I want to make this as clear as I can...the trailer and clips I saw at ShoWest for “Tropic Thunder” mad me laugh as hard as anything I’ve seen in a very long time. And I wasn’t alone. Everyone in the room was also laughing as hard as I was and it was one of those rare experiences where you couldn’t hear the movie.

 

Since a lot of you probably haven’t heard of “Tropic Thunder” yet, the film stars Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Danny McBride, Bill Hader and Robert Downey Jr. as a group of self-absorbed actors who set out to make a war film. After ballooning costs force the studio to cancel the movie, the frustrated director (played by Steve Coogan) refuses to stop shooting, leading his cast into the jungles of Southeast Asia, where they encounter real bad guys.

 

Trust me when I say, that synopsis doesn’t do the film justice.

 

What Ben has set out to do is poke fun at Hollywood actors and so called “important” films. And based on the footage they showed, I absolutely believe he’s hit a massive home-run.

 

Anyway, the day after we saw the footage, Paramount invited a few online journalists to interview Ben at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas. Since we were all so busy with ShoWest, I suggested to everyone attending that we wait to post the interview. Thankfully, everyone agreed and that’s why on Joblo, Coming Soon, First Showing and Latino Review you can read the same interview. It’s pretty rare in our business to work together like this, and I’m glad we all waited to post till tonight.

 

And as I’ve already said, “Tropic Thunder” blew me away and was easily one of the best things I saw at ShoWest. I promise you when this film comes out in August, everyone will be talking about it. Since the trailer is done and the movie isn’t that far away from coming out, I’d imagine in the next few weeks it’ll be online. But if you can’t wait for some footage before reading the interview, here’s the restricted clip that was recently released. Also, I managed to participate in an interview with Robert Downey Jr. at ShoWest and he talks a lot about his character in “Tropic Thunder,” so click here to see it. 

  

And one last thing. When Ben premiered the footage at the party for “Tropic Thunder,” he was joined by Robert Downey Jr. on stage. Then, for what seemed to go on for about 10 minutes, they insulted each other verbally in a way I'd never seen. They insulted past failures and they even went after real personal stuff. It was performed so well that I’m sure people in the audience thought it was real. So when we first sat down with Ben, I asked him about the exchange. That’s how the interview started....

Question: How much did you guys prepare that back and forth last night onstage?

Ben Stiller: We started working it up yesterday on the plane ride over. We knew that we had to say something. I'd never done one of these before where you just sort of introduce clips and I didn't know what the expectation would be and so I just figured we should just do something short or whatever. I had one thought and Robert [Downey Jr.] had one idea and we were like, 'Well, lets figure this out.' We got on the plane and then we started rehearsing it for like an hour before and then we said, 'Fuck it. It doesn't even matter. It's just a thing. Lets go have fun. Well, lets rehearse again.' So it literally became like we were working on the movie again because it was sort of in terms of the dynamic of the movie. It was fun and it took like an hour and a half, two hours. We were sort of obsessing in the car on the way over it.

Question: You got great laughs in the room. It was very, very funny.

Ben Stiller: Yeah, good. Thanks. Those things, you don't want to push it, but you also want to have fun and I think also knowing that they weren't filming it or anything gave us a little freedom to say whatever.

Question: It's been seven years since you directed. Why was now the time go back and what was it about this script.

Ben Stiller: Well, this movie I've been working on for a while. I had the idea for the movie like twenty years ago when I was doing 'Empire of the Sun' in 1987 because at that time that's when all these Vietnam movies were being made and my friends and I were going on auditions for these Vietnam movies and my friends were getting them and going away to fake boot camps. It seemed like there was a time when all actors were going away to fake boot camp and talking about these incredible experiences that they had and how it really changed their lives and there was something there that seemed funny to me. Maybe it was because I wasn't getting parts in those movies, but I was like, 'Oh, wow. You're going off and getting all of that. What about people who actually go to war?' The actors were like owning this experience as if it was like this real and incredible experience. I'm sure that it was a great experience, but it wasn't like actually going to real boot camp. So that was percolating in my head and I thought maybe I'd do a short or a sketch about actors who go away and do Vietnam films and come back and are forgotten, try to parallel the veteran's experiences. That didn't seem funny at all [laughs]. So I put that away. Then the idea came that it might be cool to have a movie about a bunch of actors that get stuck out in the jungle on a movie and are caught in this real situation. So, literally, for the last ten years I worked on a first act of it, about ten years ago, and then Justin [Theroux] came on about eight years ago. I said, 'Come on, lets work this.' Then we brought on Etan Cohen on about four years ago. So literally over the last ten years we've been working on the script in different and various forms. I would go away for a few weeks on vacation or something and work on it.

Question: So how much military training was involved?

Ben Stiller: So minimal. I got in touch with Dale Dye. He's like THE guy for training. He's in 'Platoon'. He's the guy who does all the boot camps. He did 'Saving Private Ryan' and is like the military advisor on all the movies. Dale and I emailed a bit maybe about six or seven years ago when I was telling him about the idea. He gave me a lot of feedback on experiences that he had taking actors out into the jungle and a lot of that stuff comes out of what he told me, like going on 'Platoon' and taking the guys out on an overnight and Oliver Stone telling him to scare the shit out of the actors. So when it got down to doing the movie Dale was going to take us out. I said, 'We've got to do a boot camp.' We were going to do like this two day intensive boot camp in Hawaii when the guys got there for rehearsal. I said that we had to do it. Then as we got closer and closer to shooting the schedule started filling up and Downey was doing 'Iron Man'. He was going to get there a couple days beforehand and it was finally getting so tight because of all the prep that we were doing for the movie that my producer came up to me one day and said, 'Alright, here's the choice. We either do the two day boot camp or we can do a cast dinner on Saturday night.' I was like, 'Lets just go for the cast dinner. That'll be much more fun.' Also, Dale got a job directing this other TV show and so he couldn't be there. So I think that when Dale went away the pressure was off because he's so imposing and he's so tough. So we were like, 'Alright.' We just bailed on it, honestly. But we did have his guys there and they showed us how to shoot the guns and stuff, but it really felt that the license was just to be able to have fun with this since we were just actors trying to be soldiers. So we could be bad at it.

Question: Did you go looking for some outrageous stories from actors about being on a war set and stuff like that?

Ben Stiller: Yeah, and like I said I got a lot of stuff from Dale and then also friends of mine who were like in 'Hamburger Hill' and I go way back with them. They'd talk about being back in the Philippines there doing that movie and how they really did have to do these crazy two and three week boot camps and were just stuck in really horrible hotels. There's also the stories about the guys who didn't show up at the boot camps, the stars that didn't go to the boot camps because apparently that's a real thing that happens on some war movies. So it was an amalgamation of all those stories, input from friends and then just figuring out what we wanted to do for the story in the movie.

Question: Was this always going to be an R rated movie?

Ben Stiller: It became evident while we were writing the script, and there's been so much emphasis in the last couple of years, I think, placed on R versus PG-13 and when we were coming up with the movie we weren't thinking about the rating. But it did become evident that there was language in the movie. If you were going to do a war movie this is a part of it. We were writing the first scenes, which you haven't scene yet, but they're out in the opening of the movie which is the movie within the movie and so it's this sort of hot LZ and they're trying to do an extract mission and coming in with the choppers to pull the guys out and there's all this over the top dialogue that is just like so many motherfucking and fucks in there. You can't not do it and do one of these movies, be in that genre. So that's what it came out of it. Then when we realized that we were stuck with it being an R that we should then at least have fun with it since we're going to have to be an R.

Question: Yeah, not a lot of decapitations and 'I'll suck your dick'.

Ben Stiller: Yeah, exactly, but I'm working on that. I think we need to open it up [laughs]. What's crazy is that I just watched 'Beowulf' and maybe I watched the unrated DVD or something, but that was a PG-13 movie and limbs were being torn off and blood was splattering. So it's a very slippery slope. There's no clear guidelines. I guess if you have two fuck's in a movie it's an R, but there aren't any real clear guidelines on what they say you can and can't do. It's all up to interpretation.

Question: You've worked with a lot of these guys before. Can you talk about the casting, the standbys you wanted in the film and then the new people as well?

Ben Stiller: For Lazarus, for Downey's part it was really important. That's like the biggest thing because it was like who are you going to get that's an actor that everyone respects because it had to be the real deal. It had to be a guy who would actually believe is this incredible award winning actor and also be really funny and also be able to do that character because he's in character for the whole movie. That was a really short list. I didn't really know Robert before and we ran into each other actually in Hawaii the Christmas before we were shooting. We have a mutual friends that introduced us and it was like we hit it off and I thought, 'Wow. I should ask this guy.' You get a little shy sometimes when you have a friendship and then you also have a script and you don't want it to be like, 'Hey, we met in Hawaii. Here's my script. I think you're awesome, man.' I just decided to do it because I thought he would be so uniquely suited to it and that he would get it. He really loved the script and then we did a table reading. Jack [Black] was always in my mind, but never in a million years did I think that Jack would do it. I just thought that he would have his own thing going on and this was an ensemble thing and I didn't know what his thing would be. But he was always that guy to me, and when he read the script and liked it I was like, 'Oh, my God. Jack wants to do it and Robert Downey wants to do it.' Then everybody else started to fall in and for Sandusky, the Jay Baruchel part, that was a really tough role too because that guy sort of has to be the straight guy through the movie, but also have a really good sense of humor. He came in and auditioned and he just had this take on the character where he was actually doing a character. He just saw the actor guy doing the character for the movie. He had that whole take on it as opposed to just playing the straight guy. A lot of really good actors came in for that role, but he just had a really great comic sensibility. I hadn't seen him in 'Knocked Up' or anything. I'd seen him in 'Million Dollar Baby' and that's all I knew of his work. But he's awesome and so committed and he's so funny. A lot of the stuff that he does in the movie which you'll see is that he's sort of a movie geek in the movie and he talks a lot. A lot of the times I would have him talk, talking on the set and I'd say, 'Okay, lets film that.' He would talk about this whole HD versus Blue Ray DVD's and what the difference is and the pixel rates and he'd go on these rants while they're trekking in the jungle. He drives everybody crazy because he just keeps talking and talking and so he gave us a lot of material.

Question: Are you surprised that in this day and age you were able to keep Robert's look in the film under wraps and then premiere it on your own terms?

Ben Stiller: Yeah. I don't really know how that works in this world these days because I feel like it's basically that if you're off the radar with something and people don't know about it, I guess if it's not a 'Star Wars' movie or something where people know it's coming maybe they're not looking for it as much. I think that we were all very clear that we didn't want to put it out there until we had a context for people because they would see it and be like, 'What the hell is that?' So, yeah, I guess so. There are so many places where things can get leaked or emailed or put out there and I guess that we got lucky in that way, that nobody broke trust or anything. I think also because the movie was sort of under the radar for a long time that no one really knew about it and it wasn't announced as a big tent pole thing and we were just sort of making the movie.

Question: You've really achieved the status of headlining movies. There's always the argument about doing sequels to movies. Can you talk about your feelings about that?

Ben Stiller: Well, I think it always depends on what the sequel is. I never did them until 'Meet the Parents' and that was because Robert De Niro called me up and said, 'You're going to do the sequel. You're going to do it, okay?' I was like, 'Alright.' You really don't want that call from De Niro and also that was just to work with those people in that cast, Barbara and the rest. It was like a once in a lifetime thing. On this one, on 'Night At The Museum', which you might be referring to, that was just that I thought they had a better script and they had a new idea and I really got a lot out of that movie. I just enjoyed doing it and the connection that kids have with it is just such a positive thing in my life. So I wanted to do it again and have fun doing it.

Question: Is it written by the same guys?

Ben Stiller: Yeah. Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lenon. It's sort of a couple of other guys worked on it which is pretty much the same process that happened on the last one, in terms of all the writers who worked on it. It's a couple of other guys, but they're very much responsible for it because they created that world and they created the tone of that humor.

Question: So you're at the Smithsonian for this one?

Ben Stiller: The Smithsonian, yeah, and it's like a whole other sort of group of new characters. It's going to be a really cool cast which I don't think I'm supposed to talk about it yet.

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