Ben Stiller says “Tropic Thunder” would be far too “dicey” of a prospect for today’s climate.
Stiller was celebrated for co-writing, directing, co-producing and starring in the 2008 comedy, which satirized war movies and mocked the self-centered nature of certain actors who actually believe they’re changing the world.
The film starred Robert Downey Jr. as Kirk Lazarus, a fictional Australian actor who uses blackface to portray an African-American soldier, which was certainly controversial at the time — but also earned him a Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and Oscar nod.
When asked by Collider if the film could even get made today, however, Stiller said simply: “I doubt it.”
“Obviously, in this environment, edgier comedy is just harder to do,” he continued in the interview, published Sunday. “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.”
Stiller credited Steven Spielberg for making it happen. He said that while it was “a very inside movie” for portraying meddling studio heads and production issues, the DreamWorks Pictures co-founder “read it and was like, ‘Alright, let’s make this thing.’”
“But yeah, the idea of Robert playing that character who’s playing an African American character, I mean, incredibly dicey,” added Stiller. “Even at the time, of course, it was dicey too. The only reason we attempted it was I 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.”
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Downey himself recently reflected on the movie on Rob Lowe’s “Literally!” podcast. He said “Thunder” merely exposes “tropes that are not right and had been perpetuated for too long,” like the minstrel shows that birthed blackface as a racist form of entertainment.
He even slammed the new norm of streaming services adding disclaimers in front of older and culturally outdated programs, such as “All in the Family,” and said that there “used to be an understanding with an audience” that seems to have vanished.
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Stiller appears just as determined to defend his work, and responded last year to a social media user who mistakenly believed the director had apologized for the film’s insensitive humor, maintaining that he makes “no apologies for Tropic Thunder.”
“Don’t know who told you that,” Stiller continued in his post on X, formerly Twitter, at the time. “It’s always been a controversial movie since when we opened. Proud of it and the work everyone did on it.”