Stiller Attacks Boot Camp Braggers In War Comedy

BEN STILLER’s new war comedy TROPIC THUNDER is the actor/writer’s subtle attack
on Hollywood stars who make a big deal of pre-film boot camps.

The funnyman directs and stars in the new film – opposite Jack Black and
Robert Downey Jr. – as the leader of a troupe of actors who mistake a real
warzone for a movie set.

And he reveals the idea for the project came to him after he read
super-serious actors’ experiences in soldier training.

The actor tells Playboy magazine, “Around 1985 all these Vietnam war movies
were being made… I remember the guys who got those parts were always doing
interviews about going off to boot camp for two weeks, (saying) how it was the
toughest experience of their lives.

“They had to camp out, shoot guns, eat C rations, all of that.

“There was something so ironic and funny about actors talking about how hard
it was to go off for two weeks for a movie about a war when it obviously had
nothing to do with the real experience of war.

“It might have been my own bitterness about not getting parts in these
movies, but I did think there was the seed of something in the irony of actors
taking themselves too seriously. Maybe this movie is my revenge.”

(KL/PL/CL)