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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
Princess the porn dog, Gasping Moron Motel, and Creepy Kiddie Hospital. Plus: Sue has PTSD from her encounter with Richard's flaccid wiener.
Mar 8, 2004 | Obscene and herd
"We wanted to be up there with that girl who sucked off the horse and gagged." Matt Stone is explaining the inspired and ambitious vision behind "Princess," an X-rated cartoon he and Trey Parker created for Shockwave.com back in 1999. "Shocked," a half-hour documentary about Parker and Stone's brief stint creating Internet entertainment (airing on TRIO tonight at 9 p.m.) explores that strange period during the late '90s when many in Hollywood were so afraid of getting left behind by the Internet boom that they abandoned their traditional jobs to get involved in Internet start-ups. (Those of us who'd had Internet jobs since the mid '90s, on the other hand, were more than happy to take the jobs they left behind.)
But Matt Stone and Trey Parker were in the catbird seat. They had a wildly popular series, "South Park," and Shockwave wanted them to produce Flash content for the Internet. Parker says that he told executives at Shockwave, "We'll do it if we can do whatever we want."
Ah, yes. I've issued the same ultimatum many a time, but usually the response is: "Security? There's a strange woman in my office and when I ask her to leave, she starts screaming about stock options."
His wish was granted. "We wanted to put the artist back in charge," explains Rob Burgess, CEO of Macromedia, which owns Shockwave.
Do you see where this is headed? "We were hoping it would be the most offensive thing, at least in terms of cartoons, or else what the hell were we doing?" Parker reports. Enter "Princess," a cute little doggie and his adorable doggie and kitty friends who romp around town and witness the sickest, most explicit scenes imaginable.
"At one point, Trey's comment was 'Make the penis look more realistic,'" animator Chris Brion recalls.
"We wanted to see little kids wearing this stuff [Princess merchandise] around, not knowing that the content it was based on was completely X-rated. But if you just looked at the crap, it says 'Princess.' It's really cute like little boys and girls would wear it," Stone explains. "That, still, is really funny." Stone and Parker giggle.
Cut to Stefanie Henning, who worked in content acquisition at Shockwave.com at the time. "We were really looking to create franchises. The question, obviously was, around 'Princess,' 'Is this a franchise? Is this something we can really mass market across multiple platforms?'"
"And then the second episode was the little boy seeing his dead mom being violated by a man ..." Stone explains, as Parker chuckles.
Watching "Shocked," it's tough not to feel a little bad for the Shockwave executives, as naive as they were, for being taken for such a ride by the Beavis and Butthead of the TV industry. In the documentary, Parker and Stone are not only their usual childish, smug selves, but they're absolutely shameless about creating some pretty disgusting content.
So why is it impossible not to cheer them on? There's something about the interplay between Henning and Burgess, their dorky businessspeak still littered with those pesky buzz words "content" and "multi-platform," and Stone and Parker's frank, shameless desire to offend. Maybe these two guys are sociopaths, but they're talented sociopaths, and when you flash between Stone and Parker giggling and Burgess talking about them "touching people where they don't like to be touched," the results are like a live-action version of "South Park," with Parker and Stone as Cartman and Stan, and Burgess as nerdy teacher Mr. Garrison.
Whether Stone and Parker are vaguely creepy whippersnappers or poster children for the FCC, "Shocked" provides a tidy parable of one of the most absurd junctures in the Hollywood Internet content bubble.
Never say "forever"
Onward, to absurd junctures in the reality TV programming bubble. The low point of idiotic reality TV seemed to have been reached last summer by "Paradise Hotel," the Fox show that began as an attempt to get hot people to make out, and ended in a strange, experimental landscape of openly manipulative producing. For some reason, the big, dumb, misguided animal known as "Drunk Asshole Hotel" stumbled onto some unforgettable terrain, and everyone won: Fox, the drunk assholes, the dumb animals at home ... everyone.
Of course, the beauty of Paradise! rested in its ham-handed inelegance and boozy missteps. After the initial incentive -- hook up, or leave! -- fell through, the producers made up new rules meant to trick the inhabitants, and eventually, the uncertainty of where the show was headed or how long it would last became a major part of its appeal.
This week, the creators of "Paradise Hotel" returned with "Forever Eden," where another round of idiots have been invited to stay as long as they can without getting kicked out by their fellow guests. There are a few differences, though:
1. Instead of setting the show at a glowing white palace with spectacular views, the producers decided to go with one of those seaside hotels available only through highly exclusive travel agents -- you know, the ones whose ads in the paper say: "Cancun!!! One week $295 + airfare!!!"
2. Instead of casting a wide range of very peculiar human beings, from wildly dysfunctional morons to mildly tweaked brainiacs, the geniuses at Fox decided to cast this show based on what are commonly known as the "Three Is Company" criteria: stupidity, loud gasping and double takes.
3. Instead of introducing us to our brand-new moron friends at the beginning of the show, the producers immediately roll out one SHOCKING NEW TWIST! after another, and after two shows on which nothing at all happens, outside of the announcement of more twists punctuated by more gasping and double takes, That Voice is already claiming that Monday's show is THE MOST SHOCKING YET!
So let's summarize: Last year, Fox tried to create a really crappy show, and stumbled onto a gold mine completely by accident. This year, instead of reproducing the first show exactly, including location, brand name, slow build-up, and a few special visits from former guests, Fox rolled out everything that was stupid about the first show with exactly none of its charms.
Now let's take a minute to collect our thoughts and reflect on just how stupid the producers behind "Gasping Moron Motel" are. Amazing, isn't it? I know a really smart dog that could come up with a better show than this.
My kingdom for a Band-Aid
But you know, as a devoted slave to "Paradise Hotel," I may be a little biased. Which brings us to an important distinction: There are critics who prefer to give the illusion that their word is final. They would like you to think that they have some privileged powers of perception, that they alone can separate what is Good from what is Bad.
Then there are people like me. I've got some good ideas, sure, but I also have a lot of personal preferences and prejudices based on a tangled set of psychosocial and cultural influences. Who knows, maybe if I didn't love ham so much, I would have enjoyed "Charlotte's Web" a little more when I was younger. Maybe if my parents got along better when I was a kid, I wouldn't love "Ordinary People" and "The Corrections" and "Six Feet Under" as much as I do.
Look, it's nice to pretend that you're objective. We all like to offer up this illusion whenever we can. But there comes a time when a writer must admit his or her prejudices. I watched Stephen King's "Kingdom Hospital," based on "The Kingdom" by Lars von Trier, and I tried to form an unsullied opinion of it. But here's the problem: I think Stephen King sucks.
