25 Years Later: A Look Back at When Trey Parker and Matt Stone Crashed Sundance in 1999

by Pablo Kjolseth

I am writing this preface on August 14, 2024. My name is Pablo Kjolseth, and I attended C.U. Boulder around the same time as Trey Parker and Matt Stone back in the late '80s and early '90s. We shared film teachers and Trey was kind enough to help me on a short 16mm film project back when I was still working at The Video Station, which at that point had Colorado's biggest collection of VHS tapes and laser disks. That was back in the early '90s, before DVD's, Blurays, and streaming.

I saw the ur-text for what would become the phenomenon of SOUTH PARK when THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS screened in a 500-seat auditorium next to what is now known as the Dalton Trumbo Fountain Court by the University Memorial Center in the largest auditorium in the chemistry building (known to all students as Chem 140). This was for the Fall 4500 Film Screening for students who had taken production classes at the Film Studies Program at C.U. Boulder. If there was a machine plugged into the atmosphere of that room that night, when THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS hit the big screen, the needle would have gone off the hook. To other film students that I spoke to immediately after the event, it was obvious: Trey and Matt had what it took to be rock stars.

A few years later came the Denver Film Festival premiere of Trey's first feature film, ALFERD PACKER: THE MUSICAL (later retitled CANNIBAL! THE MUSICAL, by Troma, the indie film distributor who eventually picked up the film). I saw Trey eagerly standing at the front door of the theater and personally greeting every single person coming in. The film had been shot on 16mm but was being projected digitally. Digital projection at that time looked crappy at best, but that didn't keep a packed-house from laughing its ass off during all the song-and-dance numbers associated with Colorado's most infamous cannibal.

Trey and Matt worked on several other projects then in August of 1997, came SOUTH PARK, which became a phenomenon worthy of gracing covers on such magazines as Newsweek and Rolling Stone. The year after that, BASEKETBALL and ORGAZMO, were rolled out by studios hoping to capitalize on the success of SOUTH PARK. While that gambit didn't work out, within the DNA of the ideas of CANNIBAL! and ORGAZMO one could find many elements that would eventually blossom into THE BOOK OF MORMON; a Broadway sensation that would go on to win more awards than I could possibly list here without boring the average reader.

25-years-after the debut of SOUTH PARK, I was invited to attend the two SOUTH PARK anniversary shows at Red Rocks (August 9 & 10, 2022) where Trey and Matt would share the stage with Primus, Ween, and members of Rush to sold-out shows. SOUTH PARK has always been in the press for various reasons. Recently and locally, that attention has been at an even more than usual fever pitch thanks to a "no small effort" make-over of a local Colorado treasure that SOUTH PARK itself helped slap into the national consciousness: Casa Bonita.

Casa Bonita had, since 1974, been a destination eatery for families eager to entertain their friends and children with a variety of sights and spectacles, including cliff jumpers, arcade games, rooms decorated to fit different themes, and much more. It was an eatery that advertised so-called Mexican food with grade-school cafeteria tray efficiency and various amusement park pleasures. The sopapillas were always, genuinely, tasty, and safe. That being said, the last time I attended (before renovations), Casa Bonita reeked of bleach, there were no lines, and one of my friends barfed out his Casa Bonita meal less than an hour later at the nearby Lakeside Amusement Park. He stayed huddled by the garbage can as I took a ride on the roller coaster. When I met up with him afterwards, he was still blue in the face and we cut our trip short.

The documentary ¡CASA BONITA MI AMOR! (2024), that everyone will be able to see soon at local theaters or eventually stream, presumably, on Paramount+, will surely highlight the many ways that Casa Bonita, before the renovation, could have gone horribly wrong, not just in a temporary gastro-intestinal way, but possibly a permanent life-ending way. That adventure is the subject of Arthur Bradford's doc, which won this year's Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award.

After Trey and Matt spent almost $50 million dollars on renovations, Casa Bonita now offers what is both a completely different experience while somehow still being eerily the same, only with better food, huge lines, friendly security guards, and much higher-class illusions and entertainments.

Producer, actor, writer, director, etc., Jason McHugh, an integral member of Trey and Matt's early career, contacted me last week to let me know that he will soon have two new DVD's coming out to commemorate the 30th anniversary of CANNIBAL! THE MUSICAL. More details can be found at his website: Cannibalthestore.com. For those about to read my article below, Jason wanted me to add that "Lapdance was the actual first ever streaming media festival ever!"

With the preface now out of the way, and for those interested in a time-capsule of when Trey and Matt were freshly minted punk-rock celebrities in leather pants, velvet shirts, very young, not yet parents, belting out original songs like "Chewbacca" with their band DVDA and still partying like it was, well, "1999"... here is the article I wrote 25 years ago. I was hired, at that time, by J. Gluckstern, the editorial editor for an independent campus newspaper at C.U. Boulder, and it is here reprinted with his permission and as it appeared back then in weekend edition of The Colorado Daily that was published on Jan. 19, 1999.

PARTYING WITH THE BASTARD CHILD OF THE 1999 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

By Pablo Kjolseth

I told myself that I wasn't going to the 1999 Sundance Film Festival (January 21-31). I'd gone twice before and found myself always having a love-hate relationship with the event. I love watching the movies and hate the cellphones and attitude. But when producer Jason McHugh (CANNIBAL: THE MUSICAL! and ORGAZMO) called and invited me to attend, I found myself unable to resist the lure of free lodging.

Little did I know that I would be sharing the space with pornographers, a variety of exotic dancers, strippers, the Toxic Avenger, and SOUTH PARK creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. In retrospect, bringing earplugs could very well have been the single most important thing I did.

ARRIVAL

I miss the first week of the festival and show up in Park City, Utah, on Thursday, Jan. 28th. I drop my stuff at the condo and meet two absurdly endowed and panicking Go-Go dancers, Aurora and Pamela. They've just woken up (it's 2 pm) and still don't have anything to wear - except boots. They're part of the entertainment for tonight's "Lapdance" festivities. Aurora tells me that the word on the street, is that Utah authorities are going to shut down the party at the first sight of nudity.

REWIND

For the uninitiated: Before Parker and Stone hit it big with SOUTH PARK, they made a film while students here at C.U., Boulder, called CANNIBAL! THE MUSICAL.

CANNIBAL was rejected from Sundance without even getting an official rejection slip. The angry filmmakers decided to crash the event anyway and set up a screening of the film in one of the hotels.

Years later, other rejects followed suit and formed the Slamdance Film Festival. As Slamdance also grew (this year they supposedly had over 700 submissions of their own) their rejects formed Slumdance. Every year has a new set of what McHugh calls "barnacle fests" and Lapdance is his brainchild and the latest addition to the family.

McHugh is fast becoming a father figure to the whole concept of crashing large media events with his own sideshows in the hopes of garnering free press for a variety of projects that come his way. Last year McHugh pioneered a barnacle fest at the Cannes Film Festival called Cannes You Dig It? This year, it's the Lapdance Film Festival.

Hot pink fliers featuring a topless woman announce that the one-day event will be screening the latest short by Trey Parker ("Le Petit Package"), a "freaky ninja flick" by Glasgow Phillips, a Stan Brakhage retrospective, and a strange mix of other things.

Although Brakhage was invited to speak at the event, he declined. He said he didn't want to distract attention from the documentary about him (by director Jim Shedden and which was officially playing at Sundance that same day). He also cited one of the bylines on the Lapdance flier - "Comedy. Porno. The Avant Garde." - as indicative of something that didn't seem a good fit for him. What Brakhage did decide to do was record a 10-minute spot on VHS wherein he talked about several of his films and the subject of pornography.

FASTWORWARD

Back to the condo: I walk around the corner and see Matt Stone with a huge chunk of meat in his hands. His hair is wild, and I can't see his eyes behind his sunglasses. "Hi, Pablo," he says, "want some bacon?"

I declined and make my way toward the couch where I proceed to make phone calls. At one point, Trey Parker walks through the door, fresh from snowboarding, and collapses next to me. When I hang up the phone, I turn to him and say hello. A look of surprise fills his face.

"Pablo? What are you doing here?" We chat for a bit, but I have a cold and my throat starts to hurt. It doesn't help that people are tag-teaming bong-hits next to us in the kitchen.

CUT TO

The Lapdance Film Festival takes place at The Park City Silver Mine Adventures a couple miles away. The huge tourist attraction has multiple levels, rooms, and attractions. Tonight, however, the miniature mountain backdrops and rustic facsimiles of miners and their wives and homes are surrounded by various movie screens, live music (VINYL), DJ's (EZRA & ALIEN TOM), exotic dancers (one looks like Medusa in her skin-tight white suit), Go-Go Dancers, smoke machines, bubble machines, free drinks, food, and more.

Before the craziness, however, a press conference is called with Lapdance organizers flanked on all sides by porn starlets.

McHugh thanks Robert Redford for creating the large festival which allows so many others to latch onto for their own spinoff events.

Farell Timlake (associate producer of ORGAZMO and PORNOGRAPHY CONNECTION) rambles about the weather, the internet, a revolution, and who knows what else (my tape recorder ran out of batteries). Farrell starts to sweat profusely as members of the press wonder what drugs he might be on.

Maybe in response to Farrell's long ramble, Parker keeps his comments short.

"I think what we really want to say is that Jason called us about a month ago and said 'Dude, we're going to go to Sundance and there'll be a bunch of chicks and beer.' And I said, 'Okay, I'll go.' "

Feigning thoughtfulness he shifts gears and says, "I remember seeing a very amazing film at Sundance. It was about a man who had lost his only child. It was so beautifully shot, and I thought to myself 'this is a great movie, but it would be so much better with a stripper giving you a lap dance.' "

Matt Stone interjects that "As somebody who's part of the mass and crass commercialization, I want to say that it's cool to do a movie with none of the music cleared. And we did it because it was really fucked up and funny and now we're giving it to the world."

McHugh concludes the press conference when he mentions the retrospective of Stan Brakhage being presented. "He was a professor for us at the University of Colorado and definitely an inspiration and definitely someone who was making movies that he wasn't necessarily allowed to make at the time he was making them. We have a videotaped statement by Stan that we will now show."

A handful of people actually stick around and listen respectfully to the overhead projection of Brakhage, but it's not until Parker's short comes on, just afterward, that the crowd really thickens. Despite the box-office disappointments of BASEKETBALL and ORGAZMO, he's still hot, hot, hot. He's a rock star. He knows it. He plays it. He dresses it.

Parker knew what he wanted as a film student at C.U. - and he got it. It's weird for me to see him now, constantly surrounded by autograph hounds, mugging endlessly for cameras, making out with a variety of beautiful women throughout the night. One-one-one, though, he's still very accessible. I ask him if his parents ever complain about the content of SOUTH PARK and he just laughs.

"No way. I just bought them new cars. A new house. Took them on a trip to Europe. Believe me, they're not complaining." We talk for about five more minutes before he gets enveloped in a crowd of autograph seekers.

My ruminations of fame and power eventually evaporate under the sensory overload that is Lapdance '99: live music, various dancers, strobe lights and general craziness. Outside, in a Metro bus, semi-nude women with whips indulge the S&M crowd.

Amidst the revelry I spy a Bond girl, a Baldwin brother, Tori Spelling, and other vaguely familiar faces. Two screens are devoted to showing various Brakhage films.

It is a distracting way to see his films, but the show is cut short anyway when the group hired to run the projectors (Web Audio Visual) has an accident wherein their setup falls 30 feet to the dance floor, causing thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to the Brakhage films spliced together on the reel.

Is it a great party? USA Today referred to it as "the hottest ticket in town." An internet critic for Mr. Showbiz was less enthusiastic and panned the event, but McHugh shrugs it off as sour-grapes due to the critic's failed desire to bed a porn starlet.

In many ways, Lapdance really does epitomize Sundance. You can't spit without hitting some half-machine Borg focused on their camera, a camcorder or cellphone. It is a destination where people go to see and be seen. It's about hype. It's about publicity. It's about making deals. It's about partying. And somewhere in the squeeze you just might see a film or two. Maybe.

I left the Lapdance party at midnight, making my way past a steady stream of people who would continue to arrive for the next three hours. My big day at Sundance was coming up on Sunday, the only day a non-passholder can cherry-pick an itinerary of film viewing thanks to the people who clear out to watch the Super Bowl.

Until then, I would have to deal with a constant throng of grumpy Go-Go dancers tripping and stepping over my sleeping bag.

Sunday was a long way away.

- pk

Postscript, for completists only:

For those interested in a very low-fi, audio bootleg excerpt of DVDA performing an unflattering song about Robert Redford (all the more audacious, given that it was at a club located on Main Street in Park City during Sundance) check out:

For those curious to watch the 16mm mock-trailer short that Trey helped me shoot (featuring narration by Stan Brakhage!), TUBES OF FIRE can be seen on YouTube at: