performer

“South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who this summer landed one of the richest TV deals ever, are being called Scrooges by performers at their Casa Bonita restaurant near Denver.

In late October, the performers, including the famed cliff divers, went on a three-day strike, citing unsafe working conditions and stalled negotiations over their first contract. The performers voted unanimously to unionize with Actors’ Equity Assn. a year ago.

The strike ended when the restaurant’s management agreed to bring in a mediator to assist in the negotiations.

But the standoff has continued, prompting Actors’ Equity to take out an ad in the Denver Post this week that depicts a “South Park” cartoon-like Parker and Stone awash in hundred-dollar bills while their staff, including a gorilla and a person clad in a swimsuit, shivers outside in the Colorado cold.

The union said its goal is to prod the star producers to resolve the labor tensions by giving about 60 Casa Bonita performers, including magicians and puppeteers, a pay increase and other benefits along with their first contract.

A full page ad is running in the Denver Post on Dec 24.

(Actors’ Equity Association)

Other Casa Bonita workers voted earlier this month to join the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 7.

“At Casa Bonita, we value all of our team members and their well being,” the restaurant management said in a statement. “We are negotiating in good faith with our unionized team members in the hopes of concluding fair collective bargaining agreements.”

Parker and Stone declined to comment through a spokesperson.

The pair, who also created the hit Broadway play “The Book of Mormon,” rescued the kitschy, bright-pink Mexican-themed eatery in Lakewood, Colo., from bankruptcy in 2021 and have since plowed more than $40 million into the restaurant to upgrade and correct unsafe electrical, plumbing and structural issues after the facility had fallen into disrepair.

For “South Park” super-fans, the venue has become something of a mecca since first being featured in the seventh season of the long-running Comedy Central cartoon.

In that episode, Cartman flips out when Kyle invites Stan, Kenny and Butters Stotch to his birthday party at Casa Bonita (not Cartman), where they are serenaded by the restaurant’s ubiquitous mariachi bands.

Along with legions of other kids who grew up in Colorado, Parker and Stone fondly remember making the trek to the Casa Bonita of their 1980s youth. Restoring the restaurant has become a passion project for the writers, a journey that became grist for a documentary, “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!,” which streams on Paramount+.

In July, Paramount managers were eager to tie up loose ends to facilitate the company’s sale to David Ellison’s Skydance Media and RedBird Capital Partners. The incoming management team also became involved in the protracted negotiations to strike a new deal with Parker and Stone’s production company, Park County, to avoid having the situation unravel, possibly tripping up their corporate takeover.

Paramount ultimately agreed to extend the overall deal for Park County as well as lock up the show’s exclusive global streaming rights for $300 million a year over five years. Until this year, the show streamed exclusively on HBO Max.

The overall deal is slated to bring Parker and Stone’s firm $1.25 billion through 2030.

As part of the pact, the team agreed to create 50 new “South Park” episodes for Paramount. The series has enjoyed a ratings bounce and increased cultural resonance this year as it routinely roasts President Trump.

Actors’ Equity, which also represents Broadway performers, is seeking pay raises for its members at Casa Bonita. Union representatives said performers’ wages there average $21 to $26 an hour.

“Matt and Trey have become fabulously wealthy by pointing out the hypocrisy of rich and powerful people,” said David Levy, communications director for Actors’ Equity. “And now they are behaving exactly like the people they like to take down.”

No, our Women in Film issue doesn’t exclusively feature women — Noah Baumbach and Brendan Fraser feature in our Dec. 16 edition as well — but it does shine a particular spotlight on their extraordinary contribution to the year in film.

As performers and production designers, writers, directors and more, the women included here helped fashion deeply felt stories of parenthood, friendship, grief and betrayal, and that’s just for starters. Read on for more highlights from this week’s Envelope.

The Envelope Actresses Roundtable

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

This year’s Oscar Actresses Roundtable was full of laughter, sparked by everything from Gwyneth Paltrow’s impression of mother Blythe Danner to Sydney Sweeney’s tales from inside the ring on “Christy.” But when it comes to self-determination, this year’s participants — who also included Emily Blunt, Elle Fanning, Jennifer Lopez and Tessa Thompson — are dead serious.

As performers, producers and businesswomen, the sextet told moderator Lorraine Ali, the boxes that Hollywood and the broader culture seek to put them in need not apply. And realizing that is its own liberation. As Lopez put it, “I don’t ever feel like there’s somebody who can say to me, ‘No, you can’t.’”

‘Hamnet’s’ last-minute miracle

(Evelyn Freja / For The Times))

Since the moment I first saw “Hamnet,” I’ve been raving to everyone I know about its climactic sequence, set inside the Globe Theatre during a performance of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” (Well, if you can call it “raving” when you preface your recommendation with the sentence, “I sobbed through the last 45 minutes.”) As it turns out, though, the process of making the film’s final act was as miraculous as the finished product.

“There were only four days left of shooting on ‘Hamnet’ when Chloé Zhao realized she didn’t have an ending,” Emily Zemler begins this week’s digital cover story, which features Zhao, actors Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal and Joe Alwyn and production designer Fiona Crombie. What they created from that point, combining kismet, creative inspiration and grueling preparation, will buoy your belief in the power of art. “It was like a tsunami,” Buckley tells Zemler. “I’ll never forget it.”

A Is for Animal Wrangler

When I first read Helen Macdonald’s transporting “H Is for Hawk,” which combines memoir, nature writing and literary criticism, I can’t say I closed the book wondering when we’d get a film adaptation. Little did I know that director Philippa Lowthorpe, star Claire Foy and a pair of married bird handlers would provide such a thorough answer to my skepticism.

As Lisa Rosen writes in her story on the marriage of art and goshawk in “H Is For Hawk,” that meant shaping the production around the notoriously wary birds of prey, including its lead performance. “It wasn’t like having another actor who had another agenda or actions or a perspective that they wanted to get across in the scene,” Foy told Rosen of her extensive screen time alone with the five goshawks who stood in for Helen’s. “I was along for the ride with these animals.”

More stories from our Dec. 16 issue