‘South Park’ History Reveals Three People Cried in the Pilot Episode’s Focus Group

Ahead of South Park’s 19th season, Entertainment Weekly did a piece on The Spirit of Christmas, Trey Parker & Matt Stone’s short film that lead to the birth of South Park as we know it, which included some special, never-before-heard stories.

To start, there were actually two Spirit videos: Jesus vs. Frosty (which came out in 1992) and Jesus vs. Santa (1995). Stone and Parker made Frosty in college, and according to Parker, “[The audience reaction] was huge. It was just the fact that there were little kid voices and cute animation and that they were screaming, ‘Fuck.’ People hadn’t really seen anything like that before. It was mostly college kids so we knew our audience. At the time, we were just trying to do something that all our friends and college buddies would think was funny.”

Three years later, Parker and Stone made Jesus vs. Santa for $2,000, and it too was a big hit. They pitched the two Spirit of Christmas holiday specials as a show (South Park) to networks like MTV and FOX, who declined. (However, FOX exec Brian Graden asked to make 100 copies of Frosty on VHS to send as that year’s Christmas card, and ended up helping them develop the show.) It gained popularity being passed around on taped copies, even once making it back to Trey & Matt. “Months went by,” Trey said. “And then we were at a party and these guys were like, ‘You guys have got to see this!’ They made everyone gather around the TV and played The Spirit of Christmas. Matt and I are like, ‘Dude, we made that.’”

It was eventually brought to Comedy Central President Doug Herzog by a development exec, and Herzog loved what he saw.

After making a pilot, they did a focus group in which participants were asked to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10. “There were 1s, and 2s, and 3s everywhere,” Graden said. “We made three people cry—they were saying that it’s inappropriate for children to say those kinds of things. Matt and Trey asked how it went. I had been to many focus groups, but they had not. I’ve never seen a worse focus group, and thought, ‘Well, this show isn’t going to be the next year of my life.'”

Of course it wasn’t the next year of their lives, but much more, as the show took off. The next time the three met with Comedy Central, they wore shirts with check minuses on them to mock the poor focus group results. Now the show is currently working on its 19th season, and is going stronger than ever.

For more of the backstory, check out the full article here.

[via Entertainment Weekly]