South Park stars upset over censorship
South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have won a censorship battle with officials at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) after their new puppet film was slapped with a "ridiculous" NC- 17 rating.
The duo knew their new racy Thunderbirds-type film Team America: World Police would be met with some opposition but they were outraged when MPAA bosses came back with their harshest rating.
Parker reveals the censorship chiefs were most upset with one scene showing two puppets making love and another featuring a puppet likeness of United Nations weapons inspector Dr Hans Blix being eaten alive by North Korean leader Kiim Jong-Il's sharks.
Parker fumes he was particularly upset with censorship surrounding the sex scene, because, in making the necessary cuts to get an R-rating, he and his partner have turned the scene into a smutty love-making mess.
He says: "We just have a love-making scene, not a sex scene, where the two puppets fall in love… They're not anatomically correct and we did the thing that all kids do and the MPAA's like, 'Well, they can't do this.'"
Stone adds: "The puppets did make love for about three and half minutes, now it's just a cheap one-night stand."
