Animator who co-created the "South Park" sitcom: Who is Trey Parker?

His real name, Randolph Severn Parker III, was born on October 19, 1969, in Conifer, Colorado. He was born the son of his mother, insurance marketer Sharon, and his father, geologist Randolph "Randy" Parker. Parker has an older sister named Shelley. A shy kid who got good grades in his classes and attended honors classes, Parker adored "Monty Python", which he started watching on television in third grade. He was heavily influenced by Terry Gilliam in his later attempts at animation.

Parker, who wrote a sketch called "The Dentist" in sixth grade and participated in his school's talent contest, played the dentist in the sketch. Saying that he has a big dream of making a career in film and music, Parker started making short films with a group of friends from the age of 14. Parker, who shot these short films with the video camera that his father bought, continued to make films until the group graduated.

At the age of 17, he became interested in music, mainly comedy-centered songs. Developing a love for musical theater as a teenager, Parker joined the venerable mountain community theater "Evergreen Players". At the age of 14, he got his first role as a choir member in the musicals "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" and "Flower Drum Song" and designed sets for the community theater production of "Little Shop of Horrors". Parker, who played piano for the choir in high school, was a popular high school student as he became known for his choir program nationally as such. Thus, he always played the leading role in school plays.

After graduating from Evergreen High in 1988, Parker continued his education with the University of Colorado Boulder. Having studied both film and Japanese, Parker took a film class there where students were asked to collaborate on projects. In class, he met Matt Stone and the two instantly bonded over the provocative, anti-authoritarian humor and Monty Python. Parker made his film debut as "The Giant Beavers of Southern Sri Lanka" (1989), which parodied Godzilla-style attacks with beavers.

Parker and Stone have written and starred in several short films together. Parker began by using a construction paper animation technique in "American History" (1992), a short film made for his college animation class. The unexpectedly exciting short film resulted in Parker's first award, the "Student Academy Award".

In 1992 Parker founded a production company called "Avenging Conscience" with Stone, Jason McHugh and Ian Hardin. The quartet created a three-minute trailer for a fictional movie called "Alferd Packer: The Musical." The idea was based on Parker's obsession with Albert Packer, a real nineteenth-century prospector accused of cannibalism. Parker, who was engaged to his girlfriend Liane Adamo at the time, but broke up shortly after, transferred his depressive state to the project. The trailer caused a stir among students, leading Virgil Grillo, head of the university's film department, to persuade the quartet to turn the film into a feature film. Parker, who wrote the screenplay for the film, created an "Oklahoma!"-style musical featuring ten original show tunes and starred, directed and co-produced the film under the pseudonym Juan Schwartz.

They presented the musical "Alferd Packer: The Musical", which premiered in Boulder in October 1993, to the Sundance Film Festival, but there was no response. Next, the group rented a conference room at a nearby hotel and started doing their own screenings. Later, the film was sold to Troma Entertainment in 1996, where it was renamed "Cannibal! The Musical". Not widely released, the film became the best-selling game following the subsequent success of Parker and Stone and has since been described as a "cult classic".

Following the success of the movie, the band moved to Los Angeles without Ian Hardin. Upon arrival, they met an attorney for the William Morris Agency, who associated them with producer Scott Rudin, and as a result, they purchased a lawyer, an agency, and a script deal.

"Cannibal!" director David Zucker, a fan, contacted Parker and Stone and asked him to make a 15-minute short film to show at a party about Seagram's acquisition of Universal Studios. Due to a misunderstanding, Parker and Stone improvised most of the movie an hour before it was shot, creating a parody of 1950s instructional videos and featuring numerous celebrities, including Sylvester Stallone, Demi Moore, and Steven Spielberg, in the short comedy "Your Studio and You."

Around this time, Parker wrote the script for the superhero comedy "Orgazmo" and began production. The film was rated NC-17 by the Motion Picture Association of America and had a limited release. This resulted in a poor box office performance, but as of 2022, the film has garnered average reviews and is considered a cult film.

Parker and Stone made two adult stop motion animated shorts called "The Spirit of Christmas". The film has been referred to as both "Jesus vs. Frosty" and "Jesus vs. Santa". TV executive Brian Graden liked the movie and sent it on VHS to several industry executives in Hollywood. Meanwhile, someone digitized the short film and uploaded it to the internet, and it became one of the first viral videos. As "Jesus vs. Santa" became more popular, Parker and Stone began negotiations to turn the short film into an animated television series called "South Park." They preferred that the show be done by Comedy Central.

The pilot episode of "South Park" took three to three and a half months to complete, and the animation took place in a small room at Celluloid Studios in Colorado in 1996. The sitcom "South Park", which premiered in August 1997, immediately became one of the most popular programs on cable television. Due to the success of the first six episodes of the series, the broadcasting company requested seven more episodes, and the series wrapped up its first season in February 1998. Thanks to the success of the series, the broadcasting company also made huge commercial gains and its popularity grew.

In April 1998, Parker and Stone signed a deal with the production company, producing episodes of "South Park" until 1999. During this time, the team was also busy writing the second and third seasons of the series, which Parker and Stone would later describe as "disastrous". They realized that the series was coming to an end and decided to write a personal, fully dedicated musical. In 1999, the adult computer-animated musical comedy "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut" hit theaters. The film, which received generally positive reviews from critics, achieved a healthy revenue at the box office.

In 2000, Parker and Stone, who began planning a television sitcom starring the winner of the 2000 presidential election, tentatively named the show "Everybody Loves Al" because they thought Al Gore would win the election. The sitcom, which caused controversy as a result of the election, was later renamed "That's My Bush!" changed to. The sitcom, which aired between April and May 2001, received a lot of publicity and criticism, but the cost was too high. For this reason, the series was officially canceled in August 2001.

In 2002, Parker and Stone began work on the adult puppet comedy "Team America: World Police," which satirized big-budget action movies and related clichés, with a humorous emphasis on the global implications of United States politics. They said how difficult it was to work with puppets in the film, which was produced using a crew of approximately 200 people. Premiering at the Denver Film Festival on October 14, 2004, the film received critical acclaim and earned modest returns at the box office.

Parker and Stone, along with writer-composer Robert Lopez, began working on "Mormonism"-centered music during the making of the series. They worked for the musical "The Book of Mormon: The Musical of the Church of the Church of Latter-day Saints" for several years and first wrote songs for the musical in 2006. The development workshops kick off the musical, which began in 2008, the first of half a dozen workshops to be held over the next four years. As a result of all the hard work, the musical comedy "The Book of Mormon" premiered on Broadway at the Eugene O'Neill Theater on March 24, 2011. The film received widespread critical acclaim and won nine Tony Awards and a Grammy Award. It also became one of the most successful musicals of all time, grossing over $700 million.

On April 13, 2016, Universal Pictures announced that Parker would voice the villain Balthazar Bratt in the computer-animated comedy film "Despicable Me 3". The film, which was released in June 2017, marked Parker's first voiceover role not written by him or Stone, and despite mixed reviews, it became the fourth highest-grossing film of 2017 for grossing. It also made its mark as the fourth highest-grossing animated film of all time.

Continuing to write, direct, and voice most characters in "South Park," Parker and Stone adopted a production process in which an entire episode was written, animated, and aired within a week. While initial reviews for the series were negative, it has garnered numerous accolades, including five Primetime Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and addition to various publications' lists of the greatest television shows. In 2012, the series reduced its production of 14 episodes per year to a single 10-episode series in the fall. As of 2019, the series ran until 2022, when it would reach its twenty-sixth season. The twenty-third season of the series premiered on September 25, 2019.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Parker, Stone and Peter Serafinowicz created a web series called "Sassy Justice". The production used deep fake technology to lure unrelated celebrities and politicians into the fictional world of a television reporter, and its first episode aired on YouTube on October 26, 2020.

The franchise of "South Park", which went on to become a business worth hundreds of millions of dollars, also expanded to music and video games. In August 2021, Parker and Stone signed a deal with ViacomCBS to renew the series for six additional series and 14 projects at Paramount+.

In January 2022, it was reported that Parker would produce an untitled film with Stone through the rebranded production company Park County and media company PGLang, with Parker directing the film in March 2023. The film, which will be distributed by Paramount Pictures, was written by Vernon Chatman and the live-action movie comedy tackles racial issues. Production is scheduled to begin in the spring of 2023.

Personal life

Parker married Emma Sugiyama in 2006 and divorced in 2008. Later, Parker started a relationship with Boogie Tillmon. Thanks to this relationship, Parker had a stepson and the couple had a daughter named Betty Boogie Parker, born in 2013. The couple married in 2014 and divorced in 2019 due to irreconcilable differences. Currently living in Los Angeles, California, Parker has many mixed views on religion.