For those that haven’t yet heard of the film….

Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. lead an ensemble cast in “Tropic Thunder,” an action comedy about a group of self-absorbed actors who set out to make the biggest war film ever.  After ballooning costs (and the out of control egos of the pampered cast) threaten to shut down the movie, the frustrated director refuses to stop shooting, leading his cast deep into the jungles of Southeast Asia for “increased realism,” where they inadvertently encounter real bad guys.

Trust me…that synopsis doesn’t do the film justice. There are many, many scenes that had the entire theater laughing out loud and parts of the film are so filthy that you won’t believe what is said. Again, I loved the movie and completely recommend it.

Anyway, I recently sat down with most of the cast…and below is the roundtable interview with director Ben Stiller. It’s a great interview and one worth reading. As always, you can either read the transcript or listen to the audio by clicking here. Finally, if you’d like to watch some movie clips from “Tropic Thunder,” click here.

Again, “Tropic Thunder” hits theaters this Wednesday. Go see it!

Question: There seems to be a sort of a petition online to have you keep on directing everything as everything you direct is just great.

Ben Stiller: I love directing and that’s my first love, definitely. No, it is. I really love directing. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do and I feel like hopefully in the length of a career when I’m not acting anymore that I will keep directing.

Q: You know, this is a great comedy, but it’s also quite an action movie. Can you talk about working with John Toll, the cinematographer?

Ben Stiller: Sure. It was incredible. I mean, we sent the script to Toll just because we felt we had to. We were like, ‘Alright, we know he’s going to turn us down, but we’ve got to send him the script just to say we did it.’ And I got this call back saying Toll wants to meet, he wants to talk.  And I’d never met him before, but I’d been a fan and I really wanted the movie to have the look of a real war film. That was really important to me and so, we sat down and he’s a really serious guy and he’s a very measured guy, but he also has this really dry sense of humor. And, I sort of laid out what I wanted to do and we talked and we both sort of took a chance on each other I think, because we didn’t know how it would work out. But it was amazing to be able to see his process and y’know, guys like that who are great with outdoor work – and he’s amazing with lighting too inside – but, it’s all about where and when you shoot. So, to get out there with him and his chart where the sun rises and sets and the azimuth and his compass and to say, ‘Well, y’know, if you built the compound there, then you’d have a great shot in the late afternoon and we could shoot this way in the morning.’ Just that whole process, because that’s [why] they are masters of natural light. Those guys just understand when and when not to shoot and which way to shoot. It’s an amazing art form I think. And then to be able to do all that and the action with him and then to have him work on a comedy, and he’d worked with Cameron a lot, but this is a different kind of comedy and y’know, for us, to get him to shoot multiple cameras? That’s something he really doesn’t…multiple cameras shooting in one direction. We shot three cameras most of the time, because there was so much action and actors, but to shoot a scene where you are shooting two actors across from each other most times cinematographers don’t want to do that because you can only light one way that they feel good about, but a couple of times I sort of convinced him, ‘C’mon, I know you can shoot two ways.’ Because people were improvising so much and you want to get both sides of it. So, of course, he’s so brilliant and great and he’d be, ‘Alright, we’ll do it.’ And, of course, it looks incredible because he’s just incredible. And it’s the same thing, he’s always would say at the end of the day, because the dusk stuff is always the best looking stuff, right at the end of the day, he’d be like, ‘I dunno. Just keep shooting.’ He’d look at his light meter as the sun’s going down. ‘I dunno if it’s going to come out or not, just keep shooting.’ And then of course you get into the dailies and this is the most amazing thing. It was really great to work with him and we really spent a lot of time together and then in the DI, the final color timing, to see his process and how he can make – he showed me how you just bring something up one point how it affects contrast and lighting. All that. It was just really fun.

Q: In the notes you say satire was not your intent. Can you clarify this?

Ben Stiller: Oh, did I say that? What do I say? Shit.  No, I feel like the tone of the movie is it’s own thing and I think there are elements of satire, but I don’t think it should just be categorized just as that. There are elements of parody in it, but obviously, I don’t think it’s just that. I feel like hopefully it’s its own thing, which has a real story, but a lot of familiar stuff that we are playing off of. And it’s a genre that people know and y’know, I wanted it to hopefully work as both something you could go ‘Oh, that’s funny because I’ve seen that in that.’ But it’s also funny if you hadn’t.

Q: Does that mean the trailers and all the stuff in front of it aren’t parodies? Are there any that didn’t make it?

Ben Stiller: Um, we had a ‘Simple Jack,’ the movie ‘Simple Jack,’ there is a ‘Simple Jack’ trailer that we shot that features Mickey Rooney which is awesome. (Laughs.) He plays like the angry farm owner that’s made because Jack accidentally kills one of his rabbits.  It’s like a very sort of ‘Of Mice and Men’ inspired vibe. So we have that trailer. No, that was it. The trailers were actually a lot of work. So, it’s not like we had a lot of extra stuff around. 

Q: The mockumentary, what happened to that?

Ben Stiller: Well, what happened to it is it is finished now. Have you seen the Reign of Madness website?  So, we are releasing little bits and pieces of it. Like every day or every other day up until release there will be more little short bits from it. And then we are going to release it on Apple on iTunes I think like a week and a half after the movie comes out and then it will also be on the DVD.

Q: What is the running time on that?

Ben Stiller: It’s a half an hour.

Q: Does it have the footage of Robert doing the medication in 69 or 70?

Ben Stiller: Um, here is the deal. There is so much stuff we shot for that, what I wanted to do was put out little pieces on the Internet and then have the full thing actually be some different stuff than what you’re seeing on the Internet. So, it will hopefully, mainly be new stuff f that you’re seeing. It is mainly new stuff in the half hour. And then because there is others stuff that didn’t fit into it, on the DVD we’re going to have outtakes and probably about 15-20 minutes that’s not in it on the DVD. A lot of that is Robert sort of going crazy when he goes back to live, he goes back to live with the family of the character he is portraying and freaks out. He sort of has his post-‘Platoon’ syndrome thing.

Q: I just wanted to know how you could even know that Robert Downey, Jr. could have even done that role?

Ben Stiller: No, I never heard him do the character ever. I just knew he was a great actor. He’s brilliant. And it was really important to hire, to me, this part had to be somebody who actually was one of the greatest actors of their generation, which he is, but he also has a sense of humor. He’s like the biggest, at that time, the biggest bargain genius actor on the planet. Y’know what I mean? I mean he really was. It was like, ‘OK,’ Y’know, it’s like because of everything in his life, this guy, he had his shit together and this is it. This is the moment of time to get Robert Downey and he read the script and he was like, ‘Yeah.’ I remember he called me up and he read the script and he loved the script and hew as like, ‘Yeah, this is just really funny. The story, the whole thing is great.’ And I was like, ‘Great, so alright, we’ll start…’ ‘No, I gotta think about it for a second.’ (Laughs.) Cause he knew it was like a little bit risky and then he said yes and we did a read through right at the beginning before we went off on location. And that was the first time I heard him do the character and he started to play around with it and it sort of revved up and it was amazing. Then he just got into this groove and was just amazing.

Q: I take it that Tom Cruise never took offense when you parodied him on the Ben Stiller show?

Ben Stiller: No, he’s a really great guy. A really positive guy. And to his credit, I went and I did that which I never felt was mean spirited so I felt OK showing it to him. He saw it somewhere, but then we did the Ben Stiller Show and we did the Cruise thing too and a friend of mine was in ‘The Firm’ at the time, and I showed it to him down there and he loved it. I mean, I would probably not have loved it if I saw somebody gave me – somebody doing me. I always give him credit for that. He was always open to it. If you ever spend anytime with him, he’s like that. Then we did this thing on the MTV Movie Awards like eight years ago and that was really fun. We had a good time where I was doing his stuntman and since then we stayed in touch and talked about stuff over the years and then I showed him the script and he really was intrigued by the idea of this movie and then he – I give him credit for this character. He really came up with this idea and it sort of spurred me and Justin to go back and work on this guy, this character. And it helped move the story, because I needed to have – I needed to explain what was happening back in the world while the guys were out in the jungle, so it ended up being one of these weird organic things that just developed.

Q: Coogan said earlier you put a lot of self-deprecating moments in the film?

Ben Stiller: Sure, I think the whole movie is like we’re all doing that. For sure. That’s the point.

Q: Are there any you can point out?

Ben Stiller: Well, all of it. Y’know, it’s like, the whole vibe of the movie is we’re saying look at how ridiculous this world is and it’s the nature of being an actor and being in big movies and the infrastructure around it and the way people get protected and the way people sort of build fences around themselves, some out of necessity, but it’s a very tough world to navigate, I think. To maintain your equilibrium in it. So, we wanted to just have fun, because actors, I think, have a great sense of humor about themselves and just say this is just ridiculous. This is not important. And there have been a lot of movies that have done it. I just have always found that humor going back to SCTV, y’know, all that behind-the-scenes stuff, I just personally find it funny and enjoy it. So, I thought this was a movie to do that and hopefully people will connect with the characters. That was sort of a challenge.  How can this not be too inside? But, I’m probably not the right person to judge that, but I sort of went for my gut and then when we stated to screen the movie, see just how much people could connect with the characters. How much of a jerk could Speedman be? Could you care about him or do you have to, or how far could he go? And, Downey’s character, strangely, was never an issue. Because I think he’s such a persona and the character is so well defined that people were always on board with it.

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