The following is an interview I conducted with Ben Stiller about TROPIC THUNDER in March. As the film hits theaters this week, I thought it would be interested to look back at his thoughts after he had just finished his final cut of the film...
As you may have read in our ShoWest coverage, Ben Stiller and
Robert Downey, Jr. threw a party to premiere some footage from their upcoming
comedy TROPIC THUNDER. And if you did read our coverage you know that it
was a) hilarious and b) the must-see comedy of the summer. The next
morning, Stiller was kind enough to give up about 20 minutes of his time to talk up TROPIC THUNDER. Be
forewarned: the interview contains spoilers and plenty of profanity.
Ben Stiller
How much did you and Robert prepare that
banter onstage last night?
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, 'F*ck 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.
You got great laughs in the room. It was very,
very funny.
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.
It's been seven years since you directed. Why
was now the time go back and what was it about this script?
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.
So how much military training was involved?
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.
Did you go looking for some outrageous stories
from actors about being on a war set and stuff like that?
Stiller: Yeah, and like I said I got a lot of
stuff from Dale and then also friends of mine who were like in HAMB
