Ben Stiller\'s latest comedy flick

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Ben Stiller is the Stanley Kubrick of comedy - at least accordingto Jack Black.
A comparison to the intense director of The Shining, Dr Strangeloveand Eyes Wide Shut might seem unlikely.
Stiller, after all, is the man who is best remembered for creatingthe inimitable Derek Zoolander and for giving Cameron Diaz the, um,wrong kind of hair gel in There's Something About Mary. But hislatest film, Tropic Thunder, might be the closest thing Stiller hasever gotten to a magnum opus.
Don't get me wrong. It's still a sicko comedy. Written, directedand starring Stiller, alongside Black and a hilariously made-upRobert Downey Jr, it's an epic send-up of Hollywood's most"serious" genre - the Vietnam War movie. So howKubrick-like is Stiller about the movie? Well, for one thing, he'sbeen working on it for 20 years.
"I had a really small part in [1987's] Empire Of The Sun, andaround that time a lot of people I knew were doing war movies likePlatoon and Hamburger Hill, and going off to fake boot camps. A lotof actors were talking about going to the life-changing
Fake boot camp
"It just seemed to me there was something funny in that. Theidea of actors taking themselves too seriously, not having a realexperience."
Stiller was also one of those actors trying to join the ranks ofVietnam-war flicks, trying out, unsuccessfully, for Oliver Stone'sPlatoon.
"I had a meeting, a look-see. [Stone] looked at me and said,‘oh, you're cute'. Which I don't get. And that was it. I was20, so I probably looked cuter."
Taking a chance
The film started to take shape 10 years ago, when Stiller, armedwith 30 pages of material, met up with friend and actor JustinTheroux, and the two started working on the project. "Aboutthree and a half years ago we did a read through of it, and thatwas good, but it told us a lot." Stiller eventually gave thefinished script to his Empire of the Sun director Steven Spielberg.
"Spielberg decided to take a chance on it because he reallythought it was a little bit different."
Different it is. Although there's a long comic history of war moviespoofs - remember Charlie Sheen sending up his Platoon performancein Hot Shots? - this time, Stiller's looking at it through theactor's lens.
A ridiculous idea
Stiller, Black and Downey Jr head up a cast of self-absorbed actorswho set out to make the most expensive war film. After ballooningcosts force the studio to cancel the movie, the frustrated director(played by British deadpanner Steve Coogan) refuses to stopshooting, leading his cast into the jungles of Southeast Asia,where they encounter real bad guys.
Stiller's choice of leads - apart from himself of course - wascarefully considered.
"Jack [Black] was always the first choice for Portnoy justbecause Jack is one of the funniest guys there is. To me it wasjust a great idea. And then to get somebody to play Kirk Lazarus[Downey Jr's Aussie character], I, really felt it was important tohave somebody who actually was respected as an actor, andconsidered one of the great actors of their generation, which Ithink Robert is. And he's really funny too."
Of all the characters in the film with a capacity to deeply offend(and there are several) perhaps most of the talk has been aboutDowney, Jr's character. He plays an actor who makes theknuckle-headed decision to play his character black.
"We always had to be really clear about what our point of viewwith this character was," says Stiller. "It's an actorwho's making this wrong-headed decision to go too far and try tofind this great challenge, so he's going to play anAfrican-American guy, which is just like a ridiculous idea, Ithink, for a white actor. We just had to make sure that we werereally clear about what we were satirising and where the humour wascoming from. That's all we could do."
Downey Jr adds: "But the whole premise of the movie is Stilleras a disaffected action star, and Jack as the druggie adult comedyguy. It just seemed like there'd be something missing if somebodywasn't going so method that it was really inappropriate andborderline psychotic."
He sees the possibility of an outraged reaction, but doesn't reallythink it will happen. "Well, A, I know that morally we didn'tdo anything overtly offensive. And B, my friends, you know, black,white, just feel that the movie is about something [else] so thatby the time it's over it's actually the least of yourconcerns."
Disability groups boycott spoof

Critics are calling Ben Stiller's new movie a hilarious spoof ofHollywood's egotism, but a coalition of disability groups is notamused.
The coalition has objected to the repeated use of the word"retard" to refer to the character Simple Jack, played byStiller in Tropic Thunder.
Comprising 22 groups including the Special Olympics and theNational Down Syndrome Congress, the coalition launched anationwide boycott of the film at Monday's premiere in Los Angeles.
Protesters and disability groups heckled stars at the premiere andheld up signs that read, "Ban the movie, ban the word."
But the film's producers refused demands to cut the repeated use ofthe "R-word".
"The film satirises Hollywood and its excesses, and makes itspoint by featuring inappropriate and over-the top characters inridiculous situations," said Chip Sullivan, a spokesman forDreamWorks, a unit of Paramount that released the film.
Dangerous moves
Ben Stiller didn't shy away from performing some of his own stuntsin Tropic Thunder, which was filmed in Hawaii.
"There's this scene where my character's on top of a mountain,trekking alone by himself. The only way we could get there was byhovering a chopper and jumping out, me and the stunt guy.
"And then we had to get back on the chopper, but it couldn'tland because it was too small an area. So we just had, we had toclimb back in while the chopper hovered a few feet off theground."
"A thousand-foot sheer drop on each side," adds RobertDowney Jr "The stunt guy was even going, it's not even justthat you shouldn't have been here, Ben. I shouldn't be here rightnow."
Don't miss it!
Tropic Thunder opens on Thursday around the UAE.