I found one of my favorite movies on google video: “Your Studio and You”.
You can read the wikipedia article to learn more, the film has three aspects which make it excellent:
- It is funny and well done
- The movie featured a bevy of celebrity appearances which includes Andrew Bergman, James Cameron (shown improving the Universal Studios landscaping), Shaun Cassidy, Robin Cook, Shelley Fabares, Michael J. Fox (sometimes mistaken in the film for Dian Bachar, a longtime Parker-Stone collaborator), Brian Grazer, Heavy D, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Barry Kemp, Angela Lansbury (shown painting the Psycho House), Mike Lobel, Traci Lords, Kevin Misher, Demi Moore, Darrin Pfeiffer, John Singleton, Steven Spielberg (shown as a Universal Studios Guide), Sylvester Stallone (in his Rocky Balboa character, and subtitled for comedic effect), Marty Stuart, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker. (from Trivia about Seagrams)
- It is historically interesting.
Let me focus on the last point. Read on Zap2it.com an interview with Trey Parker, who together with Matt Stone directed the movie.
On April 6 1995 Seagrams, back then one of the largest beverage company in the world, decided to sell its share in DuPont oil for $9 Billion to instead later buy Universal Studios, MCA, PolyGram, and Deutsche Grammophon.
Universal Studios PR employees contacted David and Jerry Zucker “to make a short film for Universal to be played at a big coming out party Seagrams was throwing for all of its employees.” link
The Zucker brothers (“Airplane”, “Naked Gun”, “Top Secret”) had no time and asked Trey Parker and Matt Stone (who were complete unknown punks) to do the movie, Zucker Bros. said to already have a “very funny script”.
But when Trey and Matt appeared on site for the takes with Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Michael J Fox, they were surprised that the “very funny script” did not exist. Also, the PR people were aroused not to see the Zucker Bros on site, but punks.
“We suddenly just stopped everything and said, ‘let’s just do it all like a really stupid ’50s industrial movie. Because then at least that part of it will be funny. And so we just started trying to shoot it like those little ‘duck and cover’ nuclear things from the ’50s.”
The movie features “Seagrams Wine Coolers”, and good advice how to improve Universial City Studios (UCS) – all employees agree “It’s UCS for me”. So, Seagram beverages decision to get more fun in entertainment business led to this movie a year later.
Really weird: Trey Parker did not see the movie for four years after the take, because it was so internal that they did not give a copy to the directors (!?) but it showed up on the web (!!hurray!!) in 2001, and then… haha.
The result is above, and the guys made many great things after and before it, such as Southpark. True Art.