Team America Article

Taken from Empire Online

25/06/2003:
The Puppet Masters
South Park team plan Hollywood satire
The twisted yet stupidly talented minds behind South Park have turned their satirical eye on Hollywood for their next feature. Inspired by Thunderbirds (the original, not the remake), South Park scribes Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Pam Brady are now going to work on Team America , a send-up of mindless Hollywood action movies. But, rather than relying on CGI or huge explosions, the team will go back to basics for their cutting-edge comedy.

"We will be sophisticated and employ all modern technology," producer Scott Rudin told Variety. "We have gone well beyond the paper cut-outs used in the last movie. Here, the entire cast will be made of wood!"

Yes, in honour of Joe 90 and his ilk, the film will feature puppet protagonists, who save the world from total destruction thanks to their apple-pie-stuffing patriotism and belief in the good old US of A.

"Our cast will be deliberately made of wood, but that will only be taking to the extreme what is evident in many Hollywood movies right now," said Stone. "I hate all these new Hollywood films that are CGI-driven. Trey and I loved that Thunderbirds series because of the artistry of the marionettes. It's amazing that a studio would make a movie out of it and take out the only thing that was good about the series."

Targeting the kind of A-list stars who regularly populate high-concept action eye-candy, the South Park team aim to put them in their places and theyıre, unsurprisingly, not too bothered who they upset on the way. "We hate those actors who take themselves so seriously and think they are a productive and important part of society," said Parker. "The subtle joke here is that all actors are puppets. This will probably piss off everyone in town, and might well be our swan song."

Given that the pair managed to depict Saddam Hussein chasing Satan around the abyss with a severed male member without being run out of Hollywood or burned at the stake, Stone and Parker will almost certainly survive to cause all manner of mayhem in the future.
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