Tropic Thunder: Etan Cohen Journeys into Madness

Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 11, 2008

Etan Cohen is a funny, funny man. He worked on the screenplay for Idiocracy, which makes him alright in my book. There’s also got to be something going on upstairs for Ben Stiller to bring him into the circle to work on Tropic Thunder. The co-writer seemed to have a lot of fun setting his sights on Hollywood.

In terms of the genesis of the project, Cohen chalks it all up to the long gestating idea of Ben Stiller. In 2002 or so, Stiller approached Cohen and dropped the notes onto his lap and asked for him to help craft it into a movie and a movie-within-a-movie.

The truth is, we wanted to take it kind of over the top to give it something you hadn’t seen before in a movie.

What they came up with to take this film over the top is what everyone will be talking about by this weekend, guaranteed – Robert Downey Jr. Cohen liked the idea because it was out there, but plausible enough that people would believe an actor would go this fall for a role. Hell, it’s already been done before, though for less laughs, in the C. Thomas Howell film Soul Man. When about a potential backlash against the character, Cohen was aware of the potential and somewhat shocked by the reality of it at the time, but his fears were allayed as audiences really seemed to get what the movie was trying to say with the character.

Talking about the character of Kirk Lazarus, an Australian actor who goes to extreme, the name Russell Crowe continually pops up in conversation. Cohen dismissed the idea that Lazarus was based solely on Crowe and instead said there were many actors who went into creating that personality, a mish-mosh that he liked to call “The greatest hits of Hollywood douchebaggery.”

It’s a big challenge … How do you make anyone care about these people emotionally? It’s a little bit of an uphill climb not getting people to just dismiss them as cartoon characters. It was about making them relatable.

It seemed a shame that there was a lot of the film left out due to length and changes in the script, and oddly enough, believability. In reference to the stories he’d been told in looking for fodder for the film, Etan said “We’d get fed stories all the time, but the funny thing is a lot of times when you hear the real stories it’s like, well we can’t put that in the movie because no one would believe a human being would actually do that.” Of the things that made it into the movie, what did Cohen like best?

I’m very proud of the Robert Downey Jr. transformation. That’s just something that I, you know, I’m not saying that I love it more than my children… It is one of those moments where you feel like you created something that, um, I don’t think I’ve seen this- maybe there’s a good reason I’ve never seen this before.

The co-writer went on to talk about how much of a boom it is to have this script approached in a very serious manner. It was filmed as though it were going to be a legitimate Oscar contender, with a serious director of photography and a lot of real effort put into the making of the film, despite its comedic nature.

One thing’s for certain — Cohen has put a lot of different laughs into this film and his work here gives us reason to look forward to his next project, the Will Ferrell, Sacha Baron Cohen adaptation of Sherlock Holmes.

Tropic Thunder thunders into theaters on August 13th.

Read more articles by Robert Fure