During the mid-1990s the junior executive at Fox, Brian Graden, asked his friends Matt Stone and Trey Parker to make an animated Christmas card based on a five-minute stop-motion movie they made at the University of Colorado. Graden made 35 VHS copies and sent them to his friends, that shared it with their friends. One copy ended up in George Clooney's hands. Executive producer Anne Garefino recalls "Before we even began working on the series, the fact that George Clooney had made hundreds of VHS copies of The Spirit of Christmas and sent them out to all his friends was already the stuff of Hollywood history. When he did the voice of Sparky, Stan's gay dog [for episode four], he did the voice remotely. We never met him until he finally came by the studio to do a voice for the South Park movie."