Ben Stiller handed them out to cast and crew at the conclusion of a punishing 13-week location shoot as a gesture of thanks, but also contrition: T-shirts that read “I Survived Ben Stiller’s Comedy Death Camp.”
Sitting at a bayside restaurant in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he’s currently filming “Night at the Museum 2,” Stiller — who co-wrote, directed, co-produced and stars in the ensemble action-comedy “Tropic Thunder” — waved it away as a joke, a riff on star Robert Downey Jr’s acerbic nickname for the production, most of which unfolded in the steaming jungles of Kauai last year.
According to actor Jay Baruchel, Stiller might have had a different rationale for his choice of “wrap” gifts. He called Stiller a mensch and “one of the kindest directors” he’s worked with, but continued: “I think for everybody, it signaled the end of the madness.”
Baruchel, like Stiller and Downey in the film, portrays an actor caught in the middle of real paramilitary strife while filming a big-budget Vietnam War epic. “It rained 12 times a day,” he said. “There were a tremendous amount of things to worry about, from prolonged exposure to mud to the leptospirosis virus caused by every animal in creation. A lot of people were getting sick.”
Added Jack Black: “A couple of people got bit by centipedes. It’s like getting shot by a gun, apparently. You have to go to the hospital.”
Downey recalled that during the Hawaiian shoot, “People were dropping like flies.”
After two decades in the business, Stiller has become one of Hollywood’s most consistently hit-making A-listers; his movies have collectively taken in more than $3.5 billion in worldwide box-office receipts, landing him on Forbes magazine’s list of the Top 10 most bankable stars.
Stiller, 42, began incubating the idea for “Tropic Thunder” more than 20 years ago, developed the script off and on for the last decade and landed a budget from DreamWorks reported to be around $100 million.
Viewed another way, with its biting satire of studio greed, talent- agent vapidity, movie star butt-kissing and hubris, the R-rated homage to films such as “Apocalypse Now” is a hugely expensive poke in Hollywood’s eye — a joke Hollywood paid through the nose to have played upon itself. The film never second-guesses its audience’s familiarity with entertainment industry inside baseball nor does it defang its jokes — and for that reason, early buzz has been mixed.
“Tropic Thunder’s” movie within a movie centers on buffoonish yet instantly recognizable Hollywood types — Black plays a “fart movie” comic saddled with certain chemical-dependency issues while Downey portrays a pretentious Australian Method actor whose immersive “process” brings to mind Russell Crowe and Daniel Day-Lewis — filming the “biggest war film ever” in the jungles of Vietnam.
A profanity-spewing studio boss (played by a nearly unrecognizable Tom Cruise) threatens to pull the plug on the production’s runaway costs unless its director (Steve Coogan) can get things under control.
So he leads the cast deep into the jungle where hidden cameras will capture the verite-style terror and dismay of hotshot actors out of their mollycoddled depth.
None of them realizes until it’s too late, however, they’ve encroached upon the turf of heavily armed heroin dealers. A real war erupts with Stiller portraying Tugg Speedman, a washed-up action superstar who has pinned his diminishing career hopes on “Tropic Thunder.”
“I’ve never played a mentally impaired character,” said Stiller. “But I put myself out there. I’ve had flops. There is stuff I do that could easily become parody too. Again, it always comes back to what we are satirizing: the actors and the Hollywood system. What do you do to be taken seriously? How far do you go?”
“Tropic Thunder”
R for pervasive language including sexual references, violent content and drug material. 1 hour, 45 minutes. Directed by Ben Stiller; written by Stiller and Justin Theroux; starring Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Nick Nolte. Opens today at area theaters.
