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South Park: Trey Parker Explains The Show's Weekly Writing Process

During an FYC event, South Park co-creator Trey Parker walked fans through the fast-paced weekly writing process for the animated series.

As the Comedy Central animated series readies to throw open the doors to Season 29 on September 16th, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone offered some insights into the show's writing process during a recent Emmy Awards FYC event spotlighting the duo. If you're wondering how South Park can be so timely, Parker explained just how little time there is between when they hit that "that's the joke" moment and when the episode hits screens.

"If you watched the typical 'South Park' episode on a Sunday night before it airs, it would be unwatchable. I mean, it wouldn't make any sense because there's so many times that it's really always on, we always… it's like Monday around lunchtime that we've gone through every version of that story and we've gone this way and we've gone that way and we're like, 'that doesn't work, this doesn't work, rewritten it, rewritten it, rewritten it,' you know, and then we get around to Monday and we know it's like okay, we got to get close now and it's always around then that we're like, 'that's the joke,'" Parker shared.

He continued, "That's what's funny, you know, and especially with… why it's important with the subject matter we do, too. It's like, you know, there's always a fine line between like, 'okay, we did that, right?' You know what I mean? And it's like we… a lot of times, too, people think that we start an episode going, we need to say this about this, you know, but the truth is we'll just go, 'oh, we should talk about this subject. This thing's huge right now.' And we won't even know how we feel about it until like Tuesday. We're like, 'well, I didn't even know I felt that way about that.' You know what I mean?" But even though the long-running animated series has a quick turnaround time, Parker noted that South Park shares something in common with an even longer-running animated series. "The thing is, we do the show fast, like Matt's saying, but I know that our show goes through as many, if not more, than a 'Simpsons' script or anything like that."

South Park Creators on Embracing "Bully Mentality" to Take On Trump

The topic of the long-running animated series's focus on Trump was also a hot topic during the duo's one-on-one with Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group co-chair and CEO Mike De Luca during the South Park Emmy Official FYC event in Los Angeles earlier this month. For the record, Parker and Stone made it clear that their original plan was to go after Trump as a one-shot. That changed when they saw how it turned out and the reaction it received.

"We were just going to do that first show [Season 27 opener] with the Trump stuff.' We laid into him so hard, and the thing became: 'Well, who's the bully now?' It became this just totally juvenile joke of like, 'We're not gonna stop. We're going to do it every single week.' Even when everyone's like, 'OK, guys, move on,' [we're] like, 'Nope, we're not moving on. We're going to keep going, going, going.' That became the joke," Parker shared. "To me, that was the whole season, was that they kept reacting, and we were like, 'Well, God damn it. All right, we'll do it some more.'"

As for Parker and Stone being concerned about a backlash from the Trump Administration, Stone referred back to the duo's all-or-nothing attitude, where they would rather lose it all than play it safe. It was a bully mentality," Stone shared. "We don't care. We don't give a fuck. We say it all the time. We're not irresponsible, but we'll go back to Colorado. We don't give a fuck." Yes, that included the possibility of losing the show. "[With] last season, the thing that felt powerful about it wasn't just that we're going to say this thing or we're going to go there [but] that we're going to throw our show on the table," he added.

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