LOS ANGELES — In Team America: World Police, Trey Parker and Matt Stone target four of the world’s greatest terrorist threats: Kim Jong-Il, Michael Moore, Sean Penn, and the MPAA ratings board. So far only the latter two have fought back.

Depicted in the film as a two-foot-tall puppet working ostensibly for the Film Actors Guild but in fact a duped agent for the terrorists, Sean Penn responded through a letter leaked in the Drudge Report. Passionate if not terribly coherent, he wrote that he didn’t mind being made fun of but he did take issue with their remarks in a recent interview to the effect that there’s no shame in not voting and that if you don’t know anything, you shouldn’t vote.

The Team America team fired back.

"He says he’s not mad about being in the movie," says Stone. "But it’s obvious he is. He says, ‘I don’t care about my image, but when you encourage people not to vote . . . " Which is not what we did. We said that to encourage uninformed people to vote is stupid. Just trying to shame people into voting, or threatening them with death, isn’t the best way. So what he’s really upset about is that we made him into a puppet eaten by a panther [actually a black cat]."

Score one for Team America! The MPAA proves more formidable, however. Parker and Stone took it on in 1999 when they barely got an R rating for South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. This time they had a strategy. A key scene in the movie involved two Team America members, both puppets, having sex. How to avoid the dreaded NC-17?

"We packed it," says Parker. "It was a two-minute-long scene that was really fucking funny. We put in a few shots [some involving puppet golden showers and other fluid exchanges] that we thought would be our bargaining shots. Still they said, ‘You can’t have any of it. Just the basic missionary position.’ We said, ‘Come on.’ Then it got whittled down and whittled down."

The whittling was tough on the puppets. After 10 or so re-edits, the film got an R and the scene, according to Stone, remained "funny . . . but not as funny."

"What sickened me," adds Parker, "not that I wanted any more cut out, is that we blew Janeane Garofalo’s head clean off and they didn’t say a word."

"It’s such a weird anachronism," says Stone. "There’s this secret group somewhere that doles out ratings. It’s like the Star Chamber. There’s no accountability. You or I or the regular public can’t vote them out of office or have any say. They’re accountable only to the studios. They’re not accountable to the parents or the artists."

"We’re going to spend the next year trying to bring a class-action lawsuit against them," says Parker, ominously.

So much for the MPAA. They may have won this round, but as our president would say, they can run, but they can’t hide.

As for Michael Moore, he’s a surprising target, though some might take delight in watching him blow up. (The puppeteers stuffed him with ham before setting him off.) Wasn’t Stone a friendly witness in Moore’s Bowling for Columbine? Don’t get them started.

"Basically he’s a shithead," says Stone. "He’s ripe for parody."

"He’s one of the few [celebrities depicted in the movie] I’m actually personally pissed off at," says Parker.

"The interview I did with Michael Moore is vastly different from how the movie ended up," says Stone. "I said, like, ‘I don’t think guns are the problem at all.’ He was, like, ‘I don’t either.’ He’s an opportunist. He doesn’t believe half the things he says."

What really makes the two mad is the sneaky sleight of Moore hand that makes it seem they were responsible for a left-wing animated history of the US done in the South Park style.

"Somebody read Howard Zinn and they made a little fucking cartoon out of it," says Stone. "It’s so transparent. Moore never says in the movie that the animation is by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. But he uses montage to put images and sounds together to create meaning that doesn’t exist. Ninety-nine percent of the people who saw that movie think that Trey and I did that animation. We’d never do anything so fucking retarded as that. So that’s a perfect example of how Michael Moore distorts truth."

And Michael Moore goes bang in a burst of blasted ham. So what have they got against Kim Jong-Il?

"Nothing," says Stone. "He’s just evil. At least he’s an interesting character. Michael Moore is kind of a sad and bitter fuck. Kim is a fascinating character in real life. That’s the one character in the movie that I think we might have gotten spot-on. He really puts on his own shows, his own musicals. He’s a nutcase."

A nutcase who puts on musicals. How can anyone hold a grudge against someone like that?

— PK