Trey Parker and Matt Stone Remade a Classic Monty Python Sketch Using ‘South Park’ Characters
Trey Parker and Matt Stone are clearly big fans of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and famously credited Terry Gilliam’s cut-and-paste animations as the primary influence on South Park’s construction paper cut-out aesthetic.
The duo once admitted that their initial friendship began due to a shared love of the iconic troupe. “Matt and I met and got along so well because we were just pure Python freaks,” Parker explained, adding that “they were in their own world and they just didn’t give a fuck about what the normal comedy thing to do was. From the beginning with South Park, we were like, ‘We gotta do that.’”
Parker and Stone actually got to meet the surviving members of Monty Python at the Aspen Comedy Festival back in 1998, later referring to the aging comedians as “our Gods.” Eric Idle even has a cameo in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, voicing the inventor of the new electroshock V-chip, who has a very Python-esque name, “Dr. Vosknocker.”
In retrospect, no other actor could have delivered the phrase “Big Floppy Donkey Dick” quite like Idle.
In 1999, the remaining Pythons celebrated their 30th anniversary with Python Night, an extended TV special that featured new documentaries and, most interestingly, a batch of brand new Monty Python sketches. Unfortunately, the sketches mostly sucked. Idle recently said it was “unquestionably the worst Python show ever.”
One bright spot in the largely forgotten program was a contribution from the South Park guys. The “tribute” consisted of a remix of the iconic “Dead Parrot” sketch in which Cartman returns to the “Friend Store” to complain about the “Dead Friend” (Kenny) that he purchased not half an hour ago from that very boutique.
The clerk, Kyle, argues that Kenny is merely “resting.” Most of the sketch plays out like the original, until the end, when Cartman is plucked out of the scene by its animator: Gilliam.
The animation was bookended by live-action segments featuring Parker and Stone, in which they joked that Gilliam should come work at South Park. They decided that the only way to convince the “big Hollywood director” to join them was to kidnap his mother, who is then revealed to be bound and gagged beside them. At that point it cut to a team of police officers, led by Terry Jones, giving a press conference about the Mrs. Beatrice Gilliam.
While South Park is still going strong, it does seem as though Monty Python is finally no more. And this time it isn’t just resting.
