The Spirit of Christmas

A short cartoon by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Visit my new Unofficial South Park Homepage.

Get your Spirit of Christmas desktop theme for Windows 95.
Click on the "Download the Cartoon" button below.

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MORE PICTURES.
Click on the pictures button.

Warning: Contains foul language. I rate the movie about PG-13.

The story behind the movie.

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?

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Please come back again because new stuff is added daily.

This page has been accessed times since April 18, 1997.

Homepage maitained by Taison Tan
ttant@cco.caltech.edu

Last updated August 21, 1997

Disclaimer
All images and sounds on this website are edited by Taison Tan.
If you want to use the pictures or anything else just let me know.
I'll let you use them. I'd just like to know how many people use them in their own pages
and I hope to get some credit for it too : )