I think honestly they’d make all of them. Of the fake movies in Tropic Thunder, do you think a Hollywood studio would actually make any of them? We were having a meeting about shooting the thing and were like, “Why don’t we get John Toll, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.” And then we did get John Toll!
Oh, totally, it was like, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get Nolte for this?” And same thing with the cinematographer actually, John Toll, who did fuckin’ Thin Red Line. Nick Nolte is really the perfect guy for his role - did you always have him in mind for it? In war movies, especially lesser war movies, there’s these horrible stereotypes of, like, the fat guy who’s too slow and gets everyone killed, and the southern guy named Dixie, and the 19-year-old black kid from Detroit, and they all have terrible names like Fats or Motown, or the Jewish kid’s named … Brooklyn! There’s this perfect cross section of our fightin’ boys! So that was a first step - who would be the funniest group to exploit? And then we also felt like, well, what’s the worst cast we could possibly come up with to fill those roles? We knew any craven studio head would want an Oscar winner, an action star with major box-office clout, the comedy gross-out guy, the rapper. Where did the idea for Downey’s character come from?īelieve it or not, all the characters came first from watching war movies. It’s not going to change the world if you break character at the craft-service table.” Television actors are always striving to be a little more on point, so there would be times when I’d be doing, like, your average show, and there’d be people in character at lunch, and you’d be like, “Knock it off! Cut the comedy! It’s really just a cop show. Yeah, and weirdly, without naming names, the most have been in television, which is the most ironic thing ever. Have you met lots of crazy Method actors? We wanted to do a send-up of those Method actors who become anorexic and dysmorphic when they get parts, you know, live the role, pluck bald spots out of their hair. There’s nothing funny about African-American jokes, but there’s something very funny about actors playing African-Americans when they’re white. So obviously Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), as sort of the most risqué character, was the one we were most careful with. We’re very careful when we tee up our subject, which was Hollywood and actors here. Like the kind of humor that just makes people feel shitty. Neither he nor I are fans of cruel humor. Well … I was going to say, between the funny and the totally ridiculous.
How did you and Ben Stiller decide when to draw the line between funny and… The other day, Theroux spoke to Vulture about war movies, the Simple Jack controversy, and why Iron Man 2 won’t be anything like The Dark Knight. Lately, though, he’s been even more accomplished behind the scenes, directing last year’s Dedication starring Billy Crudup, being asked to write the upcoming sequel to Iron Man (!), and collaborating on the script for this week’s Tropic Thunder with Ben Stiller and Etan Cohen. Over the past decade, actor Justin Theroux has long been a quiet player on the indie film scene, adding his slightly whiny charm to movies like The Baxter, Broken English, and Mulholland Drive.
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