BAD BOYS, GOOD BOOK
The secret to the dark humour in The Book of Mormon? Co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone gave it a moral core
The Book of Mormon has taken Broadway by storm and opens next week in Toronto. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are also the brains behind South Park. The secret behind their surprising success? Sincerity.
CHICAGO— Here are the first three things you notice when you meet Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the diabolical duo who’ve put South Park on the air for 16 seasons and who now have four companies of The Book of Mormon playing to sold-out houses around the world — one of them arriving in Toronto on April 30:
1. They look like the kind of suburban daddies you’d probably meet at Costco, fighting over a case of discount salsa.
2. Their personal conversation is almost totally devoid of four-letter words or gross sexual anecdotes.
3. They’re both really nice guys. Really. “Oh my God, they killed Kenny!” you can shout all you want, but the world has been pretty good to these two guys and they don’t mind indulging in some upbeat karmic payback.
It turns out their favourite part of The Book of Mormonisn’t the Joseph Smithbaiting jokes, or the scatological African pageant, or the tribal folk song that is an invitation to fornicate with the Higher Power.
“We feel that ‘I Believe’ encapsulates the whole show,” says Stone, referring to the inspirational Act II showstopper which, sung without irony, would be a dandy number for Josh Groban.
Parker agrees with his partner. “I love satire and dark humour, but if there isn’t a heart or a moral centre underneath, it’s all just crap. Sure it’s musical theatre and you want them to smile in that big-hearted way. That’s what I loved so much about Avenue Q,” he said.
And that’s why they asked one of its creators, Robert Lopez, to join them in writing The Book of Mormon.
“I’m sitting there in that theatre watching Avenue Q and it’s one person singing to a puppet and I’m bawling my eyes out,” Parker continues. “Because it totally works. That’s genius. Once you’re there, you can go wherever you want to with the jokes.”
Stone nods in enthusiastic consent. “Moral core. That’s the secret. The bottom line is that if we did South Park and it was for Cartman instead of about him, it would never make it. The fact is that South Park has these two kids, Stan and Kyle, who can be crazy but who try to do the right thing in life. That allows you to have fun with it.”
And have fun, they do. Two hap- less Mormon missionaries are sent to Uganda, portrayed as a wretched dictatorship that forces famine, AIDS and female circumcision on the inhabitants.
But somehow our two lads, elders Price and Cunningham, float through it all kind of gleefully, appearing, in the inspired description of The New Yorker’s John Lahr, as though “it’s Hope and Crosby all over again, with God standing in for Dorothy Lamour.”
Sure, there’s the spirit of a 1940s Road movie about it, but its deeper roots are in a very specific musical comedy.
“The great overarching thing we had from the start was the whole King & I concept,” says Stone. “You know that great sequence where the Siamese hear Uncle Tom’s Cabin, apply it to themselves and then regurgitate it back in a new framework.” Stone is talking about the legendary ballet “The Small House of Uncle Thomas,” which Jerome Robbins staged with genius. Parker explains how they ran with it. “Let’s have Mormonism explained to a bunch of people and then have them explain it back. Once we knew we had that, we knew we could hang everything else around it.” And how do they think Rodgers and Hammerstein are reacting off in eternity? “They’re up there saying, ‘You go, guys!’” laughs Stone. “At least that’s what we’d like to think.” Both men are aware that the show goes to some pretty offensive places and they are well aware of the dangers. “If the show started with one of the more dangerous numbers, we’d have a problem, sure,” Stone allows. “But by the time we get to that stuff in the show, we’ve earned it. There’s a difference between being gratuitous and making a point about something.” Parker says, “We’re very aware of being gratuitous and we try to never go there.” It’s an instinct they’ve learned during their years with South Park, which began on Aug. 13, 1997. “We just try to do seven funny shows a year, but every time it feels like we’re reinventing the wheel,” shares Stone. “We view each season as an album and each show as a song on that album. We just go into the studio and see how it comes out.” Although a lot of their reputation has risen on their topical satire, Parker says, “we don’t do a lot of current event shows. We’re careful not to play that card too much or it gets old very quickly.”
Stone smiles. “You know where a lot of shows come from? I’ll suddenly remember how I felt about something in fifth grade. We think back a lot about how we were as kids. . . .
“We were both a lot like ( South Park’s) Cartman as a kid,” he adds.
They have that freedom because, as Parker reminds us, “We’re not like normal TV shows. We’ve got a contract for four more years and we don’t ever have to think, ‘S---, we might get cancelled.’”
Until they fade off into the sunset, Stone insists, “We’re just trying to make albums that are true to the band.”
As they get up to leave, Parker adds, “It’s shocking and surprising to us that the kind of people who buy expensive tickets to Broadway shows would like our humour.
“Thank God, but they do!”