South Park 10 Anniversary DVD is out Tuesday

A collection of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s favorite episodes. They didn’t include any episodes from the 1st four seasons in the DVD. Why? Because they feel that, beginning with season 5, South Park became an entirely different show. In describing the epiphany that came about after they finished making their movie:

“We also knew, we’ve got to take this to a whole other level,” Mr. Parker said. “We can’t just be doing Cheesy Poofs and Kenny dies and the black chef singing his soul songs. We can’t just be about jokes. And we learned, ‘Wow, look what happens when you take a real craft, a movie, and you apply that to these characters and you really give them the kind of character arcs that are so tried and true.’

…In the early years, Mr. Parker explained, network executives and others encouraged them to think of the show as a situation comedy. “They wanted the sitcom style, where you had an A story and B story that had nothing to do with each other,” he said. “Then you figure out a couple of places where the stories can cross or you shoehorn them into each other because you need more going on.” Via the NY Times.

South Park is the anti-Simpsons, in that the later seasons are better than the earlier ones. The new season starts Wednesday.

Also check out an interview with Parker and Stone in this month’s Cracked magazine.

And, check out what happens when a Japanese artist gives South Park the anime treatment.