Getting Team America: World Police across the finish line was no easy task for South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The duo’s 2004 puppet movie, about a Broadway actor who joins an international counterterrorist organization to help save the world from Kim Jong Il, was a nightmare experience for them from day one. Part of the problem was the difficulty of operating the 270 marionettes they used for the movie, each of which required at least four puppeteers to perform even the simplest tasks. “It was the worst time of my entire life,” Stone said after production wrapped in 2004. “I never want to see a puppet again.”
Then there was the issue of censorship. Parker and Stone were contractually obligated to secure an R-rating for Team America by the time the film was released on October 15. However, the duo was still negotiating with the Motion Picture Association of America over the film’s rating at the beginning of that month. The folks at the MPAA took issue with one scene in particular, and if you’ve ever seen the movie, you know exactly which one we’re talking about. A sex scene between the lead character, Gary (voiced by Trey Parker), and fellow Team America member Lisa (Kristen Miller) was originally a minute and a half long before being trimmed down to just 50 seconds.
The sequence was so outrageous that Parker had the film’s first assistant director, Eric Jewett, gather the crew together for a special talk the day it was shot. “Trey gave us all permission to take the day off if we were offended or uncomfortable with what we were about to see,” Jewett remembered. “No one left. The result was a comedy bit like no other.” That comedy bit had to be submitted to the MPAA nine times prior to the film being granted an R-rating, however—up until then they kept giving it an NC-17.
Among the things they objected to were shots of the puppets urinating and defecating on each other. “We love the golden shower, but I guess they said no to that,” Parker told Rolling Stone at the time. “But I just love that they have to watch it. Seriously, can you imagine getting a videotape with just a close-up of a puppet asshole, and you have to watch it?”
Parker and Stone finally had the rating changed from NC-17 to R ten days before Team America hit theaters. Regarding the MPAA’s indifference toward everything else they did in the movie, Parker said, “We blow Janeane Garofalo’s head clean off, [but for the MPAA] it’s all about the positions of the dolls having sex.”
The unrated version with the full sex scene intact was eventually released on home video the following year.
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