The first two names that pop into most peoples heads when thinking of the long-running Comedy Central series South Park are Trey Parker and Matt Stone. With the two having served as showrunners, writers, and voice actors for the small town since the beginning, they are most associated with the raunchy comedy.
However, it should be noted that the producer has also been working on the series for a long period of time -- two decades. Having worked on nineteen of the twenty three seasons, Vernon Chatman is a huge part of the show and has certainly learned a lot during his tenure.
This is one of the things that was so re-assuring to fans when The Shivering Truth first premiered, as the show hails from Chatman himself. Adult Swim is currently airing the show's second season, and to help promote the anthology series, we spoke exclusively with the creator.
We asked Chatman a lot about how his work on South Park helps him with his current project as well as several other interesting tidbits. Check it out!
Joe: Do you feel like your lengthy work on South Park prepared you for The Shivering Truth?
Vernon Chatman: Yeah, I’ve been working on South Park since 2001.
I’ve worked on a million different projects and shows and every one of those informs what I’m currently doing and one of the things is that there’s this beauty to the architecture and this shape of stories and the way stories unfold and this show is a way to kind of do frenetic and insane riffs and sort of twists and morphs in how story structures can go.
Because South Park is such a complete world that it's not formulaic. There’s parts that are formulaic, but the foundation of it is extremely tight and thought through story and character structure. That’s a thing that I really learned from those guys and wanted to take to a crazy degree with this show.
Joe: How many seasons can you see Shivering Truth running for? Do you think it can follow up South Park?
Vernon Chatman: It might not even catch up to South Park with that. We’re only doing six per season and when the South Park guys have their brains put into Muskian robot bodies, they’ll just keep going.
Joe: Out of the characters in South Park, which is your favorite? Is it Towelie because you voice him or another character such as Cartman, Randy, Butters, or the rest of the colorful cartoon cast?
Vernon Chatman: Let me think. There are moments that really tickle me like Kanye West as a gay fish.
Partially because I just remember the fun that I had coming up with that stupid character and story and then the joy that I had the next day when Kanye had tweeted his apology and that he watched the episode. And he tweeted this whole thing about how he’s gonna learn from South Park and he’s gonna check himself and he’s taken the criticism to heart.
And I never really cared about Kanye that much but he was the only person that he next day after he got ripped on South Park kind of did his own mea copa in his own crazy self-centered way and that made me like him just because he was so committed to being insane. I don’t know where I am on Kanye now, I mean he’s great but I don’t know how close I’d let him to my kids.
Joe: Would you like me to share anything else with your fans?
Vernon Chatman: Watch the show and tell people about it. Enjoy it, good luck, and wear a seatbelt while you’re watching.
What are your thoughts on these comments from the creator? Be sure to check out the trailer and synopsis for The Shivering Truth and share your thoughts in the usual spot!
The Shivering Truth is a delicately crafted, darkly surreal anthology comedy.
Each episode is a miniature propulsive omnibus cluster bomb of painfully riotous daymares all dripping with the orange goo of dream logic. A series of loosely linked emotional parables about stories within tales that crawled out of the deepest caverns of your unconscious mind and became lovingly animated in breath-slapping stop motion -- in other words, it is the TRUTH (squared).
New episodes of The Shivering Truth air on Adult Swim every Sunday night at midnight.