By Robert Scucci
| Published
Southern park has always been able to remain culturally relevant due to the speed with which an entire episode is set up, as documents largely in the 6 days to be broadcast documentary. Although this method “do everything at the last minute” has served Trey Parker and Matt Stone very well over the years because the pressure forces them to run against a deadline apparently impossible week after a week during an active race, a particular episode, “I am a little country”, was almost ruined because its premise is being insured “a little country, a little rock Mary famous by Donny and Marie Osmond.
And I am not talking about a situation where they could have exchanged the melody with something else and get away with it, because a significant quantity of the intrigue for “I’m a little country” relied on the citizens of South Park singing the emblematic song throughout the episode.
Country, rock and roll, and war in Iraq
I have only three weeks after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, it is not surprising that “I am a bit of a country” which would unpack how the city of Southern park reacted to war by opposing the Redneck, from pro-war citizens led by Skeeter to the more liberal and anti-war demonstrators led by Randy Marsh. According to Parker and Stone, they both noticed how most pro-war songs are country, while most of the protest songs fall into the gender rock and roll, leading them to believe that the osmond song would be decisive to tear the two sides in a fun way on the city’s place when they are not hell of all the others in the typical Southern park fashion.
Taking into account the tight chronology in which Southern park The episodes are produced – starting the production on a Thursday evening and being given to the network the following Wednesday morning little time before it spends on the air – “I am a bit of a country” must have almost rewritten or completely rewritten if they could not get rid of the song in time.
Racing against the clock
Other series do not encounter the same problems as Southern park faces when they need to guarantee rights for musical numbers because an episode of Simpsons,, For example, takes about six months to produce. According to Parker, going through the appropriate channels on any other program is essentially a non-professional because it takes a few weeks to a few months to apply a song while the producers determine the license and negotiate payment with the owner of the song. In the case of South Park’s “I’m a little country”, or any other episode, by the way, the luxury of time does not exist, which results in conversations starting with “Hey, we want to use your song in the series, will you be in four days, you?”
Fortunately, Sunday evening before “I’m a little country” had to be broadcast as South Park’s 100th episode, they obtained the green light to finish the episode as it is written, which is nothing less than a miracle because it means that they were able to obtain the rights in a few days, not months, without legal repercussions.
Everything met at the last minute
Although you thought that episodes like “I’m a bit country” would rethink Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Southern park Due to the quantity of stress that he could potentially have put their crew, you must give them a credit to stick to what they call their “Saturday Night Live Production schedule. It is this level of carelessness that allows them to stay above current events without episodes that seem dated to liberation in a world where a 24/7 news cycle means that most of our attention can be measured only in nano-secret (had to drop a Basketball Reference here… rest in peace, denslow!).
So, the next time you shoot “I’m a bit country”, you thank your lucky stars that the Osmond estate was cool enough to allow their song to be in a good place in an episode of Southern park With little or no notice.
