Matt Damon said of his "cameo" in the movie; "I thought it was brilliant! I mean, I never understood it, and then I heard an interview with them and they said the puppet came in looking kind of mentally deficient and they didn’t have time to change it, so they just made me someone who could really only say his own name."
George Clooney was only upset that they didn't ask him to voice himself. The one actor who did get upset was Sean Penn but that's consistent with his humourless personality.
Which makes sense with Clooney, since he “voiced” a dog in the first season of South Park and pretty famously was the celebrity who passed the original short film around Hollywood and helped Trey and Matt get the show launched. I believe he actually voiced a doctor in the SP movie too, right?
@@callmeshaggy5166 Yup. "Dr. Doctor: Son, we... accidentally replaced your heart with a baked potato. You have about three seconds to live." SP Movie is still so watchable even today. Same with Team America.
When the very first footage of Team America was screened for Paramount executives, the first scene (the poorly crafted puppet in front of a background of a badly drawn Eiffel Tower) prompted one executive in the audience to yell, "Oh God, they fucked us!"
Yes, Simone, you are now ready for the rest of their work. The two of you should definitely react to "Orgazmo". I'd also recommend "Cannibal the Musical", but as a musical, you'd have to cut the best parts for RU-vid.
The Matt Damon bit was based on how the puppet came out looking when they made it, something went wrong making it and they thought it looked a bit messed up so they just kept it and carried it through to how he sounded in the movie. Was no personal reason towards Matt Damon, despite Ben Affleck song in the movie
According to the behind the scenes or special features is that when it was time for the person that was voicing Matt Damon to say his first line, he forgot it and just said Matt Damon. That apparently made Trey Parker laugh so much that he changed all of Matt Damon’s lines to just ‘Matt Damon’
When I 1st watched this movie, I was by myself, my wife wasn't interested in it. So I thought it was OK, a little funny. But watching you watch it, made it even funnier. Thank you.
This is the best piece of art that has ever been made, and if more reactors watch it, we can heal all wounds and give the world its sense of humor back.
2 things -The “beef” with Matt Damon is simply that they couldn’t mold the puppet to look good. It always looked like Damon had some sort of…chromosomal malaise so they used that. -I hope you were watching the uncensored version of the movie. The puppet sex scene included them pooping and peeing on each other so that they could cut those as a bargaining tool with the studio and MPAA in exchange for leaving more content in.
There was actually no beef with Damon; the puppet just looked goofy as hell, so they decide to just make him so slow he could only say his own name. Damon has actually gone on record in saying he found it hilarious even though he still deals with people saying “Matt Damon” to him on the street.
My mom never saw this movie but because me and my friends did the Mat Damon line over and over, she, till this day, will say "Matt Damon" in the dumb way every time he is mentioned XD
In the underwhelming political drama Syriana that came out a bit after this I was in the theater and did the "Matt Damon" voice when he first came on screen. At least a handful of people laughed, and it was a very proud moment for me. 🤣🤣
The main element as I understand it was they couldn’t find anything distinctive about Matt Damon’s voice that they could caricature, and the first instance of “Maaaaaatt Daaaaamoooon” was done out of frustration, but everyone involved immediately lost their shit. So they just went with it. 😂
The South Park creators said it was so difficult dealing with all the puppets and voice overs in this film, that they would never ever ever make another film with puppets again. I LOVE this film. Equal sarcasm spread in every direction.
I had heard for even the first fight scene in here at 2:12 ("let's make this interesting") they wanted the puppeteers to just bash the puppets together randomly like in the final shot, but they couldn't make it look bad enough... so either Trey or Matt ended up doing it, and they damaged the puppets in the process.
When Kim is singing 'I'm so lonely', the statue in the middle of the stairs is a real dude. Its still my favourite detail of this entire movie. The whole thing is hilarious
@@dunhill1 He's still singing the song 'I'm So Lonely', just because he mispronounces it because of his accent doesn't mean he's not singing that same song.
I saw an interview with Matt and Trey where the interviewer asked "So what do you think the chances of Kim Jong-il seeing this movie are?" Matt and Trey begin laughing, then Trey says "Pretty fucking good, we sent him a copy!" ROFL I love those guys.
Allegedly, the over the top sex scene was put in so the censors would focus on that and the rest didn’t seem so bad in comparison. For the theatrical release, they just had to remove the worst of the sex scene and the rest was allowed.
South Park, Jackass, and even the simpsons writers use the same technique. They will write and make a ridiculously over the top obscene bit they know the censors will reject in order to get all the other stuff through.
The more graphic sex scenes that were cut out of the theatrical release were put in the unrated DVD edition. The sex scene is longer and includes golden showers and scat.
18:30 Actually it was a happy accident. Apparently they were meant to make Matt Damon a quite intellectual and intelligent character... but then they got the puppet back and it didn't look the best so the rest is history One of my favourite behind the scenes is actually to do with the opening shot of the crudely drawn Eiffel Tower with the marionette. Allegedly when they screened the film to executives, one of them saw the shot and yelled "Oh my God they fucked us" It's a shame you didn't react to the Unrated version, "that" scene was extended with various other positions and acts
I seem to remember reading that they actually tried to remake the Matt Damon puppet multiple times and kept getting that not quite right result. They made the joke that he looked like he should talk like Timmy on South Park. Hence we got, “MATT DAMON!”. 😆😆😆
It was an homage to Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds series, that ran from 1965 - 1966. I don't know about abroad, but here in the UK it holds a similar status as Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes - not nearly to the same extent, but in terms of being one of our proudest television outputs. It was two seasons of 16 90 minute episodes that entirely used puppets in the same style as Team America - Anderson actually pioneered that form of puppetry, which he called 'supermarionation'. I can't explain why, but I feel it holds up incredibly well for something 60 years old, compared to other shows and films from the time. The use of colour film, way ahead of its time in the UK; the expansive, detailed sets; the enrapturing pyrotechnics; the futuristic aesthetic (seriously, the designs of vehicles in his series are iconic, from the Fireflash and the Sidewinder to the Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle and Saloon Car from his next show, Captain Scarlet).
Here in Spain some local tvs used to run some of Gerry Anderson's shows, being Thunderbirds and UFO the most famous. I loved coming back home from school just in time for your daily episode of Thunderbirds. The good ol' times.
Marionation is done by audio sensors in the head of the puppet that are activated by prerecorded audio tracks and move the lips to the audio. I just read this in an article online.
Matt and Trey said they wouldn't do it again because it was such a huge effort to make over a long period of time but they were very satisfied with the result. I think they are proud to have made a block buster movie and an award winning musical. I think they're also proud of their earlier efforts including Cannibal the Musical, Orgazmo and Baseketball. Orgazmo is still my favourite but it felt great going to see this at the cinema when the war on terror was really kicking into gear.
It was specifically the studio oversight that drove them out. They hated needing all their ideas approved by outside executives. Bigger, Longer, & Uncut didn't have this issue because Comedy Central was backing it.
my favorite fun fact about this movie is that the puppeteers (who are obviously the best in the business) offered to make the marionette fight scenes and walking/moving around parts look realistic, but Matt & Trey insisted that they make it awful on purpose. makes the first fight scene (matrix parody) and the scene of spotswoode walking out the door after meeting gary that much funnier.
Michael Moores depiction and demise was revenge for Moore using an animation in Bowling for Columbine that ripped off an animated short trey parker and matt stone made in college after they turned down Moore's request to do a south park style animation sequence for Columbine. In the edit of columbine, Matt Stone's appearance in the documentary makes it seem as if Stone had something to do with the sequence.
This is BY FAR my favorite reaction from you two! George got all the jokes, and Simone was appropriately shocked at... all of it, haha. I can see George clutching at his sides during the vomit scene, haha. This movie is just gold from beginning to end.
The best thing to a sequel you are gonna get is a 5 minute segment in Stargate SG1s special 200th episode where they use this exact same style of puppet and humor to eviscerate their own first episode. It just amazed me they went through all that effort for a 5 minute skit and the punchline is magnificent. That whole episode was a wonder of madness.
You should watch 'Swiss Army Man'. It was made by the same people that made 'Everything, Everywhere all at once'. Its proper mental and defo worth a watch.
I remember seeing this in theaters when I was in High School. They literally had ushers at the doors of the actual theaters where this was showing to verify people were old enough to see it. I've never seen that before or since with a rated R movie.
It was the other way around for me (in Las Vegas, NV) , I was sitting next to kids and there's no way they were older than 10. That also happened with Bad Santa. People here give zero fucks.
They probably learned their lesson from the South Park movie. Somehow, young kids convinced their parents to take them to see the movie (probably cause it was a cartoon) and they made the R rating very clear early on by placing "Uncle Fucker" at the very beginning of the movie. Needless to say the theater emptied out pretty quickly....LOL.
During the closing credits, the movie samples the entire soundtrack... but near the end of the credits, a bonus song plays of Kim Jong-il giving some of his motivation and back story.
The marionettes were heavily inspired by Gerry Anderson’s series like Thunderbirds and Stingray - in fact, the sash at around 15:50 is a nod to the sashes in the Thunderbirds uniforms. Might be worth having a look at some of those shows some day - really excellent shows for their time.
There was documentary that came out a while ago called, "This film is not yet rated" about how inconsistent the rating is. Trey and Matt were interviewed and talked about the sex scene in this movie. They said they took it as extreme as it could go, knowing they would get an nc-17 rating, and then scaled back until they dropped it to rated R. They knew if they started with what the final cut would have been, it would have probably go the nc-17 rating.
They have complained about the rating system forever. They said when they were more independent and making movies like Orgazmo, they got no feedback and were slapped with an NC-17 rating. Then when they made the South Park movie, all of the sudden the ratings people worked closely with them and the studio to make sure they could get an R rating.
@@Willinders01 And if you watch Orgazmo, it's really fucking tame. The worst thing in it is dude butt, and a couple swears (Mainly from A-Cup and Roy). Aside from the concept, it could be made PG-13 with some minor edits.
@@Eidlones It was actually one of the jokes of the movie, that the whole story revolves around porn, but there's no sex and barely any nudity in it. I'd love to see George and Simone react to it, now that I've seen their reaction to Team America.
In Captain Scarlet there is an old dude who is the boss of the team, just like Team America. The reason his chair is always sliding all over the place, is that the boss in Captain Scarlet had a similar chair, and it moved around arbitrarily to the point it was distracting. I love that they did such a tribute with this movie, to Gerry Anderson and his shows with “Supermarionation”.
This film is SO fu*king brilliant. There are so many levels of jokes. I wish they would do a sequel, but I know they never will (Trey and Matt said this was so difficult to film they'd never do it again).
I looked up some responses from the people parodied on the film. Full quote of Matt Damon's AMA: “I was always kind of bewildered by Team America, I think because it’s hard for us to understand what our images are in public, I think we’re not good judges of that, and when I saw myself on screen just only able to say my own name and not really that well, I kind of wondered “Wow, is that how people perceive me?” At that point I just kind of was like, I’m a screenwriter and an actor, and like really? I can barely say my own name? So I was always bewildered by that, and I never talked to Trey and Matt about that. And Incidentally, I believe those two are geniuses, and I don’t use that word lightly. I think they are absolute geniuses, and what they’ve done is awesome and I’m a big fan of theirs, but I never quite understood that one. But I will say this. Those of us who were parodied in that video were parodied because we were against the Iraq war, and we went on the record against that war, and so history is on my side not theirs.” Alec Baldwin said it was hilarious. (Wikipedia claims that he offered to voice the role himself but the link is dead; the IMDB trivia page says the same but it doesn't have a source so I'd take it with a grain of salt.) Sean Penn thought in his letter that "it's all well to joke about me or whomever you choose. Not so well, to encourage irresponsibility that will ultimately lead to the disembowelment, mutilation, exploitation, and death of innocent people throughout the world" and ended it with a sincere f*** y**. George Clooney: "I must say I would've been offended if I wasn't in it... Those guys, they're friends of mine. I helped them get their show on the air and was Sparky the gay dog and was in their South Park movie. Part of the fun about being up here is that we get to be objects of that." In 2008, Helen Hunt had become much less vocal about her political statements. In a piece from The Guardian: "[P]erhaps such satirisation explains her nervy shyness today. When asked why actors who make political statements are parodied, she won't even let me finish the sentence, blurting out, 'I don't know, I don't care.'" The only thing I could find about Susan Sarandon was a tweet from 2017 where she joked that maybe Team America was behind North Korea's failed missile launch. Stone & Parker said their aim wasn't to insult individuals, but the idea of celebrity expertise: ”This isn’t so much a statement on who they are as people, but it’s the idea that as celebrities, they know everything about everything. You’re actually trying to figure out what’s going on in the world, and then all of a sudden, on your TV news show is Janeane Garofalo. These stars really aren’t authorities on anything.” The exception: Sean Penn.
@@A-small-amount-of-peas The american military was being satirised as a bunch of "dicks". But then the movie loops around to the big moral and speech at the end with a "sure, the army are dicks, but we need them to keep the world in check". Matt and Trey tend to play the moral at the end of a story pretty straight. Nearly all south park episodes parody both sides but the ending moral is played straight.
I've been in the U.S. Army for nearly 20 years. We fuckin' love this movie. And the satirical "patriotic" song. We would ironically sing the song unironically. We were highly ambivalent about the wars we were fighting-that is, having intense yet contradictory feelings on the matter. This attitude seemed to confuse civilians, and especially foreigners. We didn't give a flying fuck. Live your best lives, fam. Cheers.
16:46 "There's three kinds of people..." These are likely the wisest words recorded on film. More accurate than anything that Socrates passed on to Plato.
"I'm surprised they didn't do more..." It's a LOT of work. (And they come from *animation*...) They had fun, they loved the end result, but the experience was just brutal and something they were not motivated enough to ever do again.
I'm surprised they hadn't seen those sort of puppets before. As you say, this is based on Thunderbirds, but you also had Captain Scarlet, Stingray and Joe 90. I thought they might have seen one of those shows.
The original idea for this movie was to remake Michael Bay's 'Armaggedon' but with puppets. It evolved into this. And as much as people wanted a sequel, making the film was so difficult that the directors said no way.
I loved the music in this movie so much I bought the soundtrack. But the thing I love most about this movie is that they aren't making fun of Muslims, North Koreans, the French, etc. They are making fun of the typical American's stereotypically blind view of the world and their feeling of self importance and exceptionalism.
Fun fact: when they first showed the movie to Paramonut executives, the higher management were audibly enraged when they saw the opening shot thinking Matt and Trey had stiffed them by making something that looks that crappy. Then the camera panned out and they sighed with relief.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone write most of the songs used in South Park, and have made multiple musicals. They have multiple Emmys, Tonys, Grammys, and were nominated for an Oscar for the South Park movie. Stephen Sondheim even wrote Trey Parker a letter, saying he loved Team America, and wondered if he would ever want to do a collab.
I remember seeing this in the theater with two of my friends. We were kind of shocked how many people brought their pre-teen kids in because they heard "puppet movie." There was an elderly couple sitting in the row in front of us and they were laughing as hard as we were, so that was a turn-up for the books. A couple of weeks after we saw it, one of said friends came to my dorm and I asked her to wait. I'd worked out how to play "I'm So Ronery" on the pennywhistle and gave her a little performance. Good times with this movie. Also! My Western Civ teacher was this really straight-laced, reserved man from India. He asked me after class one day if I'd seen Team America. Thought it was a little strange, but I said I had. He said he'd seen it that weekend and found the puppet sex scene one of the funniest things he'd seen in years. If my head could have exploded that day, it would have.
@@Dularr sausage party came out just a handful of years ago and that has quite a few things in it that some people might consider worse, then you have stuff like The Interview that came out like 7 years ago. I REALLY think people go too overboard with the "this couldn't be made today" comments
@@Goomyx1492 Sausage Party sounds right. It came out in 2016, but was in production for 8 years. I don't think it could be made today. Generally 2017 is when Hollywood changed. After the scumbag Harvey W was outed.
Ridonkeylous is the word for this film A lot of shows like Thunderbirds had large mannequins for their shows, it was the best way to shoot such tv series.
Too funny! LOL PMSL - You guys really need to see BASEketball (1999) too from the 'Southpark ' guys too. Its a hilarious spoof on sports movies by the Airplane / Naked Gun director Jerry Zucker. I'm pretty sure about all that. Cheers..........
Wonder how Matt Damon responds to his latest depictions by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, in South Park: The Streaming Wars Part 2 (2022).😂 "Fortune Favors the Brave!"
I think I heard somewhere that the Alec Baldwin part was supposed to be George Clooney, but they recently made fun of George on the show and it was reported that he thought it was hilarious, so they changed the character to someone who would be more easily offended.
10:10 Alec Baldwin is topical this year 😬 10:29, 18:28, 24:06, 24:47 “Mert Dermon” 😂 22:39 Alec Baldwin telling people to grab a gun is very topical this year 😬
This is such a unique concept for a movie that has yet to be truly topped. Matt and Trey have stated the filming process using puppets was immensely frustrating and would never do so again. Also humorous how Team America was threatened with an NC-17 rating, for that matter.
Still think/say that the Team America song should replace our National Anthem, because how epic would it be to hear 70-80, 000 football fans sing "America FU*K Yeah" before every football or other sports games. lol
It sort of looked like she was weighing whether to laugh or chuckle at some of the jokes, on camera. Don't want to get heat for laughing at a scene that is deemed "offensive" now.
21:07 i don’t think they were actually words. Like they didn’t actually speak Arabic they just spoke gibberish with an accident. So I’d imagine they did the same with Korea
Yeah the creators of this said that working with the puppets was so hard they will never ever ever do it again. But they have to realize that they created something special. I can only imagine what what happened now if somebody went to the studio and said they wanted to make a big budget movies with marionette puppets
If y'all liked this one, you seriously need to watch Orgasmo (probably a Patreon exclusive only), and Baseketball, also starring the South Park duo Trey and Matt
As a Brit, i was brought up on shows like Thunderbirds, Stingray & Captain Scarlet as a kid which this film was heavily based on & spoofed. Made this film even funnier.
In the spirit of today's unconventional marionette animated film, I would like to recommend either or both of Wes Anderson's stop-motion films: The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs!
10:33 FYI they weren’t making fun of matt Damon or being overly mean to him.... his puppets head just wouldn’t come out right and they didn’t have time to correct it, so which ever one of the two that did his voice just adlibbed “MaTt dAmOn” over and over again and everyone thought it was fucking hilarious, so they kept it.
My favorite story about the making is that apparently Alec Baldwin heard about his role and liked the idea so much he offered to play himself but Matt and Trey said no because they thought they did a better impression of him. Also when Sean Penn saw the film he sent the pair a letter outlining how offended he was which pretty much boiled down to his exact dialogue in the film
The week after this movie came out, Alec Baldwin had a bad time dropping his kids at school. All the teenagers kept saying to him "You are worthress, Arec Barrwin"
Matt Damon's puppet came out looking like that, so rather than remake the puppet they changed the script so his character is essentially brain damaged cause of how it looked 🤣 Matt Damon reached out and asked Matt and Trey about it and when they explained he found it hilarious. Sean Penn on the other hand got so offended he wrote them an angry letter about how they portrayed him, so they published the letter publically to take piss more out of him 🤣
Matt Damon doesn't take himself too seriously, and Sean Penn does. Pretty much the way it's always been. Didn't Matt Damon appear as himself in J&SB Reboot just to say he played Loki before it was cool?
The puppet sex scene was originally way longer and far more extreme. It was basically Parker and Stone seeing what they could get away with. And while they didn’t have an issue with Matt Damon, it was just because of how the puppet came out, they did have a beef with Micheal Moore
