A bloody good laugh

AS THE co-creator of South Park, Trey Parker has seldom been shy of controversy. Along with his fellow conspirator Matt Stone, Parker has introduced millions of viewers across the world to the comic possibilities of insulting Scientologists, talking faeces and being anally probed by aliens – a plot line that made many people in Alabama think that the animation was in fact a documentary.

But while South Park's crudely drawn characters have earned Parker and Stone international infamy along with millions of dollars, they were taboo-busting on a budget long before that. Named after the only American to have been convicted of cannibalism, Alferd Packer: The Musical was a film that the duo made as film students at Colorado University, Boulder.

Based on a true story about a gold prospecting trip that went gruesomely wrong, the film had the gore of hick horrors such as The Hills Have Eyes mixed with the dance routines and show tunes of Oklahoma! Understandably, it didn't exactly conquer the 1993 Box Office Top 100 Movies, or even the Box Office Top 1,000 Movies, but recently the idea has been reanimated as a stage show called Cannibal! The Musical, and it is coming to Edinburgh.

While pleased that the musical is developing a life of its own, Parker is ambiguous about the film that spawned it. "In some ways, it's like talking about the high school talent show that you won," he says. "It was so long ago. I haven't even seen the movie in over 10 years."

If Alferd Packer is not the work that Parker would put at the top of his CV, he is still quick to acknowledge the influence it had on South Park. "Part of the joke would be that Packer is so cheap-looking that we didn't need tons of money to make it. Making it look really crappy was a running theme. Crappy is funny to me and that's why South Park is the way it is. It is a good format for comedy because of its cheap look. South Park is just a little cartoony thing and as soon as you talk about big issues in that format then they almost automatically become funny."

Ironically, Parker spent so much time making the film that it brought his film school career to a premature close. It was a decision his old alma mater was to regret. "They said: 'You are not here to make movies. You are here to learn how to make movies.' They kicked me out."

Parker, nearing 40, has never seen a stage version of his 15-year-old film, but then he is equally wary of settling down to watch old episodes of South Park. "When I watch South Park from 10 years ago, I sit there and cringe," he says. "It's so lame. Hopefully, I have grown with the show and I think the show is a lot better now. Back then we didn't know how to write and were just being shocking. We were 25, we were kids."

The problem for Stone and Parker is that it is becoming harder to find chains to yank. "It has changed more rapidly in the last 10 years than ever before. We sit there every year and watch the standards change. When we did the first two seasons, we felt that what we did was so hardcore, but they could be on a children's network now.

"People talk about the first episode of South Park and think we did something that no one had ever done before. The thing that we fought the hardest for and that people didn't really notice is that Cartman said 'Goddamnit' a lot. All the boys would say 'Jesus Christ!' That was the thing that would have everyone in Hollywood asking how we got away with it. Having a piece of talking poo was easy. Having a kid saying Jesus Christ was a real battle."

Interestingly, no matter how much South Park sent up celebrities and the industry that employed Stone and Parker, there was always a lot of support for them from large sections of Hollywood, who could see the satire behind the filth and the fart jokes. They comprehensively trashed that with the puppet film Team America. Taking potshots at both gung-ho American foreign policy and the liberal acting elite who opposed it, Stone and Parker happily alienated themselves.

"No matter what we did, we were still the darlings of Hollywood until we did Team America," laughs Parker. "For a while, we were invited to everything and people were really nice to us. A lot of people thought, 'Maybe I should get friendly with these guys so they don't rip on me.' Team America changed that. The super celebrity liberals hated the message of that movie even though the message is so vague. It's the same message as South Park, which is: all you extremists, shut up and just laugh for a bit. From that movie on, we don't get invited to anything and when we do, people won't talk to us."

Cannibal! The Musical, George Square Theatre (0131-226 0000). Thursday, until August 24 (not 5, 12) Various times www.cannibalthemusical.net