I've gotten to a point where I wouldn't direct someone else's material. It would only be something totally original.
— Trey Parker
I think you could take any Bruckheimer movie and do it with puppets, and it would be screamingly funny.
Colorado's right next to Utah - you know, Mormon Central.
My first serious girlfriend, when I was 16, was Mormon. I went to her house for 'family home evening,' and I was like, 'Why aren't you people ignoring each other and watching television?'
I've never met a Mormon I didn't like. They're really nice people. They're so Disney. They're so Rodgers and Hammerstein.
I've started confiding in people, other artists mostly, that I hate making 'South Park,' and I always have. It's super stressful. I'm always miserable.
A lot of people don't realize this, but probably the one person that gets made fun of in 'South Park' more than anybody is my dad. Stan's father, Randy - my dad's name is Randy - that's my drawing of my dad; that's me doing my dad's voice. That is just my dad. Even Stan's last name, Marsh, was my dad's stepfather's name.
When I was a kid, to me, the Evergreen Players were the big time.
The only way to be punk rock in L.A. is to be a Republican.
My fear is that, as soon as I get married and have kids that I'll kind of do what a lot of people do and suddenly start making, 'Now I'm gonna make films for kids.' I really hope I don't do that.
Bargaining makes you come up with the best ideas.
I was always a very happy, optimistic person.
No show would be successful if you took a group of people and just said, 'You're dumb!' over and over. That's not what Broadway's about.
I hate puppets so much.
When you sit down and write a song, you kind of have the idea for the song, and you sit there at the piano and you kinda just write it. And then of course later there's some dinking around with it and changing some stuff.
Even from the very beginning, I didn't put any money in the stock market.
Most people I know are not hard-core religious people. They are what I would call 'lightly religious.' So I don't buy the notion that we can't laugh about religion in America.
How many times have you been watching an episode of 'South Park' and thought, 'I'd like to be able to watch this on my television while hooked into my mobile device, which is being controlled by my tablet device which is hooked into my oven, all while sitting in the refrigerator?'
If you ever go to Temple Square in Salt Lake City, if you stay there long enough, you'll see a homeless person standing in the middle of their nice, beautiful square, holding out a cup for change. And the Mormons don't ever ask him to leave.
Like anything important, anything you need people to hear - you've got to have music for it. You've got to make it at least a little piece of a song or sometimes a whole song.
I was a big Broadway fan for a while.
You can't make experimental work by copying past work.
If you're famous, you suck, just for being famous. People in England totally get that; Americans don't.
Out of all the ridiculous religion stories - which are greatly, wonderfully ridiculous - the silliest one I've ever heard is, 'Yeah, there's this big, giant universe, and it's expanding, and it's all going to collapse on itself, and we're all just here, just 'cuz. Just 'cuz.' That to me, is the most ridiculous explanation ever.
Doing a musical is like having a kid. It's out there alive somewhere. It's not like a movie or a TV show where what we intended is what everyone will see. The kid can act out. The kid's going to do what it wants to do.
I try not to tune in to politics until it's two or three months before the election. Till then, it's like watching preseason football.
When someone goes, 'Oh, this group is really pissed off at what you said,' there's not a piece of my body that goes, 'Sweet!' That means I did it wrong. I'm just trying to make people laugh.
Once you have kids, you think like a parent. You get a lot more protective.
I can feel myself dying inside.
I see Santa Claus and Joseph Smith and Luke Skywalker as the same person.
Any job is a job. If you have to be doing something, then you're probably not enjoying it.
The story of Jesus makes no sense to me. God sent his only son. Why could God only have one son and why would he have to die? It's just bad writing, really. And it's really terrible in about the second act.
My dad was just a big Joseph Campbell nut.
People have a lot of different beliefs, and at the end of the day, we all have deeply held beliefs that probably don't make sense to anyone else.
When you're watching 'Armageddon,' and the Aerosmith song starts... Super funny.
When you were a teenager in Colorado, the way to be a punk rocker was to rip on Reagan and Bush and what they were doing and talk about how everyone in Colorado's a redneck with a gun and all this stuff.
That was a misconception among a lot of people - that Mormons are polygamist. No, they're not. I mean they obviously have that in their history, and there are some fundamentalists.
I don't even know where Russia and Mexico are.
If somebody actually came to me and said, 'O.K., this is it: write your last 'South Park' episodes,' I'd be like, 'No, no, no.'
I was a big 'Charlie Brown' fan as a kid.
All the religions are super funny to me.
The 'Beavis and Butt-head' movie was just a movie-length version of the TV show.
Even if you're not Christian, just from being in our culture you know Jesus and resurrection and redemption.
I got into this little habit of architecture and building. I designed a house in Colorado and one in Hawaii. The idea is supposed to be build and sell - but then I can never bring myself to sell them.
I don't want to say never, but I hope I don't become that 'take me seriously now' guy.
I have no desire to ever talk to Sean Penn.
I find Mormons adorable.
So much of what you see now in Hollywood is written and directed by committee, and you can see it.
I bought a house for my mom, I bought a house for my dad, I bought a house for my sister.
You don't need missionaries in Colorado; you got Colorado.
