INT: Ben Stiller

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 HAMBURGER HILL
and I go way back with them. They’d talk about being back in the Philippines
there doing that movie and how they really did have to do these crazy two and
three week boot camps and were just stuck in really horrible hotels. There’s
also the stories about the guys who didn’t show up at the boot camps, the stars
that didn’t go to the boot camps because apparently that’s a real thing that
happens on some war movies. So it was an amalgamation of all those stories,
input from friends and then just figuring out what we wanted to do for the story
in the movie.

Was this always going to be an R rated movie?

Stiller: It became evident while we were writing
the script, and there’s been so much emphasis in the last couple of years, I
think, placed on R versus PG-13 and when we were coming up with the movie we
weren’t thinking about the rating. But it did become evident that there was
language in the movie. If you were going to do a war movie this is a part of it.
We were writing the first scenes, which you haven’t scene yet, but they’re out
in the opening of the movie which is the movie within the movie and they’re
trying to do an extract mission and coming in with the choppers to pull the guys
out and there’s all this over the top dialogue that is just like so many motherf*cking
and f*cks in there. You can’t not do it and do one of these movies, be in that
genre. So that’s what it came out of it. Then when we realized that we were
stuck with it being an R that we should then at least have fun with it since
we’re going to have to be an R.

Yeah, not a lot of decapitations and ‘I’ll
suck your dick’.

Stiller: Yeah, exactly, but I’m working on that.
I think we need to open it up [laughs]. What’s crazy is that I just watched
BEOWULF and maybe I watched the unrated DVD or something, but that was a PG-13
movie and limbs were being torn off and blood was splattering. So it’s a very
slippery slope. There’s no clear guidelines. I guess if you have two f*cks in a
movie it’s an R, but there aren’t any real clear guidelines on what they say you
can and can’t do. It’s all up to interpretation.

You’ve worked with a lot of these guys before.
Can you talk about the casting, the standbys you wanted in the film and then the
new people as well?

Stiller: For Lazarus, for Downey’s part it was
really important. That’s like the biggest thing because it was like who are you
going to get that’s an actor that everyone respects because it had to be the
real deal. It had to be a guy who would actually believe is this incredible
award winning actor and also be really funny and also be able to do that
character because he’s in character for the whole movie. That was a really short
list. I didn’t really know Robert before and we ran into each other actually in
Hawaii the Christmas before we were shooting. We have a mutual friends that
introduced us and it was like we hit it off and I thought, ‘Wow. I should ask
this guy.’ You get a little shy sometimes when you have a friendship and then
you also have a script and you don’t want it to be like, ‘Hey, we met in Hawaii.
Here’s my script. I think you’re awesome, man.’ I just decided to do it because
I thought he would be so uniquely suited to it and that he would get it. He
really loved the script and then we did a table reading.

Jack [Black] was always in my mind, but never in
a million years did I think that Jack would do it. I just thought that he would
have his own thing going on and this was an ensemble thing and I didn’t know
what his thing would be. But he was always that guy to me, and when he read the
script and liked it I was like, ‘Oh, my God. Jack wants to do it and Robert
Downey wants to do it.’ Then everybody else started to fall in.

For Sandusky, the Jay Baruchel part, that was a
really tough role too because that guy sort of has to be the straight guy
through the movie, but also have a really good sense of humor. He came in and
auditioned and he just had this take on the character where he was actually
doing a character. He just saw the actor guy doing the character for the movie.
He had that whole take on it as opposed to just playing the straight guy. A lot
of really good actors came in for that role, but he just had a really great
comic sensibility. I hadn’t seen him in KNOCKED UP or anything. I’d seen him in
MILLION DOLLAR BABY and that’s all I knew of his work. But he’s awesome and so
committed and he’s so funny. A lot of the stuff that he does in the movie which
you’ll see is that he’s sort of a movie geek in the movie and he talks a lot. A
lot of the times I would have him talk, talking on the set and I’d say, ‘Okay,
lets film that.’ He would talk about this whole HD versus Blu-ray DVD’s and what
the difference is and the pixel rates and he’d go on these rants while they’re
trekking in the jungle. He drives everybody crazy because he just keeps talking
and talking and so he gave us a lot of material.

Are you surprised that in this day and age you
were able to keep Robert’s look in the film under wraps and then premiere it on
your own terms?

Stiller: Yeah. I don’t really know how that works
in this world these days because I feel like it’s basically that if you’re off
the radar with something and people don’t know about it, I guess if it’s not a
‘Star Wars’ movie or something where people know it’s coming maybe they’re not
looking for it as much. I think that we were all very clear that we didn’t want
to put it out there until we had a context for people because they would see it
and be like, ‘What the hell is that?’ So, yeah, I guess so. There are so many
places where things can get leaked or emailed or put out there and I guess that
we got lucky in that way, that nobody broke trust or anything. I think also
because the movie was sort of under the radar for a long time that no one really
knew about it and it wasn’t announced as a big tent pole thing and we were just
sort of making the movie.

You filmed a mockumentary during ‘Tropic
Thunder’ while you were filming the movie. Can you talk about that too?

Stiller: Well, just in keeping in the vein with
the movies that we were sort of in the genre of and paying homage to, and I
don’t like to say satirizing because it’s not really satire, it’s not parody –
it’s like whatever the movie is within itself. All the elements are in the other
films and this movie exists because of those other movies were made. In
APOCALYPSE NOW [Francis Ford] Coppola’s wife did ‘Hearts of Darkness’ and so we
thought that might be fun to do, a documentary about the making of the movie
within the reality of the movie and Justin Theroux who wrote the script with me
and Etan Cohen, he took control of this thing and wrote this fake documentary
about the director who, as you saw what happened to him in that scene last
night, basically went crazy. He took these actors out into the jungle and never
returned. It’s like, ‘What happened and what’s the story there?’ So we filmed
that sort of concurrently and Justin directed that and wrote it and did
interviews with the actors while we were shooting. I’m not sure what we’re going
to do with it. I think it’s going to come out a little bit before the movie
comes out, maybe online in segments. It’ll definitely be on the DVD. It might be
on a fake sort of History Channel show or something like that, but it was
basically having fun with that. It was actually really cool because we were able
to use elements of that for the movie also in terms of like footage that he shot
and the interviews. Steve Coogan is like a huge part of that.

When you’re working with so many comedians do
think ahead of time about what you’ll have for the DVD?

Stiller: For sure, and especially I think on this
movie. First of all, the first cut of the movie was like three and a half hours
and I walked away going, ‘Wow, I know there’s like twenty minutes that I can cut
–’ when I first saw it ‘But I don’t know after that.’ The first time I put up
then in front of people I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I can take that out and that
out and that out.’ But there was really a lot of stuff that we couldn’t use and
so I feel like in terms of some sort of director’s cut or even like alternate
scenes or something there’s a lot of stuff there that I’m excited for people to
see and there’s a lot of stuff that even in the mockumentary, stuff we couldn’t
use even within that, where like Downey – he’s just off the charts in this
movie, in my opinion. He just does an incredible job. I feel like he’s sort of
breaking new ground in terms of comedic acting and the reality level and also
just how funny he is. He went off and did a whole thing in the mockumentary
about his character that was sort of like a sub-story about what happens to his
characters and going crazy while playing the part. It’s just insane. It was too
insane even for the mockumentary so I don’t know what’s going to happen with it.
It definitely needs to come out after people have seen the movie because
otherwise people will be like, ‘What the hell is this?’ So we have a lot of
material there in terms of that stuff. The war sequences we had to cut down and
there was a lot of stuff there. Oh, and the trailers too. We did these fake
trailers before the movie that sort of setup the characters. The character that
I play in the movie has done this really bad movie called ‘Simple Jack’ where he
played a mentally retarded man who talks to animals. My character did think he
was going to win an Oscar and it’s then panned across the board and is a huge
disaster for him. So he’s coming off of that movie going into ‘Tropic Thunder’
and needs to sort of regain his place in the world. We did a trailer for ‘Simple
Jack’ and you see part of it in the movie, but there’s a full trailer for that
Justin is actually in too and my wife is in it and Mickey Rooney is in it. It’s
awesome. So that’ll be probably a part of the DVD too.

When you’re on the set of a movie that has a
movie within it, what’s it take to keep track of everything and keep it all
separate?

Stiller: There were definitely times when it was
a little bit silly because in that opening scene when we break the fourth wall
of the movie my hands are blown off and I’m doing this emotional scene and the
director is yelling cut. So you’re doing this scene where you’re filming the
director and this crew of like a hundred people filming our scene and my hands
are strapped behind my back and I have fake arms. I realized when my hands were
strapped behind my back how much you use your hands when you’re directing. You
need them to say, ‘Do this and do that.’ It just becomes a part of it and so
when you have to direct with your hands behind your back and you’re trying to
tell them to cut, because also the director is saying, ‘No, no, keep it rolling
–’ because the scene is about keeping it rolling, it all became just silly. I
would have to say, ‘No, no, no. Stop filming for real. This is Ben talking.’

There were some secrets about the film that
got out like Tom Cruises cameo in the film. Were you disappointed that that was
leaked out because it could’ve been a really great surprise?

Stiller: I guess so, but I don’t know how you
keep that stuff today under wraps if people are coming after it. With Tom,
people are watching him so much and I think that happened because people are
always just following him around. I don’t personally care though because I feel
like what he does in the movie is so insanely funny and is just so great. I
think that people are going to be in for a great surprise. I think the fact that
he’s in the movie is going to be a great surprise and even if it’s not a
surprise for people what he does is very, very entertaining and I think that
people are going to enjoy seeing him have a little fun.

Has De Niro called you about LITTLE FOCKERS
yet?

Stiller: Nobody. I’ve never heard anything about
that except from journalists. If he does call though I’m in trouble.

What are you going to do after NIGHT AT THE
MUSEUM II?

Stiller: I don’t know. I have something that I
might be doing, but I don’t yet, but I think that I’m going to take a
little bit of time off. I think the running time, it’s not locked yet, but it’s
going to be somewhere like an hour forty five.

You’ve really achieved the status of
headlining movies. There’s always the argument about doing sequels to movies.
Can you talk about your feelings about that?

Stiller: Well, I think it always depends on what
the sequel is. I never did them until MEET THE PARENTS and that was because
Robert De Niro called me up and said, ‘You’re going to do the sequel. You’re
going to do it, okay?’ I was like, ‘Alright.’ You really don’t want that call
from De Niro and also that was just to work with those people in that cast,
Barbara [Streisand] and the rest. It was like a once in a lifetime thing. On
this one, on NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM, which you might be referring to, that was just
that I thought they had a better script and they had a new idea and I really got
a lot out of that movie. I just enjoyed doing it and the connection that kids
have with it is just such a positive thing in my life. So I wanted to do it
again and have fun doing it.

Is it written by the same guys?

Stiller: Yeah. [Robert Ben] Garant and [Thomas]
Lennon. It’s sort of a couple of other guys worked on it which is pretty much
the same process that happened on the last one, in terms of all the writers who
worked on it. It’s a couple of other guys, but they’re very much responsible for
it because they created that world and they created the tone of that humor.

So you’re at the Smithsonian for this one?

Stiller: The Smithsonian, yeah, and it’s like a
whole other sort of group of new characters. It’s going to be a really cool cast
which I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about it yet.

Do you know how they’re going to bring the
other characters over?

Stiller: Basically they closed down the museum of
Natural History, the exhibits there because they’re upgrading and so they put
the old exhibits into storage and they send them to the Federal Archives in
Washington. It’s some sort of magical logic for that movie that needs to happen.

Is HARDY MEN something on the horizon?

Stiller: It’s on the horizon, but not a reality
yet.