Porno for Tyros

Zip up those pants and move over, Dirk Diggler: There's a new stud in town, and he's here to tell you that size matters a lot less than faith, hope and charity. Such is the lesson of Orgazmo, the tender tale of a young Mormon missionary who moves to Los Angeles to spread the word of the Lord and winds up battling evil as a crime-fighting porn star. It's fun, it's dumb, it was made on the cheap--but Orgazmo, due out this month, is also an event, since it was created by a guy whose day job places him at ground zero in the pop culture zeitgeist. The movie's writer, director and star is Trey Parker, one of the two masterminds of Comedy Central's hilariously tasteless animated series, South Park; his partner, Matt Stone, co-produced and appears in the movie as well. We spoke with Parker, 28, at his South Park offices as he worked on the series and put the finishing touches on Orgazmo.

Playboy: Weren't you working on Orgazmo before you even started on South Park?

Parker: Yeah. I think we were in the second week of production, (concluded on page 148) Porno for Tyroscontinued from page 87 shooting a scene in a club, when Matt walked up to me and said, "Dude, South Park got picked up as a series." And we went, "Whoa, OK." We had done this other movie, Cannibal: The Musical, and Orgazmo was going to be another one of those. It would be this thing for our friends, and a few people would see it, and people would hate it, and then there would be a core group of people that would love it, and that would be that. And now, all of a sudden, it's "from the creators of South Park." I love Orgazmo; it's just that it was meant to be this under-the-radar sort of thing.

Playboy: Sorry, Trey. You can't do anything under the radar anymore. Haven't you heard?

Parker: Right. Ironically, the MPAA is sort of helping me with that. It gave the movie an NC-17 rating, so there's only so many ways it can be advertised.

Playboy: NC-17? For a movie about porn, Orgazmo is tame.

Parker: Yeah, it's a joke. There's no nudity in it, there's no sex, really, there's no real violence. It's ridiculous. That's supposed to be part of the irony, that it's a movie about porn but it's a totally wholesome story. It's really about a good person who remains a good person, who wins, who conquers evil and that's that. What's unfortunate is that the NC-17 rating tells people to see the movie because there's raw sex and nudity, and now people will go and be disappointed. I had it in mind all the time as being a PG-13 movie.

Playboy: So what if Orgazmo's sidekick, Choda-Boy, has rockets and stuff shooting out of his dick.

Parker: Exactly! Compare it with something like Seven, in which there's a woman lying on a bed who's been raped with a razor dildo. That's OK. But don't say DVDA.

Playboy: Which stands for double vaginal, double anal, a sex act the movie tells us is worth a lot of money to the woman who will perform it.

Parker: That whole DVDA thing was almost word for word a conversation I had with a woman on a porn set. Matt and I hung out at two or three porn shoots in Los Angeles, and something funny would always come out of them that would end up in Orgazmo. We were always hanging around doing stupid shit. One time the director wanted a bunch of bubbles blowing while a scene was going on, so we sat there blowing bubbles.

Playboy: You didn't just watch, you were participants.

Parker: Yeah, we blew bubbles. Our lawyer kept telling us, "Hey, guys, you sit in the barber's chair long enough, you're going to get your hair cut."

Playboy: What were your misconceptions about porn going into this?

Parker: Guys in the business were telling me that it's the one business where the roles are reversed and the women have all the power, and I was like, "What are you talking about?" But then you see the women making $800 a scene, while the guys make $50. And on almost every set, if a woman says, "Fuck it, I'm not doing this," then it's over. For the most part, they're very powerful, very strong women. And what shocked me was that the majority of them are doing it because they're just nymphos. They're like, "I have to fuck all the time, so I might as well get paid for it." It's all professional and businesslike, and definitely not any more scummy than usual Hollywood business is.

Playboy: How did you come up with the idea of putting a Mormon missionary in porn movies?

Parker: You know, the norm in comedy has been to take a regular situation and put zany characters in it. Our style is to take a normal character and put him in a fucked-up situation. That's what South Park is all about: You take average eight-year-olds and you drop them in with Mecha-Streisand and Death and all that shit. And that's what Orgazmo is: You take the all-American boy, this nice Mormon with a nice haircut, and drop him into the world of porn.

Playboy: You grew up around Mormons, right?

Parker: Oh yeah. Utah's right next door, and there was a lot of overflow. My first girlfriend was Mormon.

Playboy: What is the funniest thing about Mormons?

Parker: Well, to me, the funniest thing is that I've never met a Mormon I didn't like. They're good people. You could say the movie is a shot at Mormons, but on the other hand, the guy who is a Mormon is the guy who wins and the guy you like. He doesn't change faiths or anything like that. It's not so much that Mormons amuse me, it's that they represent an end-all wholesomeness.

Playboy: A million-dollar budget and a five-week shooting schedule don't sound like much, but they're a lot more than you'd ever had. Were you nervous?

Parker: It was totally scary. Orgazmo was my first experience with a shooting schedule, a prop department. I was like, "What the fuck?" A million dollars is a lot of fucking money, and there was a crew of 28 people. I remember the first day I walked onto the set and saw trailers and stuff. I just went, "Holy shit." I was freaked out.

Playboy: And now, a year and a half later, this little movie is coming out, and you and Matt have become big stars.

Parker: Yeah, it's hysterical. In Orgazmo we look like we're about 12. It's like watching Clinton before he was president. You can see how much this shit aged us in a year and a half.

On almost every porn set, if a woman says, "Fuck it, I'm not doing this," then it's over.