Matthew Richard Stone (born May 26, 1971) is an American animator, film director, screenwriter, actor, and a voice actor. Along with Trey Parker, he is one of the creators of the critically-acclaimed animated television series, South Park.
Stone was born in Houston, Texas, to Gerald Whitney Stone, an economics professor, and Sheila Lois Belasco, a homemaker. Stone's father is Irish American and his mother is Jewish American, and Stone "grew up agnostic" (Stone's parents are the basis for South Park characters Gerald and Sheila Broflovski). Stone was raised in the Denver suburb of Littleton, Colorado. He lived near, but did not attend Columbine High School, contrary to popular belief. He holds degrees in film and mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
In 1997, Comedy Central debuted South Park, now in its eleventh season, which he and his college friend Trey Parker created. Stone was said to be the basis for the character of Kyle Broflovski on the show.
Stone is also a member of the band DVDA with Parker, for which he plays drums and bass. DVDA's songs have appeared in South Park. They include "Chewbacca", or "I Am Chewbacca", at the end of the episode "Starvin' Marvin in Space", "Montage", during the episode "Asspen", Orgazmo ("Now You're a Man"), BASEketball ("Warts on Your Dick"), South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut ("What Would Brian Boitano Do? Pt. II," "Hell Isn't Good" with lead vocals by James Hetfield of Metallica) and Team America: World Police ("America, Fuck Yeah," "Everyone Has AIDS," "Only a Woman" and a new version of "Montage"). There are also several previously unheard live songs made by them called "Crack" (or "Everybody Loves Crack"), "David Kelley, TV Warrior" and a cover of the Primus song "Sgt. Baker" (in a live recording of this song, Parker notes the reason for the cover is because Primus was the only other band they'd opened for).
He also appeared as a guest producer on the third track - entitled 'Natural Joe' - of Primus's 1999 album Antipop.
Stone claimed to have been on acid with Trey Parker at the time of the 2000 Academy Awards, where they wore dresses popularized by Jennifer Lopez and Gwyneth Paltrow at previous awards shows.
In 2002, Stone was interviewed for the Michael Moore documentary Bowling for Columbine, where he mostly discusses his experiences growing up in Littleton, and the social alienation that might have driven situations such as the Columbine High School massacre. In the film, there is a short animated segment about the history of guns, presented in a tone and animation style similar to that of South Park.
Stone expressed anger over what he saw as a misleading attempt by Moore to insinuate that he and Trey Parker had produced the animation, when in fact they had actually turned down a request from Moore to contribute a similar short to the film. Subsequently, Stone and Parker portrayed Moore, in their film Team America: World Police, as a suicide bomber who is shown interviewing people outside of Mount Rushmore, and telling them to say bad things about Team America in front of a camera. When asked about the conflict in an interview, Stone clarified, "I don't really hate the guy. I disagree with him politically about as strong as you can.".
