The guy who discovered South Park's creators was shocked by the new season as you were

The response gave South Park its highest ratings in years and garnered attention from a variety of news outlets, but it also divided the fandom, with right-wing fans seeing it as a betrayal of the show's typical middle-ground approach to attacking extremism and hypocrisy on both sides. Meanwhile, many other fans felt this is exactly what South Park needed to be in an era where the White House is pressuring voices in the media to tow the line or pay the price with fines and/or cancellation.

But I thought it would be interesting to hear how one man felt about this most recent season of the series, producer Brian Graden. Graden was a Fox executive in the mid-1990s when he met Trey Parker and Matt Stone. He distributed their short “The Spirit of Christmas” to friends in Hollywood via VHS tapes that quickly became re-copied and distributed to many others. He also brought the series to Comedy Central after Fox passed and saw it through its first season.

In an interview with Polygon, Graden talks a about his early days with Parker and Stone, as well as his thoughts about South Park’s most recent run. Like many fans of the show, he was definitely surprised by what he saw.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Polygon: To get started, can you take me back to the first time you met Trey Parker and Matt Stone?

Brian Graden: Absolutely. They were out here in LA. I think they were still students at Boulder or just wrapping up there and they had done a student film, which was a musical about cannibalism. Somebody just dragged me along to a screening and it was kind of happenstance, but I sat there laughing harder than anyone through the whole thing. Their humor reminded me of mine and my buddys' humor growing up.

We became instant friends and I started developing things with them, but I knew them three or four years before anything hit. What I had done for a couple of years, because they were always trying to pay rent, was I just threw a little money at them and said, “Let's make a video Christmas card for me that I can send out this year.” One of those was “The Spirit of Christmas.”

I'd planned to send it to 500 friends and network contacts and agents and all that, but when I saw it, I cut the list down to 35 people who would actually get it and wouldn't be offended by it. So there were only 35 to 40 of those initial Christmas cards that went out, but somehow those went viral. I remember leaving for Hawaii for Christmas and I came back and I went to an agent's office and he goes, “You've got to see this,” and he had popped in like a 10th generation copy of “Spirit of Christmas.” That was the first time it hit me that it was being spread around.

Then I helped them sell the series. Fox had no interest in it, so then I left Fox, joined them, formed a company and took them through the pilot and the first season. Once they were set on their way, I went on to be an executive at MTV. That was my professional journey with the guys, but I still talk to them today.

There were two versions of “Spirit of Christmas,” the original one with Jesus vs. Frosty from 1992, then the second one with Jesus vs. Santa from 1995. Which one went viral?

The second one. The first one I had sent out too, but that was the student film they had done, so it didn't have the same polish.

George Clooney is often credited with distributing a lot of them. Is that true?

Well, I think there's an element of revisionist history there because I know he takes credit for it, but to do that, he would've had to get one of those first 35 copies from someone. Maybe he made some copies, but most people I encountered had got it from a friend of a friend of a friend that was not George Clooney. I think there's some truth to it, but I think it took on mythic proportions that were not reflective of how it actually got to Comedy Central.

What was your impression of Trey and Matt when you met them?

I remember thinking the two of them had a synergy and a partnership that would last. We meet all sorts of people who are partnered producers or partnered talent or whatever and when you're 22, a lot of your relationships don't last another 30 years, especially that level of intensity, but they were so complimentary.

Matt is a really great business guy, a thinker. He really thinks deeply about big-picture things. He's very politically attuned. And of course, very funny and a great voice actor. Then Trey is just a pure comedic genius. My first impression, especially over that first year, is just that they made me laugh. We'd go to restaurants and we would just laugh through the whole dinner. Trey was a little harder to know, but I love them both equally.

How did the show get to Comedy Central?

We had already talked to people at Fox, who didn't have an interest in it. It was kind of a decision that I faced: Fox doesn't want this, but I think it's great, what are we going to do? So after eight years at Fox, I ended up leaving as we were shopping it to other networks. Only Comedy Central bit, literally everyone else said it's a one-note joke.

There’s another mythic story about the development of South Park, that it got a little ways at Fox, but they ultimately said “No” because of Mr. Hanky. Is that true?

No, there's no truth to that version. What there is truth to, and I'm embarrassed to say this, is when they came to me and said, “And we're going to have a talking piece of poo,” I was like, “No, you've got to be kidding. I mean, that's gross. Who talks to their poo?” So I was the Fox person who did not get it at all.

I didn't stop them from including it, nor did I presume I had that power. And I think, once the show got going, that Mr. Hankey ended up being the number two character for merchandise after Cartman. So I could not have been more wrong.

Are there any other memories from the development of South Park that stand out?

The pilot took over a year to do because it was literally construction paper. Then if you'd get a 30-second note from the network, you had to go back for another two weeks and cut more construction paper.

So we get to the end of this pilot, by far the longest pilot I remember doing from green light to delivery. Then at that point, they took us to a focus group. I'll never forget it because it was somewhere in Encino, we went, I can see the building on Ventura Boulevard. I kind of explained to Trey and Matt what a focus group was and blah, blah, blah.

We had our two rooms, I think, of 12 people each, and there were a lot of women in one particular group. At the end, they were asked to rate the show from one to 10. South Park proceeded to get the lowest score I had ever seen and ever seen since. I think it averaged a two out of 10. Some people gave it zeros, and we had made three women cry because it was so inappropriate for children to say those things.

On the way home, because I was riding with them, they were like, “So, how did that go?” I remember thinking, “Do I tell the truth? Do I give hope?” I'd never seen a show get a two and get picked up. So we all three got these t-shirts that had “check minus” on them because, back in grade school, if you didn't do well, you'd get a check minus. We wore those to our next meeting with Comedy Central, which they thought was very funny.

So everyone just laughed off the focus group?

I think I had a different reaction. I think the guys laughed it off because it wasn't fully apparent to them that this would be a killer because that would've been a killer of any other show at any other network. I think I felt much bluer about it because we had spent a year and a quarter on this pilot. I had left Fox in large part to do this pilot and I was thinking, “Oh my God, I'm 32 and my career is done. This is it.” I remember being really blue about it and not thinking there was much hope after that.

Last year, when South Park began making these huge waves again, what was it like for you on the outside?

Well, because it never went away in terms of it was still the most successful thing on Comedy Central, I didn't think about it being stagnant other than the natural decline of cable ratings. But what I love is, early on, if you look at the pilot, there was no social commentary. But by, I think it was the Big Gay Al episode, we sort of happened upon the ability to say things. And because the show was done last minute, as you would see later, they could do a show about the presidential election because it could be done that week. So the beautiful thing is that the show has evolved over the years, long before this season, where it has something to say, and it's going to challenge your presumptions.

The other brilliant thing is, they never really took a position as being left or right. They would always try to find a third point of view on a subject that wasn't just the left's talking point or the right's talking points until this season. And so the fact that they so boldly and definitively came out and said, “Trump is fucking Satan,” that's not something they've done before because that puts them on one side of the line. That alienates, in theory, 30 to 40 percent of the audience, I don't think it does, but that's the theory.

I think that's the underdiscussed piece of this season. People think, “Oh, well, South Park's always had a political bent.” They have, but it's never been a hardcore thing where they say “I see this thing happening and I'm going after it and I'm going exclusively after it,” because those characters, Kristi Noem, et cetera, they were there all season. This was not a one-off. The Satan story was all season and I just am in awe of the shift they made. But it also tells you how bad many people think this moment is, for them to fumble their neutrality because this is what the moment required.

Were you surprised that they so fully embraced one side?

Yes, absolutely. In the past, there might be an episode or two where you could say it goes this way or that way, but they studiously avoided that.

Do you think they purposefully chose to avoid taking sides before that though?No, no. I think I've heard Matt say some version of “Our goal is to offend everybody.” So I don't think it was a studied neutrality to be politically correct at all. I think, whatever they've viewed as stupidest at the moment on any side of the spectrum, is what they went after, and there's enough stupidity on all sides of what's happening in our world for them to do that.

Do you think what they did this season was risky of them?

I don't think South Park would've come back the way it did if they hadn't. We're living in a moment that is scary as hell, and this ends in the Insurrection Act with secret police going around shooting anybody they want in the head. I try not to be too hyperbolic, but you just see it inch-by-inch. So regarding South Park, I think anything less would've missed the moment and would've almost risked them seeming to not get where we are because we don't have the luxury in this moment of hating on a thousand different issues. There's one fucking Satan driving all of this.

I would not be surprised if, when fucking Satan is gone, they completely pivot and go after something else they think is stupid that could be completely Democratic. That will still happen. I don't think they had a political conversion. You can ask them this, but my gut says they just saw the moment and were like, “This is rising to a level of stupid that is so egregious that we're just going to go after it unapologetically.”