John Lee and Vernon Chatman: with a repertory of furry puppets, some twisted story lines, and a dose of over-the-top humor, the duo behind the adults-only cult show Wonder Showzen is causing a quake on cable television—and giving the censors a workout in the process. Two men who never met a taboo they didn't like, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, get the goods

Don't be fooled by the laughing, smiling children and old-school felt-and-fur puppets. MTV2's hit variety show, Wonder Showzen, is not a nouveau reincarnation of Sesame Street, as is clearly stated in the pre-broadcast warning: "If you allow a child to watch this show, you are a bad parent or guardian." It is a mix of animation and live-action skits such as "Beat Kids," which features scrappy young reporters who go around asking questions of various professionals. "Who did you exploit today?" they ask a Wall Street banker, and "Who is going to pay for this meat--I mean spiritually?" they inquire of a butcher.

The creators of the show, comedy writers John Lee and Vernon Chatman, may be accused of stepping on too many toes with their often inappropriate humor, but the originality of their vision Is Impossible to deny. With the DVD of Wonder Showzen's first season in stores and the show having recently returned for Its second campaign, Lee and Chatman are on a roll. Here, they talk to two men who know something about the fine art of trafficking in bad taste, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. MATT STONE: It seems like there are two kinds of reporters: One starts with the "wacky" thing, like, "Your show is wacky comedy. What gives?" The other uses words and references artists that you don't even know, thinking that you must be big fans. Which one would you like us to be?

JOHN LEE: I like the journalists who start out by painting a picture of the Locale. "It was a rainy day in Los Angeles. It was not normal--but then again, their show is not normal."

MS: With us, they would always write: "And then there is Matt, his hair kinkier than the show he writes on." [all laugh] Sometimes reporters even try to be funny in their questions, but it's really hard to give a funny answer to a funny question.

VERNON CHATMAN: Especially when the question is not funny.

JL: But it's really easy to be supercool by asking a funny question.

MS: Right, right.

JL: So your first hilarious question is ...

MS: Tell us how much you guys love interviews, now that you're all famous and stuff with your superrad show, Wonder Showzen.

JL: Well, we got to do an interview for Animation magazine, with a readership of about ten.

MS: We've never even done an interview with Animation magazine.

TREY PARKER: You've passed us already.

MS: Your show has already had a lot of problems with the censors. What have your standards fights been like?

VC: You know what? They've gotten pretty fun. One review in The New York Times said our show amounted to lazy censor-baiting. We've spent so much time battling the censors. We actually sometimes win, and then we're like, "Wait, that's not really funny after all."

TP: It's a good lesson to learn. We wasted a lot of time fighting for stupid Jokes that aren't even good.

VC: The first time I dealt with a censor, I said, "Where do you get the moral authority to tell us what's acceptable?" It was for the Snoop show [Doggy Fizzle Televizzle] I was working on. We wanted to do a thing that said "Kill whitey," and she said, "No, you can't, because it's takeaway." I said, "What's that?" She said, "The kids will takeaway that you're saying 'Kill whitey.'"

TP: What's the worst thing that could happen? Some white people die. Whatever.

VC: I don't know if you guys saw it, but we had a little kid dressed as Hitler.

TP: [laughs] Yeah, that was funny.

VC: We had to hire security.

MS: I remember on our show That's My Bush the characters couldn't say "cooch." We had to change it to "coos." [laughter]

TP: So how long does it take to do an episode?

JL: It took us ten months to do seven episodes.

TP: Jesus Christ, dude!

JL: It's ridiculous, I know. It's just Vernon and me putting it together.

TP: You need to turn down the quality valve a little bit. The only thing I don't get Is the kids on the show. Do they have parents?

VC: They're all Guatemalan immigrants. They were like ten bucks a pop. [laughter] Yeah, it's weird. They're mostly actors, but we auditioned hundreds of kids and used the ones that have a twitch or something. We tend to like the brother of the perfect actor kid.

JL: We have a category called Too Disney, and we throw those kids out. Mostly we just want the one that has kind of a limp or something. That gives them a little personality.

VC: Any sort of nervous lisp is like gold.

TP: Do you guys do all the music, too?

JL: We write the songs, and our friend Chris Anderson does the scoring.

VC: He's like a crazy savant who has circus music in his head all the time, and we just tell him to write it down.

JL: He's a Danny Elfman in training.

VC: All kid music is great because the dumber the better. A kazoo, a bongo, and you've got a hit.

TP: Why did you change the name from Kids' Show? Were you just worried about kids?

JL: That was all MTV. It was their big thing. We also had to sign something saying that we'd have a "Warning: adult content" notice at the beginning of the show. For the name we ended up with a board of five hundred titles, and we just started hating everything. So we said, "Let's use the name that we don't like from the get-go, so we won't learn to hate it later."