Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here with a story that might be titled "How Capone accidentally ended up at ShoWest 2008." Okay it wasn't entirely by accident, but I did not come to Las Vegas to go to ShoWest; that I can promise you. I'd planned on coming to Vegas mid-way through SXSW for a little R&R with some buddies, gambling, drinking, eating, donkey show, whatever we could find. I knew that ShoWest was happening, but since most of the festivities and meetings were happening at the Paris hotel, I thought it would be an easy enough thing to avoid. (Plus, I hadn't been invited to it, so…) But within hours of landing in Sin City, Paramount tracked me down and invited me to a couple of receptions they were throwing to promote upcoming releases. The first was in honor of Mike Myers' THE LOVE GURU, but I couldn't make that event. The second however was far more interesting to me: TROPIC THUNDER, the new comedy starring Ben Stiller (who also directed), Jack Black, and one Mr. Robert Downey Jr. playing a white actor playing a black man in a war movie.
When I arrived at the party, I immediately recognized a handful of Chicago-based marketing reps, and I thanked my lucky stars that there would be at least a few people there that I knew. But soon I hooked up with the Paramount person who'd actually invited me, who I'd only met briefly once before. Pretty soon, they game us the first-ever looked at the trailer for TROPIC THUNDER, a film that has done a remarkably great job staying off my radar until I saw "the photo." By now, you've probably all seen the photo of Downey in his "black makeup." He's unrecognizable, and when I first saw the image, I thought for sure there was no way people wouldn't be unset by his portrayal. But wait until you hear him talk and see him move. His character is so sincere and so over-the-top method, there's no other way he could have been. And make no mistake, the character isn't actually supposed to be wearing makeup. Oh no. He got a plastic surgery to change his features, and somehow pigmented his skin permanently to appear black.
The trailer, which is set to drop on Monday, begins like an honest-to-god war movie. And with just the right soundtrack music, it reminded me of certain scenes in APOCOLYPSE NOW. But soon it becomes clear that these are actors getting dropped somewhere in the jungles of Southeast Asia to get military training before shooting a movie. The film's director (played by Steve Coogan) is also on hand pushing the men to live the life of the grunt in the shit. The trailer tells us that Ben Stiller plays an action star, Black plays a comedian, and Downey is the intense Australian method actor willing to do anything to get into character. I also spotted Nick Nolte looking as grungy as I've ever seen him. Somehow this troop of actors is left alone in the jungle and forced to actually turn into the killing machines that they are portraying. The trailer would have been funny in its own right, but the clips with Downey so completely getting into character is astonishing. There's one clip near the end where Stiller uses the phrase "you people" to refer to the group of actors, to which Downey naturally responds "What do you mean by 'you people'?", to which the actual black guy in the cast says to Downey, "What do YOU mean by 'you people'?" Even if the rest of the movie is junk, Downey will blow you away, but from what I saw in the trailer and the two clips they showed us shortly thereafter, TROPIC THUNDER is a fairly hardcore R-rated comedy that does nothing short of go for broke. I believe it's due in theaters in August.
If I'm remembering the evening clearly, Stiller and Downey come out after the trailer played to introduce two extended clips from the film. If these scenes somehow made it onto the internet, you'd get a much better idea of just how out there this film is willing to go in terms of language, violence, and just overall inappropriateness. Stiller and Downey bantered a bit, but the friendly back and forth quickly devolved into an insult-fest that would have seemed more appropriate at a roast. When the subject of Downey beginning the summer with IRON MAN and ending it with TROPIC THUNDER came up, this was the exchange:
Stiller: You know what my son said to me? He said "Daddy, you're my superhero."
Downey: You know what he said to me? "Robert, you're a real superhero, not like my daddy, who's a fake superhero."
Stiller: Obviously you didn't see a little movie I did called MYSTERY MEN.
Downey: MYSTERY MEN? Is that a real movie? I must have missed that one. [I actually think he was serious on this point.]
Stiller: You must have been in jail when it came out. Maybe they didn't show that in Gen Pop.
Downey: You know what my son said to me. He said that he's having recurring nightmares that involve him being forced to watch HEARTBREAK KID again.
Stiller: You know, that's not funny. And it really makes things awkward for them [the audience] and for me.
They must have free-form riffing for about 15 minutes before introducing the two clips, the first of which I'm not going to say too much about because it involves the death of a major character and the actors' reaction to the death. I will say that the death scene made me laugh harder than anything I saw that night, so much so that I literally laughed hard enough that I missed about the next 30 seconds of the clip. The cast thinks the death has been faked by the special effects team, and their reaction (or at least Stiller's reaction) is so fucking wrong that you'll either be howling or puking or both.
The second clip was deeper into the film and centered around Jack Black's character fighting a his heroin addicting. He gets another actor to tie him to a tree during as he goes through withdrawal, making him promise that no matter what he says, no one should release him. It doesn't take long for him to start up with promises that the detox is over and they should set him free. And by the end, Black is promising "I will literally suck your dick if you let me go" while the men are talking around a campfire. Clearly, this will be Black's Oscar clip.
After the clips, I kind of assumed my work was done, but I was immediately taken over to Stiller, and we talked briefly about how aside from one test screening in February the production has tried to keep a low profile until now. He also talked bout walking the fine line with Downey's "black" character and how he was a bit nervous going into the film, but once he saw how Downey was going to play it, he knew it would work. It occurred to me that I might have been the only member of media at this event. I may be wrong about that, but I'm pretty sure the party was just for ShoWest attendees and that I was an official party crasher. Next up, I was brought to his majesty Robert Downey Jr. When he heard I was from AICN, that sparked us talking about his interviews with Quint regarding IRON MAN and his fondness for the site and our loyal coverage of the project. I quizzed him a bit more about his TROPIC THUNDER character just to clarify that in fact, the black face was not the result of make up but of some sort of pigment augmentation. "Oh yes, it will require another procedure if he decides to be white again," Downey assured me. We also talked a bit about his next project, THE SOLOIST, directed by Joe Wright (ATONEMENT), the story of a schizophrenic homeless man in Los Angeles (Jamie Foxx) who is also an accomplished musician. Downey told me about shooting on L.A.'s Skid Row and how much that changed him. He believes the film will be released before the end of the year, which makes me think there will be a major Oscar push behind it. Considering the swarm of people around him waiting just to say hi, I was pleasantly surprised that he took about 10 minutes to talk to me.
Anyway, that's my whirlwind TROPIC THUNDER adventure. I don't have any other plans to cover ShoWest events (not that I had plans to cover this one), so chew on that for a while, and expect to hear a lot more on this film as the summer approaches. I can't make a call about the finished product at this point (primarily because it's not finished, as Stiller was quick to point out), but the clips I saw were a scream, and I was assured that what I saw wasn't even the funniest stuff. I still have a few more SXSW films to talk about with you guys, but that won't happen until I get back from Vegas. We'll see you next week.
Capone
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