The 2000 Academy Awards were already wild well before South Park showed up. That was the year 80 percent of the filled-out ballots were lost three weeks before the ceremony and had to be frantically replaced; the year 55 Oscar trophies were stolen just two weeks before the show, leading to an FBI investigation and a $50,000 reward being claimed by a junk scavenger, Willie Fulgear, who happened to stumble upon the ditched loot. (One of the men subsequently arrested for the theft turned out to be Fulgear’s half-brother, but that connection wasn’t figured out until after Fulgear was sent to the awards as the toast of the town. “Willie, you’re a born star!” said Arnold Schwarzenegger upon meeting him on the red carpet.)

Somewhere during all this, Trey Parker and Matt Stone stepped out of a limo together. They were arriving in Hollywood in more ways than one: Less than three years before, their cutout-animation show South Park, about four foul-mouthed elementary school kids in small-town Colorado, had premiered on the then-fringe network Comedy Central. Almost immediately it caused a sensation for how far it pushed FCC regulations, generating as many fans as critics, and legitimizing the power of nontraditional TV just as the dynamics of the medium were shifting toward more adventurous projects.

Before selling the show’s pilot, the tastefully titled “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe,” Parker and Stone were barely hanging on financially in Los Angeles, where they had moved together in 1994 from Colorado to pursue film. (They shared a 1985 Buick, and at one point they say they were surviving on a single meal a day.) But within a matter of months they were near-household names, gracing the cover of magazines like Rolling Stone—well, Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny were, anyway—and steamrolling their way to a major motion picture deal with Paramount. The two had made it, even though they were certainly not what Schwarzenegger might call “born stars.”

[Join Nate Rogers as he takes a look back at the performance of "Blame Canada" at the 2000 Oscars.]