Rumor has it that the future husband of Amal Alamuddin copied the tape 300 times, circulating it through Hollywood the way most actors circulate headshots and/or venereal diseases. Because of this, the tape became so well-known in elite Hollywood circles that people actually began impersonating Parker and Stone to get meetings. Eventually, the real Stone and Parker were able to use their underground success to land a TV deal, and the rest is history. The pair thanked Clooney by giving him a guest starring role as Stan's gay dog.

Comedy Central Productions

Comedy Central ProductionsWhich, to be fair, was still more dignified than how most celebrities are treated on South Park.

There are obviously a lot of people to thank for the greatness of Star Wars, from Lucas to artist Ralph McQuarrie to Sir Alec Guinness for somehow suppressing a "What the hell am I doing here?" look while the camera was rolling. But it was Grace Kelly who managed to push Fox to spend millions on the movie equivalent of watching a manchild playing with action figures in his mom's shag-carpeted basement. Kelly, the former Hollywood star who had become Her Most Well-Lit Majesty Princess Grace of Monaco, joined the 20th Century Fox board of directors in 1975. This, according to biographers, allowed her to "get away from her oppressive husband and back to Hollywood as often as possible." However, the crushing royal atmosphere she had married into had given her one new skill she used to change cinema forever: staying quiet.

LucasfilmPre-Game Of Thrones Hollywood had no idea how crappy royal life could be.

With the board of directors "bitterly divided" over Star Wars, according to Alan Ladd Jr., who greenlit the movie, Kelly really didn't give a crap. As the board was in a deadlock, it was basically up to her to shut down funding. However, the princess was "fairly quiet about the whole thing." As men had a tendency to do back then, they considered her silence consent, and this would "tilt the scales" toward funding the divisive movie. But her tacit bravery was not left unrewarded. Out of gratitude for not killing the project in order to act like a big shot, Princess Grace was given the first-ever Star Wars figures to take back to Monaco.

As seen in the documentary Birth Of The Living Dead, George Romero's zombie classic was originally panned. The New York Times gave it a mere three-sentence review, stating that it looked like "nonprofessional actors ... besieged in a farm house by some other nonprofessional actors."

The New York TimesBut they also didn't like 2001: A Space Odyssey, so who's going to listen to this "New York Times," anyway.

Variety even questioned the morals and integrity of the filmmakers, which no one should do with any film that doesn't star Kirk Cameron.

First Run Features"We can confidently say this will never become a pop culture phenomenon, as surely as print media will thrive forever."

A big part of Night Of The Living Dead's failure was that movie theaters didn't know how to properly show the movie. At the time, most horror movies were goofy and shlocky affairs, so they were predominantly screened at grindhouses or ... children's matinees. Meaning that kids used to more sanitized horror pictures got this shoved in their impressionable eyeballs one Sunday afternoon:

Continental Distributing

Continental DistributingPfft, they saw Wile E. Coyote get way worse than that.

Oddly, having to watch a movie surrounded by screaming kids might influence reviewers' opinions. Roger Ebert too crapped all over the movie because he saw it at a matinee full of traumatized children who "left the theater with tears in their eyes." Thankfully, the movie was eventually seen in a whole new light, thanks in part to pop artist Andy Warhol.

Jack Mitchell"What? You thought I just did soup cans?"

Warhol's brand-new, super-hip magazine Interview reviewed the movie, and gave it an entirely new context: an art film.

First Run FeaturesHe may have also been simply making a statement of fact.

This was followed by positive reviews in Europe, and eventually a screening at the Museum of Modern Art. According to Romero, everyone hopped on the "bandwagon" after that. Even Ebert reversed his opinion, changing his review to 3 1/2 stars after the screams of children subsided.

A few years after the movie had been released, Buffy was rebirthed as a TV series, albeit with a different cast and other smart changes, which included abandoning Buffy's superpowered ability to sense encroaching evil with menstrual cramps. Which is strange, because usually they only make TV shows out of successful movies. That's why we got shows like M*A*S*H and Fargo, and not, say, Gigli: The Animated Series. But Buffy wasn't super-well received and didn't make a lot of money. So how did a mediocre teen vampire comedy get turned into one of the most beloved TV series of all time? Because a Hollywood power player really liked sassy blondes.

Famously, Buffy screenwriter Joss Whedon wasn't happy with the movie, even walking off the set because Donald Sutherland was "a prick," but he knew there was an amazing story buried underneath all of the debris. However, after the movie performed poorly, the hopes of a Buffy show were scrapped. Yet there was one other person that believed Buffy would succeed as a TV show. An executive at Sandollar, a production house which co-produced the movie, convinced the company to spend money acquiring the television rights. And when we say Sandollar's money, we mean Dolly Parton's money.

RCA RecordsExhibit A: an American hero

A few years before Buffy hit production, Parton co-founded Sandollar with her manager in order to get in on the money side of her acting career. When Clueless became a massive hit, the wave of awesomely snappy blondes was something Parton's company knew exactly how to ride. And that's when its CEO remembered they already had the rights to a property that was pretty much Clueless, but with the unholy dead feasting on the blood of the innocent, and also the occasional magic ventriloquist dummy.

20th TelevisionIf it's good enough for Goosebumps, it's good enough for you, Whedon.

Due to Whedon's original contract, Sandollar was obliged to offer him first crack at writing the pilot, which he eagerly accepted. And the rest is history. So don't forget that Whedon owes his entire career to the same person who wrote the world's greatest song about crashing a wedding and throwing rocks at the bride because she stole your man.