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"South Park": Laughs on a deadline
"Rude, crude, and blasphemous" is how "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft describes the Broadway hit musical "The Book of Mormon." This week on "60 Minutes," Kroft profiles the creators of the Tony Award-winning musical, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Parker and Stone are both famous and infamous for their animated cable TV series "South Park," which could best be described as, well, rude, crude and blasphemous.
Watch Steve Kroft's full "60 Minutes" report here.
As you'll see in Steve Kroft's report, produced by Graham Messick, Parker and Stone have developed a unique chemistry over 20 years of collaboration. They can complete each other's sentences, and can speak in such shorthand that it often sounds like code.
On "60 Minutes Overtime," we dig into that partnership a bit more, showing how Parker and Stone accomplish the feat of creating a new South Park episode every six days.
The show airs on Wednesday, which means that on Thursday morning, the team starts with a clean slate, and through the sheer power of brainstorming and bathroom humor, they are ready for air less than a week later.
Parker and Stone tell Kroft that they make changes right up to the final moment in order to make it better, a work habit that Kroft says he can identify with. "We work exactly the same way" at "60 Minutes," Kroft tells them.
Kroft has been working that way at "60 Minutes" for 23 years, and Parker and Stone for just a bit less than that. "South Park" has been on the air for 15 years, and Parker and Stone have written every single episode.
All of which got us to thinking about the numbers behind this 15-year South Park run.
Broadcast associate Laura Kuhn put together some fact and figures about "South Park":
-Seasons on the air: 15
-Episodes: 216
-Viewers for season 15 premiere: 3.1 million
-Emmy awards: 4
-Number of times the character Kenny has died on the show: 99
-Number of complaints the FCC received about the show from 2004-2007: 61
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