Matt Stone
Matthew Richard Stone is an American animator, writer, producer, songwriter, filmmaker, and actor. He is best known for co-creating the animated television series South Park and the stage musical The Book of Mormon with his creative partner Trey Parker. Intrigued by a career in entertainment at a young age, he studied film and mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he met Parker. During their attendance, the two worked on various short films and starred in the feature-length musical Cannibal! The Musical.
Stone and Parker moved to Los Angeles and wrote their second film, Orgazmo. Before its premiere, South Park aired on Comedy Central in August 1997 and was met with widespread praise. Following its success, the two directed a film based on the series, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, which was met with positive critical reception. Outside of South Park, Stone has written, produced, and starred in the satirical action film Team America: World Police, as well as the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, which, after long-tenured delays and years of development, was met with positive reviews.
Stone is the recipient of numerous accolades, including five Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on South Park, as well as three Tony Awards and one Grammy Award for The Book of Mormon.
Early life
Matthew Richard Stone was born on May 26, 1971 in Houston, Texas, the son of Sheila Lois and Gerald Whitney Stone Jr. He is of Irish-American heritage from his father's side and Jewish heritage from his mother's side. The South Park characters Gerald and Sheila Broflovski were named after them. Stone and his younger sister Rachel were raised in Littleton, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, where they attended Heritage High School. He attended the University of Colorado Boulder. His father was worried he would "become a musician and a bum", so he insisted that his son major in something "practical". They compromised on Matt's majoring in both mathematics and film. Stone graduated with a double-major Bachelor of Arts degree in 1993.Career
Career beginnings
''Cannibal! The Musical'' (1992–1994)
In 1992, Stone, Parker, Jason McHugh and Ian Hardin founded a production company named the Avenging Conscience. The company was named after the D. W. Griffith film by the same title. Parker employed the cutout paper technique on Avenging Conscience's first production, Jesus vs. Frosty, an animated short pitting the religious figure against Frosty the Snowman.The quartet created a three-minute trailer for a fictional film titled Alfred Packer: The Musical. The idea was based on an obsession Parker had with Alfred Packer, a real nineteenth-century prospector accused of cannibalism. During this time, Parker had become engaged to long-time girlfriend Liane Adamo, but their relationship fell apart shortly before production on the trailer began. "Horribly depressed", Parker funneled his frustrations with her into the project, naming Packer's "beloved but disloyal" horse after her. The trailer became something of a sensation among students at the school, leading Virgil Grillo, the chairman and founder of the university's film department, to convince the quartet to expand it to a feature-length film. Parker wrote the film's script, creating an Oklahoma!-style musical featuring ten original show tunes. The group raised $125,000 from family and friends and began shooting the film. The movie was shot on Loveland Pass as winter was ending, and the crew endured the freezing weather. Parker, under the pseudonym Juan Schwartz, was the film's star, director and co-producer.
Alferd Packer: The Musical premiered in Boulder in October 1993; "they rented a limousine that circled to ferry every member of the cast and crew from the back side of the block to the red carpet at the theater's entrance." The group submitted the movie to the Sundance Film Festival, who did not respond. Parker said he had a "vision" they needed to be at the festival, which resulted in the group renting out a conference room in a nearby hotel and putting on their own screenings. MTV did a short news segment on The Big Picture regarding the film, and they made industry connections through the festival. They intended to sell video rights to the film for $1 million and spend the remaining $900,000 to create another film. The film was instead sold to Troma Entertainment in 1996 where it was retitled Cannibal! The Musical, and upon the duo's later success, it became their biggest-selling title. It has since been labeled a "cult classic" and adapted into a stage play by community theater groups and even high schools nationwide.
''The Spirit of Christmas'' and ''Orgazmo'' (1995–1997)
Following the film's success, the group, without Hardin, moved to Los Angeles. Upon arrival, they met a lawyer for the William Morris Agency who connected them with producer Scott Rudin. As a result, the duo acquired a lawyer, an agent, and a script deal. Despite initially believing themselves to be on the verge of success, the duo struggled for several years. Stone slept on dirty laundry for upwards of a year because he could not afford to purchase a mattress. They unsuccessfully pitched a children's program titled Time Warped to Fox Kids, which would have involved fictionalized stories of people in history. The trio created two separate pilots, spaced a year apart, and despite the approval of Fox Broadcasting Company development executive Pam Brady, the network disbanded the Fox Kids division.David Zucker, who was a fan of Cannibal!, contacted the duo to produce a 15-minute short film for Seagram to show at a party for its acquisition of Universal Studios. Due to a misunderstanding, Parker and Stone improvised much of the film an hour before it was shot, creating it as a spoof of 1950s instructional videos. The result, Your Studio and You, features numerous celebrities, including Sylvester Stallone, Demi Moore, and Steven Spielberg. "You could probably make a feature film out of the experience of making that movie because it was just two dudes from college suddenly directing Steven Spielberg", Parker later remarked, noting that the experience was difficult for the two.
During the time between shooting the pilots for Time Warped, Parker penned the script for a film titled Orgazmo, which later entered production. Half of the budget for the picture came from a Japanese porn company called Kuki, who wanted to feature its performers in mainstream Western media. Independent distributor October Films purchased the rights to the film for one million dollars after its screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film received an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, which resulted in the poor box office performance of the film. Parker and Stone attempted to negotiate with the organization on what to delete from the final print, but the MPAA would not give specific notes. The duo later theorized that the organization cared less because it was an independent distributor which would bring it significantly less money.
Fox executive Brian Graden cut Parker and Stone a personal check of a few thousand dollars to produce a video greeting card he could deliver to friends; the film would be a sequel to their earlier short Jesus vs. Frosty. Graden sent the film on a VHS to several industry executives in Hollywood; meanwhile, someone digitized the clip and put it up on the Internet, where it became one of the first viral videos. Due to the popularity of Jesus vs. Santa, Parker and Stone wanted to turn the short into a television series later entitled South Park, and offered the show to Fox. While Fox executives were enthusiastic about the premise, they didn't want to air a show that included the talking poo character Mr. Hankey and passed on it after the duo refused to remove the character several times. Parker and Stone then entered negotiations with both MTV and Comedy Central. Parker preferred the show be produced by Comedy Central, fearing that MTV would turn it into a kids' show. When Comedy Central executive Doug Herzog watched the short, he commissioned the development of the show into a series.
''South Park''
Premiere and initial success (1997–1998)
The pilot episode of South Park was made on a budget of $300,000, and took between three and three and a half months to complete, and animation took place in a small room at Celluloid Studios, in Denver, Colorado, during the summer of 1996. Similar to Parker and Stone's Christmas shorts, the original pilot was animated entirely with traditional cut paper stop motion animation techniques. The idea for the town of South Park came from the real Colorado basin of the same name where, according to the creators, a lot of folklore and news reports originated about "cattle mutilations and UFO and bigfoot sightings".South Park premiered in August 1997 and immediately became one of the most popular shows on cable television, averaging consistently between 3.5 and 5.5 million viewers. The show transformed the then-fledgling Comedy Central into "a cable industry power almost overnight". At the time, the cable network had a low distribution of just 21 million subscribers. Comedy Central marketed the show aggressively before its launch, billing it as "why they created the V-chip." The resulting buzz led to the network earning an estimated $30 million in T-shirts sales alone before the first episode was even aired. Due to the success of the series' first six episodes, Comedy Central requested an additional seven; the series completed its first season in February 1998. An affiliate of the MTV Network until then, Comedy Central decided, in part due to the success of South Park, to have its own independent sales department. By the end of 1998, Comedy Central had sold more than $150 million worth of merchandise for the show, including T-shirts and dolls. Over the next few years, Comedy Central's viewership spiked largely due to South Park, adding 3 million new subscribers in the first half of 1998 alone and allowed the network to sign international deals with networks in several countries.
Parker and Stone became celebrities as a result of the program's success; Parker noted that the success of South Park allowed him to pursue, for a time, a lifestyle that involved partying with women and "out-of-control binges" in Las Vegas. Their philosophy of taking every deal led to their appearances in films, albums, and outside script deals. Among these included BASEketball, a 1998 comedy film that became a critical and commercial flop.