Ben Stiller doesn't think Tropic Thunder could get made at that scale today
"Edgier comedy is just harder to do," the actor said.
Photo: Dreamworks
Ben Stiller is weighing in on the whole “you couldn’t make my super controversial movie today” conversation, but—unlike some others who were mostly just yelling at clouds—he actually has a point. He’s talking about Tropic Thunder of course, the “incredibly dicey” 2008 satirical comedy about a group of actors trying to make a Vietnam War film, that also starred Jack Black, Nick Nolte, Jay Baruchel, and Steve Coogan. Most infamously, it also featured Robert Downey Jr. as an Australian method actor who undergoes a “pigmentation alteration” to play a Black character, which is a long way to say he was in blackface the entire film.
“Obviously, in this environment, edgier comedy is just harder to do,” the Severance producer recently told Collider. “Definitely not at the scale we made it at, too, in terms of the economics of the business. I think even at the time we were fortunate to get it made, and I credit that, actually, to Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks. He read it and was like, ‘Alright, let’s make this thing.’ It’s a very inside movie when you think about it.”
About the decision to just go for it when it came to Downey’s character, Stiller continued, “The idea of Robert playing that character who’s playing an African American character, I mean, incredibly dicey. Even at the time, of course, it was dicey too.” The only reason they even attempted it, he went on to explain, was because he “felt like the joke was very clear in terms of who that joke was on—actors trying to do anything to win awards. But now, in this environment, I don’t even know if I would have ventured to do it, to tell you the truth. I’m being honest.”
Despite some of the controversies over the years, Stiller stands by his film. “I make no apologies for Tropic Thunder,” he wrote on Twitter (X) last year. “It’s always been a controversial movie since when we opened. Proud of it and the work everyone did on it.”
In a 2020 interview, Downey addressed his “dicey” role with a lot of words that, well, we’ll let you decide for yourself. After discussing some of his hesitations, he said, “I get to be Black for a summer in my mind, so there’s something in it for me. The other thing is, I get to hold up to nature the insane self-involved hypocrisy of artists and what they think they’re allowed to do on occasion, just my opinion.” In Downey’s defense, according to Downey at least, “90 per cent of my Black friends were like, ‘Dude, that was great.” He added, “In my defense, Tropic Thunder is about how wrong [blackface] is, so I take exception.” Well, there you have it!