From rickmay@cinenet.net  Tue Jan 28 15:49:21 1997
Message-ID: <32EE73A6.53E7@cinenet.net>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 13:46:14 -0800
From: Rick May 
To: daemons@uiuc.edu
Subject: Spirit of Christmas  (****INFO****)

Hi there.. Dont know if you are the correct person to receive this.. But
I came across this info- and thought you would want to know about it.



Has author info, as well as whats next for the two artists.. :)


>SUNDANCE SCENE
>The Long and Short of 'Spirit'
>
>By Kenneth Turan
>
>     PARK CITY, Utah--Sundance success stories,
>Hollywood success stories, they're a glut on the market.
>But there's never been one quite like the saga that
>surrounds "The Spirit of Christmas," a five-minute
>animated short on which hangs a million-dollar tale.
>      For openers, though the shorts situation is highly
>competitive, with 60 selected from 1,200 submitted,
>"Spirit" is here because the festival called filmmakers
>Trey Parker and Matt Stone and asked if it could be
>shown. That's because bootleg tapes of this anarchic,
>outrageous, obscenely funny film, which features a
>fierce battle between Jesus and Santa Claus, have gone
>all around Hollywood and the world, making this the
>hottest home screening item in memory.
>      It started when a Fox executive they'd met through
>contacts made at Sundance gave them $2,000 to make a
>video he could send as a Christmas card. "I did the
>animation using construction paper cutouts," Parker
>says, "and we both improvised the dialogue, screaming
>obscenities at each other in my basement while my
>mom was baking fudge upstairs. It cost $750 and we
>pocketed the rest."
>     The exec sent the video out at Christmas 1995 to 80
>people, who promptly made it their card as well. And
>so on. "By February, we were hearing about it from
>every state, friends of friends in New York were telling
>us 'Metallica saw your video and they loved it.' We'd
>never bothered to put our name on it, so the whole thing
>came full circle when a friend from Ohio sent us a copy
>and said, 'You've got to see this.' "
>     Though their career as live-action filmmakers had
>already started (their "Cannibal the Musical" was a
>Sundance midnight show that was picked up by Troma),
>this short put them into orbit. "First everyone was
>trying to figure out who we were, and then there was
>like a little bidding war going on, studios offering
>three-picture deals." The team sold Comedy Central a
>series called "South Park," based on the shopping mall
>world "Christmas" takes place in, and they're about to
>go into production with a full-length animated feature.
>The budget: $1.5 million. "Pretty amazing," Parker
>says, and who's going to argue?
>



-- 
Rick May 
Freelance Animator 
CG-CHAR List Guy
http://www.cinenet.net/~rickmay