Before they were TV stars and vanity restaurant moguls, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone made Cannibal! The Musical, a low-budget retelling of the story of Alfred Packer, the old-timey prospector who was convicted of cannibalism. Although really, it was a thinly-veiled allegory for Parker’s failed relationship, as evidenced by the fact that he named Packer’s horse after his ex-fiancée.
Random celebrity cameos weren’t uncommon in the early days of South Park (although Jerry Seinfeld refused the opportunity to voice a Thanksgiving turkey), and Cannibal! The Musical also featured a surprise appearance from a notable figure.
The opening credits list a cast beginning with star “Juan Schwartz.” Of course, Schwartz was really writer-director Parker, who was sick of seeing his own name in the credits and opted to use a stage name instead. The very last credit reads, “And introducing Stan Brakhage as Mr. Noon.”
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Film fans likely did a double take at this mention because Stan Brakhage is one of the most important experimental filmmakers of all-time. Over the course of his life, Brakhage created “nearly 380 films” in various formats, including perhaps his most famous work, the four-part series Dog Star Man, which was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for the National Film Registry.
While Brakhage appeared in some of his own non-narrative films (including Dog Star Man), he wasn’t an actor by any means. Yet he shows up in the first act of Cannibal! The Musical, briefly playing Dian Bachar’s gruff father.
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So why is this legendary film artist acting in a movie in which a shirtless Parker sings a love song to a horse?
Well, Parker and Stone were students of Brakhage’s at the University of Colorado Boulder while they were making the movie, which began as a school project. As Brakhage told Reason magazine in 2001, students asking professors to take roles in films wasn’t unusual. “We do quite different things, but they have respect for me,” Brakhage said of the South Park guys.
There have even been rumors that South Park’s Stan Marsh was named after Stan Brakhage, and at least one writer has suggested that “the animation of South Park resembles the collage style that Brakhage often used in his experimental films.” Sure, why not.
During the infamously drunken DVD commentary for Cannibal! The Musical, Parker shouted out the “world famous Stan Brakhage” and noted that “what’s funny is that Stan Brakhage, who really is considered the father of avant-garde cinema, is wearing just a little windbreaker and a really small hat in this thing.”
Weirdly, Brakhage’s minor role is one of the reasons that Troma Entertainment decided to pick up the movie for distribution, owing to president Lloyd Kaufman’s reverence for the filmmaker.
Sadly, once Parker and Stone hit it big, they never invited their old teacher to, say, battle Barbra Streisand alongside Leonard Maltin.
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