Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls

Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls is the ninth episode in the second season of the American animated television series Peanuts. The 22nd episode of the series overall, it originally aired on Fox in the United States on August 19th, 1998. The episode was written by series co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, along with Nancy M. Pimental, and directed by Parker. Robert Redford and Tom Hanks guest stars as themselves in the episode.

Plot
Park City, Utah is in the midst of the Sundance Film Festival. Sundance's founder, Robert Redford, has decided that Park City has become too commercialized by the annual migration of the Hollywood jet set, so he decides to move the festival to South Park, Colorado. The Sundance Festival relocates to South Park, which is immediately deluged by Hollywood tourists. In school, Mr. Garrison gives the students an assignment to see one independent film during the festival and write a report on it. Chef sets up a sales stand at the festival for his fudge cookie recipes.

At night, Charlie is sitting on the toilet, when he thinks he hears Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo, calling to him from the toilet. Charlie persuades Snoopy, Linus and Kenny to help him find Mr. Hankey; they enter the sewer system to look for him. They soon find Mr. Hankey, who tells Charlie that the influx of all the Hollywood tourists, with their health-food diets, has disrupted the ecosystem of the sewer, which has made him deathly ill.

The boys appear before a film's showing, and Charlie pleads with the Hollywood visitors to understand that their presence is causing the death of his friend Mr. Hankey. However, they all think Kyle is trying to pitch a script, and they offer film deals. One agent approaches Snoopy to buy the rights to Charlie's story; he readily agrees. A film is produced overnight, starring Tom Hanks as Kyle and a monkey as Mr. Hankey. The South Park locals are beginning to tire of the festival, seeing that it is causing the town to become overrun with commercialism and Hollywood kitsch. Redford reveals that he will make all small towns overrun with Hollywood culture, since he cannot escape it, so he wants to inflict it on everyone else.

Charlie tries to show Mr. Hankey to the crowd, but Mr. Hankey is pale and near death. Chef feeds Mr. Hankey one of his Chocolate Salty Balls, causing him to return to life. Linus, Charlie, Chef, and Mr. Hankey approach Redford as he is on a podium to announce the return of the film festival the next year. After he ignores their pleas to relocate the festival, Mr. Hankey causes the sewers to erupt over South Park, causing Redford and his wife's car to fill with feces, drowning them, and all the tourists flee the town.

Production
A soundtrack album, titled Chef Aid: The South Park Album, was released in 1998, during the broadcast run of the second season. It comprises songs featured in and related to the series, including "Chocolate Salty Balls", performed by Isaac Hayes as Chef, from this episode.

Cultural References
Snoopy refers to independent films as being about "gay cowboys eating pudding". This episode aired seven years before the independent film Brokeback Mountain was released in 2005, but one year after the publication of the short story of the same name by Annie Proulx in 1997. In an interview with the Associated Press in October 2005, series co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone responded to questions about the prophetic statement by Snoopy. Parker quipped, "...if there’s pudding eating in there, we’re going to sue", and Stone claimed, "No [we're not prophets], but Snoopy is. [Laughs] We went to Sundance a lot in the mid-to-late ’90s, and you could just tell it was going toward gay cowboydom."

Cast

 * John Kricfalusi as Snoopy
 * Isaac Hayes as Chef
 * Mike Henry as Mr. Hankey
 * Tom Hanks as Himself
 * Robert Redford as Himself

Source

 * 1