Ben Stiller’s new ‘war’ comedy

Ben Stiller’s new war comedy Tropic Thunder is the actor/writer’s subtle attack on Hollywood stars who make a big deal of pre-film bootcamps. The funnyman directs and stars in the new film — opposite Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. — as the leader of a troupe of actors who mistake a real war zone for a movie set. And he reveals that the idea for the project came to him after he read serious actors’ experiences in soldier training. The actor tells a magazine, “Around 1985 all these Vietnam war movies were being made. I remember the guys who got those parts were always doing interviews about going off to bootcamp for two weeks, (saying) how it was the toughest experience of their lives. They had to camp out, shoot guns, eat C rations, all of that.

There was something so ironic and funny about actors talking about how hard it was to go off for two weeks for a movie about war when it obviously had nothing to do with the real experience of war. It might have been my own bitterness about not getting parts in these movies, but I did think there was the seed of something in the irony of actors taking themselves too seriously. Maybe this movie is my revenge.”