In most ways, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are trying to look forward, nearly 27 seasons in. Take Donald Trump, now running for president for a third consecutive cycle and a subject (via series stalwart Mr. Garrison) in the long-running animated series. The pair tell Vanity Fair that they’re about done with satirizing the Republican candidate. “We’ve tried to do South Park through four or five presidential elections, and it is such a hard thing to—it’s such a mind scramble, and it seems like it takes outsized importance,” Stone says. “Obviously, it’s fucking important, but it kind of takes over everything and we just have less fun.” Parker adds, “I don’t know what more we could possibly say about Trump.”

The creators, also known for their Tony-winning musical, The Book of Mormon, reveal in our interview that South Park will not return until 2025, bypassing the November election. Part of this has to do with “waiting for Paramount to figure all their shit out,” Parker says. But skipping Trump? “Honestly, it’s on purpose,” Stone tells me.

On a more personal level, the past has been looming for these guys. We’re sitting on a balcony in Telluride, at the film festival where their documentary ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! has just screened to strong reviews. (MTV Documentary Films will put it in select theaters on September 13 before it streams on Paramount+ later this fall.) Helmed by Arthur Bradford, the film follows Parker and Stone buying the Lakewood, Colorado, Mexican restaurant that they’d previously honored in a classic South Park episode, “Casa Bonita,” more than 20 years ago. The local landmark holds a great deal of meaning for the two Colorado natives, and Mi Amor provides surprisingly intimate access to Parker and Stone sinking millions of dollars into a seemingly doomed attempt at revitalization. Every beat in this Kitchen Nightmares–esque saga appears to have been captured on camera. Not quite the colorful fantasyland, in other words, that Cartman introduced us to back in South Park’s seventh season.

Bradford has been following the creative partners around for more than a decade. Ever since helming 2011’s 6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park, he’s been allowed to trail them with his camera. They never knew what would come of it, even as he captured some pretty seminal moments in their careers of late: The behind the scenes, 36-hour mad dash to make an episode about the 2016 election after being stunned (like most of the rest of the country) about Trump’s victory. The lead-up to and execution of the South Park 25th anniversary concert at Red Rocks. They’d often wonder where the movie was in all of those years of random BTS filming. But as the Casa Bonita saga began, Bradford knew he had his movie. As for the rest of that aforementioned footage: It’s still out there, and maybe we’ll see it someday.

Between the concert and the buying of Casa Bonita, Parker and Stone have been pulled back to their home state in a way they haven’t since they first broke out in the ’90s. “It did feel like we were finally kind of welcome back home, because until then, it didn’t,” Parker tells me as Stone nods along. They recall the release of their classic 1999 film South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut: “Everyone in the country was super nice to us critic-wise except for people in Denver,” Parker says. “It was more like, Who the fuck do you guys think you are?”

The reception this time around, by contrast, was “nice,” Stone says. But they also returned to a different Colorado than the one they left behind for La La Land. “It’s just so different culturally now with the internet and everything—there weren’t, like, sushi restaurants in Colorado,” he says. “There, Casa Bonita just stuck out as this amazing place. There was nothing like it.” The level of investment he and Parker put into the renovation of the beloved Mexican restaurant includes grappling with such changing times. By the end of the movie, Parker describes leaving the project behind—inevitable when they have a TV show that actually makes them money to produce—as a “break up.” Especially since the restaurant will officially be back up and running next month. “Now, people are just like, ‘Yeah, I went to Casa Bonita last night and Trey Parker wasn’t there—it’s weird,’” he says.