Who could have guessed that when Trey Parker and Matt Stone premiered their crudely animated, often debauched look at life in South Park, Colorado, on August 13, 1997 — their debut episode, “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe,” ended with satellite dishes coming out of Cartman’s rear end — that it would mark the beginning of a distinguished comedy career? Comedy Central’s “South Park” is not only still going strong, but its creators have also conquered Broadway, with “The Book of Mormon,” winner of nine Tonys, including Best Musical. As the “South Park” celebrates its 15th season, Parker and Stone spoke to the Post about their ground-breaking show in a conference room next to the cafeteria at MTV headquarters in Times Square (Viacom owns both MTV and Comedy Central).
Q: Cartman was initially a buffoon, but over time he evolved into an evil genius. How did that happen?
Trey Parker: He was originally always gonna be the kid with satellite dishes coming out of his butt. But over the course of the show he got a little bit meaner and darker, and then came the Scott Tenorman episode. [Season Five’s “Scott Tenorman Must Die,” where Cartman engineers the death of a bully’s parents.] That was big, with us wondering, should we do this? This is crazy to do with a kid. From that point on, he just got darker.
Matt Stone: There were some fans who thought it went too far. But there were people who loved it, too.
TP: It was very important that we made the distinction that he didn’t kill anyone. He set it up so people got killed.
Q: Can you give me an example of an episode that didn’t work as well as you’d hoped?
TP: We got an Emmy for this one, but “Margaritaville” was one. When we think we have a good idea and didn’t pull it off right, we get really angry with ourselves. With “Margaritaville,” we had this amazing concept about the economy being god. Then it got to be Tuesday and we’re like, “no! It’s not ready yet!” Then we just had to do it that way.
QHave you ever had an episode that you felt went too far?
MS: The only person we have to apologize to is Gary Condit. We piled on Condit when it was like, “Oh my God. He’s so guilty.” And now it’s been proven [that he didn’t kill intern Chandra Levy]. So we should apologize to Gary Condit.
QWould you like to make this your official apology?
MS: We’re sorry, Gary Condit.
TP: We should probably do it more seriously than that, though.
QIsaac Hayes, who played Chef, left the show in 2006 after an episode ripping Scientology. [Hayes was a Scientologist.] Did you know going in that there was a potential problem there?
MS: No. We didn’t include Chef in the episode, just to be nice. We’re not gonna put anybody in a weird position. If you don’t wanna work on an episode, if somebody wants to be a conscientious objector, that’s fine by us. But then afterward he got mad about it.
TP: We knew enough to keep him out of it. We thought that would be enough.
Q The end of last season’s finale, with Stan’s parents splitting up, was unusually serious, making some people think you were signaling the show’s end. What was your intention?
TP: We were just talking about getting older. Everyone thinks we were in this dark place, and we truly weren’t. There was never a thing of, this could be the end. We thought Duck President [a movie satire in the episode] was the funniest shot we’d ever done. I just watched the episode for the first time since we did it, and I’m laughing, and I get to the end and it’s kinda sad.
Q: Given that you’ve both hit 40, is there any less enjoyment to being this silly than there was when you were younger?
MS: It’s more of an escape from middle-age problems, because we get to play around. In some ways it’s different, and in some ways it’s totally, exactly, ridiculously the same.