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If there’s an upcoming film that can, or should, dethrone The Dark Knight, I think it’s Tropic Thunder, a hilarious send-up of war movies, and more accurately, Hollywood and its excesses.  At a recent round table get together, I had the chance to hear Ben Stiller talk about the movie and the challenges in making it.

When asked about how his personal experiences influenced the film, he offered up that it was “A lot, probably” and said that the script really came about from the experiences that he and the co-writers (Justin Therox and Etan Cohen) have come across themselves.  He described the movie as personal and was happy to point out the flaws in their images and the “ridiculousness” of it all.

In describing what movie was about, the director and star said:

It’s about … being in movies and being an actor and sort of, how people can take themselves too seriously and how people take movies very seriously and and how its all like, how that culture sort of takes over sometimes in our lives.  And you know, these actors lose their way a little bit.

The congenial actor also described with a laugh how on a “lark” they sent the script to John Toll, the cinematographer behind Braveheart, The Last Samurai, and The Thin Red Line, expecting to be shot down.  Stiller, an ecstatic fan of big, epic battle movies, was overjoyed when Toll agreed to do the film, which fit in with the director’s plan of treating Tropic Thunder as if it were an actual war movie, rather than a Hollywood send-up which just happened to take place in a jungle.

I wanted it to have the feel of one of those movies, and have the feel of a real movie, even though it was satirizing a lot of these things.

Stiller also gave credit to the studio for getting the idea behind the movie and providing them with a big enough budget to actually lampoon a big budget war film.  It seemed that for once, a studio made the right decision in regards to money in letting an actor/director take risks and really being allowed to bring his vision to the screen appropriately.

I guess I should have checked on the budget, but they said it was expensive.

Thankfully, the director said, none of the actors came to the set with any diva-like intentions, a behavioral phenomenon that would have assuredly sunk the project.  Despite being filmed in Hawaii, the shoot was no picnic, with constant rain storms and visits from wild boar and wild roosters, which made the filming difficult at times.

We weren’t shooting outside the Sheraton, these were like sets you had to sort of like had to drive an hour over bumpy roads to get to.

The idea for Tropic Thunder began as an idea for a short film, or a sketch, about actors who came back from filming a project in Vietnam and were suffering the ill-effects of it, a short that would have been entitled Post Platoon Syndrome. What stopped that project?

And that didn’t end up being funny, because there’s nothing funny about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  So I wisely didn’t do that movie, that short.

The real thrust of what was said boiled down to the experiences of the cast and various members of the crew, who have all been on big budget films and have seen and participated in the excessive and often ridiculous nature of Hollywood, from trailer demands to wasteful spending of money.  Everyone involved seemed eager to toss their own experience into the fire and watch it burst into flame on the screen and to take the spear of satire and thoroughly skewer themselves and the entire institution that supports them.  And yes, they did realize there was perhaps some ridiculousness in having such support to make such a movie and to poke fun at actors and big spenders when they themselves have been guilty.  But really, the film is just a way to step back and take a look at the craziness that surrounds the movie world and have a laugh.  In my opinion, they’ve done a great job and if you take the time away from seeing The Dark Knight on IMAX for the third time, you’ll have a lot to laugh at with Stiller and company.

Stiller also talked at length about the DVD release of Tropic Thunder, which you can read about here.

Tropic Thunder hits theaters on August 13th.