There have been versions of this story going around for years, most notably as an odd footnote in Big Red Son, one of the David Foster Wallace essays published in his collection, Consider the Lobster. So the story goes, once upon a time, Trey Parker and Matt Stone had just released The Spirit of Christmas, the animated Christmas video that went viral before that was a thing, which led to them getting a deal with Comedy Central to make South Park. They were doing research for their next project, Orgazmo, a movie about a Mormon porn star, when they met a porn producer and former porn performer named Farrell Timlake (porn name: “Tim Lake”), who became Parker and Stone’s “porno concierge” (according to one Orgazmo producer). Timlake would invite them down to his porn sets, which naturally presented a number of irresistible opportunities for pranks. At one point, a mutual acquaintance of both asked to invite some “friends” down to a Timlake set Trey and Matt would be attending to watch a shoot and meet Hollywood’s new wonder boys. The friends turned out to be Carrie Fisher, Richard Dreyfuss, Timothy Hutton, and Buck Henry. Of course, none of the Hollywood luminaries had seen Trey Parker and Matt Stone in the flesh at that point, so before they arrived, Trey and Farrell decided to switch personas. With Trey playing Farrell Timlake, porn producer, and Farrell playing Trey Parker, hotshot comedy animator. The story of what happened next has stuck with me through the many years since I read Consider the Lobster, for one because it’s a great story, and two because I used to work for Farrell Timlake’s brother and business partner. Imagine reading David Foster Wallace on your lunch break at the porn warehouse and finding a story about your boss. Now you have a small, strange window into my pre-FilmDrunk life. I was offered an interview with Farrell Timlake, President/Owner of Homegrown Video, at this year’s AVNs, and obviously the first order of business was to get the story straight from the horse’s mouth. — FILMDRUNK: I was wondering if you could retell the Trey Parker story. FARRELL TIMLAKE: Well, you mean how I came to meet him, or one of the adventures we had on the way?

No, I mean the time where you guys switched places to try and freak out a bunch of Hollywood people. Haha, okay. Well, that was after we met and had been hanging for a while. They’d done the Spirit of Christmas video which was what became South Park. So a lot of people had seen that, like George Clooney and stuff had sent that around to all his Hollywood friends. So a couple of people knew who they were just through having the same agent and whatnot, and one of them was a guy named Charlie Wessler. Charlie Wessler produced the movies Dumb and Dumber, Something About Mary. Even worked on some of the Star Wars films going back to the original one. So Wessler, he knew that Trey was working on this Mormon porn guy superhero script and knew that we were shooting porn together, and said, “Come over to my apartment and you guys can shoot some video. I’m going to invite some friends to watch you as you shoot it.” So we showed up and Trey pretended to be Farrell Timlake the ultimate porn producer, and I pretended to be Trey Parker the up-and-coming Hollywood sensation. So then the friends showed up, and they turned out to be Carrie Fisher, Richard Dreyfuss, Timothy Hutton, and Buck Henry. And all of them had little entourages with them, so basically it was probably like 25 people in the room, and they set up almost like stadium seating to watch us as we were shooting. And I’m just looking like a little hippie kid, and they’re all coming up to me going, “You’re so talented, you’re going to be the huge sensation,” and I was all Mr Humble, “Oh, thank you very much, I appreciate it.” Meanwhile Trey’s storming around going, “People. People. I need more ass licking. God damn it! Can I have more ass licking?” We just kept on throwing them curve balls. A couple of the so-called production assistants were actually porn stars, they were just not made up or anything, just dressed in sweats and walking around serving coffee or cupcakes or whatnot. Couple of them pretend like they get so turned on by what we’re shooting that they run out on the balcony to get it on. And Buck Henry, he’s shown up with his own camera. He goes from filming the action that we were shooting to filming the couple out on the balcony. We had one porn star that was a– she was in the ’70s porn scene, like a golden age star and she had become a makeup artist, and so we had her outside. It turned out that Buck Henry actually knew her from their swinging days at Plato’s Retreat. So, they see each other and are like, “Oh God, I haven’t seen you since that orgy!” They’re just hugging and kissing and it was just a grand reunion. And we just kept on shooting behind-the-scenes photos and stuff, like Matt Stone farting on Richard Dreyfuss and Tim Hutton and Carrie on a couch with a couple giving each other head right next to them. And they’re just sitting there like, “Oh this happens to us every day. Oh yeah, this is what we do for fun.”