It seems that Matt Stone is tired, very tired. In an interview with the Sun Online (a bastian of modern journalism) picked up by The Guardian, he talks of the pressures of working on Team America: World Police and the negative affect on his life.
Team America faired not so well in the US and grossed a mere $32m (√Ǭ£16.6m) after being much hyped by many as destined to be the comedy hit of the year. Not so in fact, and it is destined for it’s European rounds this January, albeit with the Germany release on the 30th of December.
…the 33-year-old Stone has pledged to stay away from making any further pictures with puppets or Parker after describing Team America, which opens here in January, as the lowest point in his life.
Harsh words…and they get even stronger.
“It was the worst time of my entire life – I never want to see a puppet again,” Stone told The Sun Online. “It ruined all the serious relationships in my life. You just become a different person, get completely stressed out and don’t pay attention to anything else.
“You work 20 hours a day, take sleeping pills to go to bed and drink coffee to stay up. You feel like a piece of s**t, none of your friends like you, your parents don’t like you, but you have a movie at the end.”
Now that sounds like fun! [Heavy sarcasm] Where does the creativity go blasted on sleeping pills and caffine and probably exceptionally tired and arguementative?
“I don’t know why we thought doing a puppet movie would be fun because it was terrible,” he continued. “It was really hard because they can’t do anything at all.”
You’d have thought that they would have investigated how hard it was to work with puppets well before getting into the confines of the movie process.
However, what I didn’t know is that the White House declared the movie unpatriotic. Wow, they’ll do that to just about anything nowadays.
I don’t really know myself if this is a big blow for comedy movies or not, South Park was a great series, but it was one piece of work, albeit a large one. Perhaps these guys will find new things on their own. On Team America, I’m reserving judgement until I see it.
