Bruce Campbell Says the Cinematographer for ‘Team America: World Police’ Told Him Horror Stories About It
Trey Parker and Matt Stone have said that they’d rather die along with their entire families than make another puppet movie like Team America: World Police. But, as Bruce Campbell knows well, the dead aren’t always free from puppetry.
In 2004, the creators of South Park released their feature-length satire of American politics and over-the-top action movies performed entirely by a massive cast of custom-made marionettes. Team America: World Police won no awards, broke no box office records and, thankfully for Parker and Stone, spawned no sequels, but the hilarious, unique and preposterously profane action-comedy-musical quickly became a cult-classic — and, not to mention, it contains some of the finest, catchiest and filthiest show tunes that Parker and Stone ever performed.
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Team America: World Police also happened to be the single most grueling and labor-intensive feature film that any of the many esteemed and experienced artists involved in its hellish production ever experienced. Yesterday, Evil Dead star Campbell, who knows a thing or two about hell, mentioned that Team America: World Police had the same cinematographer as Army of Darkness in a Twitter thread about the former cult classic. According to Campbell, Bill Pope, who also shot the original Matrix trilogy, would rather try to shoot a film with a cast of Deadites than ever work with puppets again:
For Team America: World Police, Parker and Stone drew inspiration from revolutionary TV producer and puppeteer Gerry Anderson and his work on the 1970s science-fiction series Thunderbirds, which used his original technique of “Supermarionation” to sync up pre-recorded voice lines with the mouth movements of the marionettes that made up the Thunderbirds cast. When planning Team America: World Police, Parker and Stone resolved to shoot the entire movie using only practical effects in honor of Anderson’s artistry, which caused the film’s production to be the biggest nightmare in movie history since Ash and his friends found a weird book in the basement of their cabin.
The Team America: World Police team made 270 custom marionettes for filming, and each one required a team of four puppeteers to painstakingly pilot in every close-up shot and massive action sequence. With a total crew of more than 200 movie professionals, Team America: World Police would take an entire day of production just to nail a single three-second shot.
Pope, Parker and Stone barely finished shooting in time for the South Park creators to hastily edit Team America: World Police into a passable cut for the film’s release. According to Parker and Stone, that meant consecutive 20-hour days during the home stretch. As such, it’s entirely understandable why Pope would say that The Matrix and Army of Darkness were light work compared to the apocalyptic, satanic stress of filming puppets as they shit on each others’ chests.
