Art & Creativity Quote by Trey Parker

Parker is giving away the con, and it’s the kind of candor that only a committed jokester can make sound like craft wisdom. When he says a musical number “doesn’t have a lot to do with the movie,” he’s pointing at the superficial complaint people have about musicals: that characters stop the plot to sing. His “trick” flips that critique into a standard. A song can feel like an interruption and still be structurally necessary.

The subtext is pragmatic and slightly ruthless: the number doesn’t need to be plot logistics; it needs to be value-add that the story can’t generate in regular dialogue. “If you take that music number out, there’s less to the movie there” is a test for indispensability. Not because the plot collapses, but because the film’s emotional math changes. You’d “miss it” the way you miss a punchline, a confession, a release valve. It’s about compression: songs let you smuggle character, satire, and escalation into a few minutes with a clarity that talk can’t match.

Context matters because Parker (with Matt Stone) comes out of animation and musical parody, where pacing is merciless and sentimentality is a target. His work (from South Park’s show tunes to Team America: World Police) treats musicality as both bait and blade: entertain the audience, then sharpen the joke or the feeling. The intent here is a defense of spectacle with standards. Make the number optional and it becomes decoration; make it irreplaceable and it becomes cinema.