Image by Tina Tiller

Pop CultureFebruary 13, 2022

The oral history of ‘please tell me that is not your penis’

Senior writer

Image by Tina Tiller

Five years ago, Chris Warner uttered a phrase on Shortland Street that rang out from Ferndale, across the internet, all the way to Jimmy Kimmel. Here’s how it came to be.

It was the penis-based plea heard around the world. New Zealand’s longest-running soap opera Shortland Street is known for odd moments and memorable characters, but what happened on our television screens five years ago today was something else entirely. It was electric. It was startling. It was just a beet-red man, holding an unbranded tablet, begging his ashen-faced son to tell him that the photo he was looking at was not a photo of his penis.

Ending on Harry Warner’s guilty gaze and the iconic Shortland Street drums, the episode was left on a cliffhanger unlike any other: had a photograph of Harry Warner’s penis accidentally been synced to the family tablet?

The scene quickly set the internet alight, inspiring remixes, memes and the piece de resistance for any New Zealand cultural export: an appearance on an American late night talk show. It became the quote of the year in 2017. It amassed millions of views on YouTube. But how did the line “please tell me that is not your penis” come to be? And how do those involved conceive of the earth-shattering cultural moment, five years on?

PART ONE: ‘This was the perfect modern situation’

Nick Malmholt, executive producer at Shortland Street, was working as a script producer in 2017. At Shortland Street, scripts begin with the storylining team, then are sent to the dialogue writers. Every script that rolled off the printer would then go to Nick for final sign-off.

Nick Malmholt (writer): I would always sit down with the team and we’d say “Is this working? Is this true or funny or smart, or modern or savvy?” This storyline was broadly about Harry and his girlfriend Lily, and his father Chris being worried that his son was coming of age and losing his virginity. It was a sensitive story that was well told at the storyline stage, and it was well scripted at the script stage, but looking at it on the page it felt old-fashioned. It didn’t feel fresh, it felt like we could write something that was just funnier and sharper and much more in the “now”.

Shortland Street writers Nick Malmholt and Maxine Fleming at work. Image: Supplied

Reid Walker (Harry Warner): Harry’s coming-of-age storyline had been kind of unusual up to that point, and there had been moments in that whole arc that had been very slapstick. I remember there was a moment when Harry and Lily were having a very cute, innocent picnic date on the beach. She’s like “can you rub some sunblock on me” and then does something remotely sexy and Harry squeezes the sunblock that shoots out onto the sand, basically.

Malmholt (writer): Back then, in 2017, we were all becoming really aware that everybody was on their smartphones and young people were exchanging pictures that they shouldn’t be. The sharing of pictures across devices was happening but no parent really knew what was going on or what to do about it. We thought this was the perfect modern situation – someone thinks they are doing a private thing with a girl they like, and what’s the most embarrassing thing that could happen? They could share that picture with their parents.

We cooked up that whole new scenario on the fly. At the very last minute, we decided to introduce phones and social media into Harry’s coming-of-age story, and having things get out of hand from there.

PART TWO: ‘That’s when ‘please tell me’ just popped into my head’

With a new storyline introduced at the last possible point of the process, Malmholt spontaneously got to work rewriting the script. He knew it needed something punchy, fresh and modern to close out the episode.

Malmholt (writer): As I was writing the final scene between Harry and Chris, I was channeling all my own embarrassing moments with my parents, those tellings off that we’ve all had. It truly was a last minute spontaneous thing, just sort of following the feeling between Chris and Harry into this absurd and embarrassed state. Chris is just hoping and hoping that what he is looking at on the tablet isn’t really what he thinks it is, and challenging Harry to tell him that there is some other possible scenario – even though Chris knows deep down there is no other scenario.

Original variations on the line were a bit more generic shock: “I can’t believe this is your penis” or “What are you doing showing your penis” sort of thing. But it just didn’t have that sad, plaintive, absurd, hopeful, parental language construction. That’s when that structure of “please tell me” just popped into my head, and I just added a penis onto the end of that. It just felt unusual and fresh and I knew it was a good line.

Nick Malmholt, the mind behind ‘please tell me’. Image: supplied

Even though I remember being amused by the line, it didn’t feel particularly special beyond that. It just felt light, sweet, amusing and truthful to the situation that we had come up with. It genuinely didn’t feel particularly significant. Of course, every week we are shooting around 100 scenes and some of them are serious and some are silly and some are sad – it was just one of many, many, many scenes.

PART THREE: ‘Doesn’t Chris want this to be Harry’s penis?’

With the new scripts printed and presented to the team, some questions were raised about both the syntax and the statement. Michael Galvin (Chris Warner) and Reid Walker (Harry Warner) were both amused by the line, but Galvin had some reservations around the phrasing.

Michael Galvin (Chris Warner): I remember seeing that line and laughing out loud and thinking “oh great, I can’t wait to deliver this”. It was funny because it’s a slightly absurd thing to say, and of course Chris is in a very serious mode when he says it. That’s funny – that tension between saying something that’s very stupid but is nevertheless very serious for that character.

Also, the word penis. It’s not really a rude word because it’s a part of human biology, but nevertheless there is a huge taboo around that word. You’re kind of getting away with saying a naughty word, or in this case saying it very emphatically, so there was that aspect to it.

I do remember that I had a question around the phrasing of the line. I went down to Nick and I said “when Chris says ‘please tell me that is not your penis’ – doesn’t Chris want this to be Harry’s penis? Because otherwise he’s sending pictures of someone else’s penis, and isn’t that worse?”

Malmholt (writer): There was a bit of discussion about the particular syntax of that line. The penis was never going to be taken out, so to speak, but the “please tell me that is not” came up for discussion because the phrasing of it was just a little bit odd. I strongly believed it was the slight oddness of the phrase that made it, so the writing team held our ground.

Galvin (Chris Warner): Nick explained to me that Chris was not thinking logically in the moment, so the line just kind of leaves his mouth. What he is really saying is “I don’t want this to be happening” and it is. In that way it made a lot of sense for it to be a slightly confused statement. Nick was right – it was perfect how it was.

PART FOUR: ‘Michael was doing it really, really big’

Shortland Street scripts are delivered to actors about two weeks ahead of the shoot day. Actors are used to shooting multiple scenes a day – sometimes more than 15 – so rehearsal time is always tight. For a small scene like PTMTINYP, Walker and Galvin had 15 minutes to rehearse.

Galvin (Chris Warner): We didn’t really need a lot of time to rehearse it. Reid and I had been working together for so long that you sort of fall into a rhythm with each other. Our characters had so much shared history at that stage that we know we can just rely on that. There’s so much that had happened in Harry and Chris’s relationship that we could easily call on years and years of shenanigans that the two characters had been through together.

Chris and Harry have had many tense moments. Image: Supplied

Walker (Harry Warner): I remember Michael was doing it really, really big in rehearsal and trying to make it as slapstick as possible. Rehearsals are not so much about the line reading, but the blocks and the movements and what the director wants for the shot and all that sort of thing. Normally everything was always bigger in rehearsals and then you’d dial it in or tone it down when you actually go to shoot.

PART FIVE: ‘It needs to be bigger’

When it came time to shoot, the actors had about 20 minutes on set and under five takes to nail the scene. Director Caroline Bell-Booth was aware that they were not dealing with a typical line of dialogue to end an episode, but both Reid and Walker were ready for the challenge.

Galvin (Chris Warner): The line was very clearly written and it was very clear that we needed a tension in the scene – Chris had this thing that he was wanting to bring up but he can’t, and he is trying to be calm about it. But Harry is belligerent and defiant, so it all just sort of spews out of Chris. Sometimes when a scene is very clearly written, well-written like that, you get a real feel for how it should be delivered. Those are always fun to play.

Chris goes bigger than big. Image: Supplied

Walker (Harry Warner): On that day we had to fall in line because we were shooting a lot of scenes and this was just one amongst them. It was sort of amusing, and we laughed a bit during rehearsal, but we held it together on set when it came to shooting. I remember Michael did a few versions that were more toned down, but then our director Caroline was like “it needs to be bigger”. Especially because it’s the end of the episode, you obviously want it to be dramatic because then it goes “dun dun dun” and all the theme music comes in. It was very hard not to laugh.

Galvin (Chris Warner): It was the last line of the episode, so I knew it needed a strong delivery and I knew I needed to emphasise the word “penis”. The delivery is quite musical and sing-song, that was intentional too. It’s like Chris knew what was coming so he tried to downplay it a bit, I think, saving it all for the killer line at the end. Basically, I was just having fun with the line and that’s how it turned out.

Caroline Bell-Booth (director): I knew that Michael would have to deliver it in an exasperated tone to hit the comedic beat. After encouraging him in that direction, we got the intended performance and moved on to the next shot without any fanfare – such is the nature of that show.

Walker (Harry Warner): I had to do about three of four guilty reactions for the final frame. We would have definitely done it a couple of times, just to make sure we had options. I was pretty good at guilty looks by then though, because Harry was a little shit. It was just business as usual after that scene, honestly. This was 2017 so I had been on the show for eight years at that point. I wish I could say, “Yeah, we knew it, we knew we had just created a Kiwi icon, we could feel it in that moment.” But honestly, it was just another day at the office. Then we all just forgot about it.

PART SIX: ‘A bit of a sexy joke gets the people going’

Two months later on February 13, 2017, the episode went to air. It was a quiet Monday night, but social media was instantly set alight by a single line uttered by Chris Warner: “Please tell me that is not your penis.”

Malmholt (writer): We often check the Shortland Street Facebook page for social media reactions, and the response to that line was much bigger than I thought it would have been. It was kind of huge for our page. To be honest I always thought there would be some kind of reaction, because a bit of a sexy joke gets the people going. It was good that they were responding with levity, but I wasn’t expecting everyone to find it that fresh and new and absurd.

Walker (Harry Warner): I wasn’t watching my own episodes any more because I had been watching the show for so long. After it aired, I immediately started getting messages from mates saying “hahaha look at this” and sending me Snapchat videos of it. I think I really realised it had become a thing when I started to get random messages from people about it on my Instagram, strangers saying “oh my god that scene was so funny” or “hahaha wow that was so great”.

Galvin (Chris Warner): I knew there had been a big reaction when a publicist got in touch with me the next day and said “oh, we’d like you to do an interview about this”. And then there was another interview and then another interview and I was just doing all these interviews – so was Reid – about this one line. I had seen all the stuff on Facebook and the remixes and stuff like that, but there’s only so much that you can say about it, really.

Malmholt (writer): I guess it was pretty unprecedented to have the show end on the word “penis”. The Facebook response was pretty big, but it didn’t feel huge and overwhelming. I felt like our writing was being appreciated and that was enough for me. It was only a few days later when it began kicking off internationally that we realised “oh, something else is happening now”.

Walker (Harry Warner): The first thing I do every morning when I wake up is I open Reddit, and one day I opened my computer and my face was right there, at the top of the front page of Reddit, staring at me. That’s when it really hit me, like, oh wow, this is a whole thing.

PART SEVEN: ‘Alec Baldwin did a filmic performance of Chris’

As PTMTINYP spread across the internet, it began to get more and more international media attention. Within two weeks of the scene airing on New Zealand television, it had made it all the way to American late night television show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where it was recreated by Jimmy Kimmel and Emmy Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin.

Malmholt (writer): The moment we realised that something extra special was happening was when the team from Jimmy Kimmel got in touch. We were just like “what the fuck? WHAT?” The fact that they even wanted to have a conversation about that line at all was amazing.

Galvin (Chris Warner): I got this weird text very early in the morning, from one of our publicists here, and it said something weird like ‘HAHAHA ALEC BALDWIN PLAYING CHRIS WARNER!” I honestly thought he had been up all night and had just sent me a weird drunk text, but then I went online and soon realised what was going on.

Walker (Harry Warner): Seeing Alec Baldwin and Jimmy Kimmel and Guillermo recreate it was when it really hit me. I knew this was something very unique, even for Shortland Street, even for the iconic viral Kiwi moments. I was a huge Alec Baldwin fan because I used to love 30 Rock, so that was very surreal seeing that. I think I got sent that clip probably over 100 times that week, everyone was just like “bro have you seen this?!”.

Baldwin and Kimmel take on the tablet. Image: Youtube

Galvin (Chris Warner): I wouldn’t say it was an enjoyable thing to watch, it was actually quite a shock. I couldn’t get my head around it – I still can’t really get my head around it. It was too incongruous. They acted out the whole scene, and I thought Alec Baldwin did a really interesting filmic performance of Chris Warner. My daughter watched both and she said “oh you were better Dad, you had more expression”. I’ll take that win.

Malmholt (writer): It completely blew me away. It was a big American star on a big American show with this really kind of fun generosity of spirit, making fun of what we have done, and embracing it. It was a real thrill. Even though I was privately tickled by the line, never in a million years did I think there would be a) any sort of reaction and b) certainly nothing involving Alec Baldwin and Jimmy Kimmel. Never in a million years.

PART EIGHT: ‘The penis still pops up in funny little ways’

Five years have passed but the penis continues to haunt the New Zealand psyche. As Shortland Street stares down its 30-year anniversary, how would those involved like PTMTINYP to be remembered? And is it still a big part of their lives?

Galvin (Chris Warner): People said “you’ll be hearing that for the rest of your life”, but it actually died down really quickly for me. The odd person will pop up and refer to it but it is always a bit of a surprise to me, and I think “oh yeah, that’s right, that thing happened”. It absolutely blew up at the time, but then it died down really quickly. Maybe that’s the nature of things now with the internet, things get really big and then they are gone.

Walker (Harry Warner): I haven’t been on Shortland Street for a few years now and I wear glasses in real life and have grown up a bit, so I don’t actually get recognised all that much. But, when I do, and when it is by strangers, that line comes up within the first two minutes every time. Every single time. Often it’s my own friends dropping me in it as well.

Malmholt (writer): The penis still pops up in funny little ways. It never went away, basically. I guess, 25 years on, it is a little bit like our version of the original “you’re not in Guatemala now, Dr Ropata”, which was the iconic line and in many ways still is, but it was nice to be able to do something that came close to it. Shortland Street is always trying to push the boat out and make the show as urgent and funny and true and real as it can be.

The Shortland Street writers’ room always aims high. Image: supplied

We’re never resting on our laurels, we’re always, always, always trying to make it better. It’s a constant dance with the audience to give them characters that they know and understand, while also exposing those characters in ways that they didn’t see coming. We’re always reaching for something original and something truthful. We don’t always succeed, but we do our damnedest. “Never be lazy” I guess is the legacy – keep on trying.

Walker (Harry Warner): It was a really entertaining part of my life for about three months, and incredibly annoying for about three months after that. I really desperately hope it is not my legacy, I think I can aim higher. But hey, if “please tell me that is not your penis” is going to be my legacy, it could be a lot worse.

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Pop CultureFebruary 12, 2022

Why is there a giant Cartman in one of Auckland’s poshest suburbs?

Alex Casey

Senior writer

Alex Casey visits the most talked-about house in one of Auckland’s wealthiest suburbs – and meets the man who built the Cartman sculpture in the front garden.

On the corner of one of the flashest streets in one of the wealthiest suburbs in the country, there is a large concrete sculpture of Eric Cartman from South Park. The Auckland suburb of St Mary’s Bay typically makes headlines for $20 million mansion reveals and housing that earns five times as much as the typical New Zealand household, not for an oversized effigy of the foul-mouthed cartoon character, known for calling everyone a “fat bitch” who should “suck his balls”. To say that the big Cartman looks out of place among the multi-million-dollar homes and hundred-thousand-dollar cars would be an understatement.

I first encountered the big Cartman about seven years ago. After jumping the fence at St Mary’s Bay school to play tennis on the posh courts, we followed our game with a customary sheepish walk around the area to perve at all the gargantuan homes. I remember high security gates, perfectly manicured hedges and glittering harbour views. I remember little dogs on leashes and puffer vests. I remember Eric Cartman, sitting there on the corner, grinning at all of the excess and demanding that people of the suburb “respect my authoritah”.

That single haunting image of Cartman plagued me for years. It didn’t make any sense. Why Cartman? Why St Mary’s Bay? Who made it? How? I could have sworn I took a selfie with him, but I couldn’t find evidence of it anywhere. I scoured old phones, hard drives, photo albums. Nothing. I asked friends, family, workmates, strangers.

Nobody seemed to remember the Cartman.

One night in January, I snapped. We had been to see the film Spencer in Newmarket, and I had spent almost the entirety of the film thinking about the big Cartman. After the movie, my associate and I drove slowly around St Mary’s Bay, scanning in the darkness for his distinctive yellow pom-pom beanie, his hard-to-miss rotund red frame. Around every corner, disappointment. Maybe Cartman had been destroyed? Maybe the Cartman never existed? Maybe, like Kristen Stewart’s Diana herself, the big Cartman was my Anne Boleyn. I went home, but I did not give up.

An hour later, scrolling through St Mary’s Bay location tags on Instagram, we had a major breakthrough in the case. Someone had captured the Cartman during their silly little lockdown walk at the end of September, 2021. Surely he’d still be there in January, 2022? Who would destroy a Cartman at a time like this? I couldn’t stop pacing. My associate attempted to appease my jabbering by cruising street by street on Google Street View, until he found Eric, beaming and resplendent in red, on the corner of Yarborough and Dedwood.

Before Cartman and after Cartman. Photo: Google

The next day, I jumped in an Uber and headed to the Cartman house. I had prepared myself for every possible situation. If the owners weren’t home, I had written a plea on The Spinoff letterhead to interview them about the Cartman. If they were home and didn’t want to talk, at least I could see the Cartman with my own eyes. As I tumbled out of the Prius in the blazing sun, a woman waved at me from the balcony of the Cartman house. Cartman-o, Cartman-o, wherefore art thou Cartman-o. “I want to talk to you about your Cartman,” I barked from behind my mask.

“You’ll want to talk to my husband Bill,” she yelled back.

Now, if you are sitting there trying to imagine the kind of legend who would sculpt a huge Cartman to plonk in the middle of a swanky suburban street, I promise you that Bill will exceed your wildest dreams. Giant handlebar moustache and gold wire frame circle glasses. Glittering diamante-dotted earlobes, offset by bare feet and paint-splattered t-shirt. I couldn’t believe he was standing before me, the man who sculpted Cartman with his very own hands.

One man and his Cartman. Photo: Alex Casey

“He’s misunderstood, isn’t he?” Bill said, his two long-haired dachshunds yapping at his feet. “Bill, let’s not do this now” – his wife June had now scurried in from the outside balcony. “We’ve got guests coming over, and what if they come early?” I gave him the letter, made a plan to come back, and excused myself. Maybe that’s why you don’t door knock people at 4pm on a Friday. I eyeballed Cartman through the fence as I left and he stared back at me, still grinning.

A week later, I was back in Cartman’s postcode. Bill offered me the option of a beer or a brandy as we sat in the empty living room of their enormous villa. The two dachshunds bustled past the doorway yapping blindly, desperate to find the stranger in the house. “Don’t look at them or they’ll bite you,” June warned urgently. “Just ignore them.” I kept eye contact with Bill across the lounge, fighting every urge in my body to look at the two sausagey shapes that were now bounding towards me at a great speed.

Their barking started to die down – was I allowed to look at them yet? “No,” said June. “Just carry on talking, they are working out if you are OK and then they will come to you.” In my hazy peripherals I saw a sausage shape beginning to squat near me on the shaggy green rug. “And don’t you dare do a-”

Too late. One of the sausage dogs was now pissing near my foot. June hollered at him and put her foot directly on the pee patch as a marker, toe pointed while the wee rapidly soaked into the shag.

“You feral bastard – Bill can you go and get the paper towels?” As Bill scurried off to get cleaning supplies, June explained why the dogs were acting out. “They know something is up, you see, because all the furniture is gone and there are new people shifting in and out.” That’s right, after 24 years on Yarborough Street, Bill and June are finally selling the Cartman house.

Bill and June and their sausage dogs. (Photo: Alex Casey)

Having lived in St Mary’s Bay since the mid 90s, the couple have seen the suburb change through their bay windows. “It used to be brilliant, there were derelict houses all over the place,” Bill recalled. “There were kids everywhere, it was just a real diverse cross-section of people, a real working-class, blue-collar area.” June remembers an eccentric old woman who lived down the street, chain smoking with a budgie on her shoulder.

Bill has been retired for 16 years, after a life spent digging roads and tunnels. Sculpting is a hobby he picked up when he found himself with a bit more time on his hands. Would he consider himself an artist? “A bullshit artist, perhaps,” he said. “I’m a constructor, not an artist. I have to model it off something, I can’t dream something up on my own.” He told me he wishes he could be like one of his creative idols, Hundertwasser, or any artist for that matter. “When they just dream something up? Brilliant.”

Perhaps it will come as no surprise that the big Cartman is not the first sculpture Bill has created – it started with their frog-shaped letterbox. “We needed a letterbox, so I made one.” He sculpted the large amphibian using Ferro cement, steel frames and chicken wire – materials he uses for all his works – and inserted a small sensor that would let out a croak whenever anyone walked past. “When it rained he would get laryngitis,” June said. “I’d be in the kitchen and I’d be so sick of the bloody croaking.”

The croak has long gone in the frog but Bill wasn’t finished with sculpting, next constructing a life-size version of their dearly departed fox terrier Molly, followed by an enormous version of their dearly departed fox terrier Molly. “And don’t forget the stupid robot,” said Jill. “He did a stupid robot which had this big stupid wand thing.” “Lightsaber,” Bill interjected. “It would stab you in the guts every time you went out the door. I got so sick of it I snapped it in half one day.”

After the robot came an Awanui Hamon-inspired sculpture, which Bill and June consider the kaitiaki of their dearly departed fox terrier Molly. “When Molly died we scattered her ashes out there, and the sculpture is guarding her,” June said solemnly. And right next to that guardian? The big Cartman.

“Yeah, I think Eric was after that,” said Bill, who you’ll notice only ever addresses the sculpture by his first name. Why South Park? “I just thought it was absolutely brilliant. Nothing is sacred. It’s so out there. They chuck off at anybody and everybody, it’s bloody brilliant.” He watched the show consistently for a few seasons, but has tapered off more recently. “The good thing about not watching South Park over the past few years is when the repeats come on you haven’t even seen them before, and it’s just brilliant,” he gushed. “Vivid imaginations.”

Bill still has a VHS tape recording of one of his favourite South Park episodes. “It’s the Oprah Winfrey episode where there was the Cockney guy with the gun who was living in… a certain part of her body.” He took a moment to crack up privately to himself. “It’s ridiculous, nothing is sacred. Nobody is sacred on South Park. God, they give the Catholics hell, don’t they?”

He repeated, once again, that he thinks Cartman is misunderstood. “There was one episode where there was a kid he didn’t like, so he ground up his parents and fed them to the kid with soup,” he added, as if presenting evidence to a jury. “Soup made of your own parents? Brilliant.”

Suddenly, I had a brainwave. Is the Cartman a symbol? Is Bill actually the Cartman in this scenario, seeking vengeance on the people of St Mary’s Bay by making them eat his Cartman soup with their eyes on their daily excursions? Does he consider it a rebellion against the suburb? “I think that’s fair to say,” he smiled. “I’ve always liked colour. The uniform around here is black Nike shorts or leggings, black Nike shoes, black Nike hat, people don’t even wear a single colour these days. God, how boring.”

If it is supposed to be an affront to the suburb, the neighbours haven’t made their voices heard. “Nobody has ever protested about it,” said Bill. “I’m sure there are some people around here who don’t even know what South Park is.” Cartman remains in great condition despite being over 13 years old – and he’s only been repainted once using test pots from Resene. “I always used to go in and tell them I was working on kindergarten projects because they’d always give me free test pots,” laughed Bill. “They were about $3 each and I didn’t want to pay that.”

The many shades of Eric. Photo: Alex Casey

As the couple prepare to leave the suburb that they have called home for nearly three decades, one question remains – will the Cartman stay or will the Cartman go? “We’ve never been that attached to material things. It’s lovely having them, nice having them, but once they’re gone, they’re gone,” Bill mused. They haven’t been asked to move the Cartman for their pending open homes as yet – perhaps for the best as they will need four to five strong people to carry him off the site. “The people who carried him down here are either old or dead by now,” June laughed.

Because she doesn’t think the next people who buy their home will want to keep the giant Cartman, June is planning on taking him with them when they move to their place up north, surrounded by bush. “Cartman can go in there where no one can see him. He’ll cope, he can have all the wētā.” That said, if the buyers are keen to keep Cartman in situ, they’d be happy to leave him in St Mary’s Bay. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting him, but if they do, that would be good with us,” said Bill.

“One way or another, he’ll end up where he needs to be.”

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