RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Media A Real Live Smackdown! The Farrelly Brothers vs. The South Park guys!

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Farrellys' "South Park" Smackdown
By Josh Grossberg
Wed Dec 14, 8:56 PM ET

Is Cartman a crook?

Peter and Bobby Farrelly, the gross-out gurus behind Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary are accusing South Park masterminds Trey Parker and Matt Stone of ripping off a movie idea.

Per Daily Variety, the Farrellys claim a 2004 South Park episode, in which Cartman pretends to be mentally disabled to compete in the Special Olympics, blatantly copied The Ringer, the brother's upcoming movie about, yes, a guy who feigns a mental disability to win the Special Olympics.

Parker and Stone's story line pissed off the Farrellys and Ringer writer Ricky Blitt so much that it sparked ill will between the two comedy teams.

"When you think of a premise so radical it's unmakable, you hang in for seven years to see it through, it is a shock to the system to have people on Websites saying, 'You hack, you stole this from South Park,' " Blitt tells Variety. "I set this up so long before that episode was conceived. It is bad enough to have your idea taken: It's 1,000 times worse when you are then accused of stealing."

The Ringer, starring ex-Jackass Johnny Knoxville as the faux Special Olympian, is scheduled for release Dec. 23.

There's been no mention of a lawsuit, but Peter Farrelly, who produces the film with his brother, believes the plot similarities weren't an accident.

"There is no way those guys didn't know we were making this very movie as they took it upon themselves to do that episode," he tells Variety. "They know what they did and they know it was wrong. Period. These are guys I have always respected, but what they did was very creepy."

Blitt says he had shopped his screenplay all over town, including to Parker and Stone, before the Farrellys and their Connundrum Entertainment snapped it up.

But veteran producer Bob Kosberg (Twelve Monkeys), who pitched The Ringer to the South Park brain trust, tells the trade he never actually spoke to Parker and Stone about the screenplay, and the pair themselves have denied ever hearing about the concept.

"I can totally see why Ricky would be bummed about people accusing him of stealing an idea he came up with himself," Stone says in Variety. "But this is a matter of people having the same idea, and I assure you we weren't aware of the movie when we did that episode. And I don't agree with Peter's point that you should back off if you have an idea and find someone else has it too."

"It should be a race to the market," he adds. "I don't think that is all their movie has going for it Getting the Special Olympics to take part, now that is a cool thing."

The Farrellys, who volunteer for Best Buddies, a mentoring program for people with mental retardation, wanted to make sure the film didn't stigmatize the athletes and sought counsel from the Special Olympics. The brothers even went so far as giving the organization final script approval.

Parker and Stone's take-no-prisoners comedy has targeted everything from the war in Iraq to The Passion of the Christ to Michael Jackson's legal problems to a recent episode lampooning Tom Cruise's affiliation with the Church of Scientology.

When discussing the origins of their puppet flick, Team America: World Police, Parker and Stone went on saying they had intended to use a purloined copy of The Day After Tomorrow script and shoot it word for word with puppets and release it the same day the live-action version. Their lawyers convinced them otherwise.

However, Parker and Stone are themselves involved with the disabled, financing and executive producing How's Your News?, a series of documentaries featuring mentally challenged reporters interviewing high-profile celebs, politicians and regular folk.

Sensitive to the Farrellys' accusations, the two maintain their innocence.

"It's hard for Trey and I to hear them come down on us like we ripped off an idea," Stone says in Variety. "I met Bob Farrelly once for about four minutes. I never met anybody else, neither has Trey, and we knew nothing about their movie. We thought of the idea for that episode early on, but we couldn't make it for two or three seasons. When the show expanded, we were able to make it.

"I don't think it means that much; if The Ringer is a good movie; it will do well. And I remember wanting to remake King Kong, 10 years ago. Does that mean I was ripped off? I wish wouldn't attack us, and 'creepy' is kind of harsh."

Parker and Stone just inked a three-year production deal with Paramount to write and direct movies. They're signed to produce new episodes of South Park for Comedy Central through 2008.

The Farrellys, meanwhile, are attempting to stage their long-gestating update of The Three Stooges.

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rex said:
Here is a script review of The Ringer from February 6th, 2002.

The script is dated June 15th, 2001.

Who is ripping off who again?

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McGurk said:
We'll wait till after the movie is released and watched before running around yelling "South Park did it! South Park did it!"

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'Ringer' of Truth

EW Exclusive: Did ''The Ringer'' rip off ''South Park'' -- or vice versa? Matt Stone and Trey Parker respond to claims by the writer of Johnny Knoxville's upcoming comedy that they took his idea for an episode
by Chris Nashawaty

Is something rotten in South Park? Well, aside from the lunchroom slop Chef serves up? One Hollywood screenwriter thinks so.

Ricky Blitt, the scribe behind the subversively silly new Johnny Knoxville comedy The Ringer, says he was shocked when he recently came across a post bashing him on the Rotten Tomatoes website. The post, from an irate South Park fan, urged the animated show's creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, to sue the makers of The Ringer (including producers Peter and Bobby Farrelly) for ripping off an episode of the Comedy Central show in which Eric Cartman pretends to be mentally challenged in order to qualify for the Special Olympics — a premise that mirrors the concept of the Fox Searchlight film, due to hit theaters Dec. 23.

But Blitt, who claims he had the idea first, says it was Stone and Parker who ripped him off. And that he's the one who should be suing. Let the feud begin.

''My friends told me to get over it,'' Blitt says, ''but all of these people are going to think that I'm the one who took it from [South Park] because theirs came out first and ours took seven years to make. I thought I could handle it. But long story short, I couldn't.''

Blitt, who has also written for Family Guy, says that he first hatched the idea of a loser who feigns a mental disability to scam the prize money from the Special Olympics more than a decade ago. And indeed, The Ringer has been in development with the Farrelly brothers at Fox since at least 2000.

But adding a whole other level of intrigue to the he-said/they-said dispute is that Blitt alleges his Special Olympics story was actually pitched to someone at Stone and Parker's company (although not to Stone and Parker themselves) via independent producer Robert Kosberg in 1999 — five years before their Cartman episode aired. Kosberg, who is no longer involved with The Ringer, backs Blitt's claim.

The South Park guys aren't buying it. ''I don't even know how to respond to this,'' says Stone, laughing. ''I'm totally sympathetic to the fact that you make a film and you go online and people say you ripped it off.'' But, he adds, referring to Blitt, ''I've literally never heard of him.''

So what about being pitched The Ringer in 1999? ''I don't remember that at all,'' says Stone. ''I don't think it ever happened. That's just not the way we work. Trey and I pitch movies mostly, we don't take pitches.''
 
But Blitt doubts two distinct parties could come up with such a unique idea. And when the screenwriter first saw the South Park Special Olympics episode, titled ''Up the Down Steroid'' (which first aired on March 24, 2004), he says he was sick to his stomach. ''I started watching it but I had to turn it off,'' says Blitt. ''I thought, 'How could they do this?' As writers, all we have are our ideas. They started off as these edgy guys and now they've gone to the other extreme of being these mainstream guys who are stealing stuff.''

But Stone swats away those charges, saying that he and his partner have been trafficking in material dealing with mental disabilities for years, citing their involvement as executive producers for the 1999 documentary about mentally and physically disabled reporters How's Your News? ''It's a part of comedy that we have been...well, obsessed with is too strong a word, but not by much, for years.'' Plus, Stone adds, ''I think the idea of pretending to be handicapped to get out of something is not that unique an idea.''

So let's get this straight. To prove his innocence, Stone is basically saying he and Parker aren't very original?

''Yeah!'' laughs Stone.

As proof, Stone points to a South Park storyline he and Parker once brainstormed where Cartman plans to block out the sun over Kyle and Stan's part of town, only to be told that the same exact thing had been done on The Simpsons. Another time, they were going to have Randy pulled over by a cop for DUI and forced to drink a beer can full of his own urine, but were informed the Farrellys (oh, sweet irony!) used a similar gag in Dumb and Dumber. ''We've had to ditch tons of ideas because somebody already did them,'' says Stone. ''When you sit around and talk about this stuff you end up at the same places.''

Blitt says that's baloney. ''Maybe they're so busy and years go by and they forget it, I'll give them any out they want, but it was pitched and that's 100 percent fact.'' Blitt says he isn't trying to shake down Stone and Parker for money, nor is he planning to take legal action. He only wants to set the record straight so that when The Ringer comes out, critics and moviegoers won't jump to the same conclusion he found posted on Rotten Tomatoes: that his movie is a South Park knockoff. ''All I want is what's right,'' he says. ''It's an ego thing. I don't want to be known as the hack that ripped these guys off.''

As for the South Park boys? Stone shrugs, ''I don't have a problem with him letting people know that he didn't rip it off. But just don't accuse us the other way.'

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