An ‘80s Rock Star Pitched an Unofficial Remake of ‘John Wick’ to the ‘South Park’ Guys

South Park obviously has a long history of dunking on celebrities, but they’ve generally gone pretty easy on rock musicians — just as long as you don’t count Russell Crowe as a “musician.”

Think about it, The Cure got to battle Mecha-Streisand, Korn were depicted as Scooby-Doo-like paranormal mystery investigators and Radiohead briefly popped by to mock a crying teenager as he’s mourning his dead parents after being tricked into cannibalizing them. And then there was the time that Van Halen helped usher in a new era of world peace. 

Apparently, Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s admiration for singer David Lee Roth once extended so far as to taking a pitch meeting with him. As Bill Hader recently revealed on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, when the SNL alum was working as a writer on South Park, Roth pitched Parker and Stone “a movie where he was an assassin” who’s just trying to “get his dog back.”

Unfortunately, this premise was strikingly similar to the plot of another very, very famous movie. “And we had to say, ‘Oh, they made this movie John Wick,’” Hader explained. “But the guy has a dog?” Roth questioned. “I go ‘Yeah, no, he has a dog.’”

According to Hader, in an effort to salvage the pitch, Parker then made a new suggestion. “He goes, ‘Well, what if you’re you, and it’s like you’re having to go on these missions, but the band’s also going, ‘Hey Dave, we need you on tour and stuff like that.’”

Unfortunately, the idea of writing his old Van Halen bandmates into the movie about a canine-loving assassin idea did not go over well with Roth. “He goes, ‘Nah I don’t want those guys involved with this!’” Hader recalled.

Hader also described how Roth toured the South Park offices, and randomly grabbed an illustrator sitting at a “canted” desk shouting, “Hey what’s wrong with you, long night?” To which the artist responded, “Woah, Diamond Dave!”

Despite tempting legal action from Keanu Reeves, the meeting was a joy for all involved. “I just wanna make it clear, we loved him at South Park. It wasn’t like a thing where we were like, ‘Oh, why is this guy here? We were, like, totally in awe,” Hader clarified. “We were like, ‘Oh my God, that’s fucking David Lee Roth.’ And he did not disappoint at all. And he was so sweet and nice. It was awesome.” 

This isn’t a huge surprise considering that Parker and Stone have previously compared their working relationship to Roth and his famous collaborator. “We’re like Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth,” Parker said in the documentary 6 Days To Air: The Making of South Park. “You may be like, ‘It’s all about Eddie,’ but if Lee Roth leaves, you’re like: ‘Well, fuck that band.’”

While he never made a movie with Parker and Stone, Roth’s dream of playing a (shirtless) movie hit man was eventually realized thanks to the 2013 Japanese short film Tokyo Story, which Roth also scripted. 

No doggies or bitter bandmates, though.