Tropic Thunder Tests Crudity’s Limits
Hollywood Newsroom is now Buzz Newsroom! Visit and bookmark our new site. Buzz is bigger and better, including sports, world news, gadgets and the entertainment news that you're used to. Same staff, just more stuff! Why Fark, Drudge and Huffington when you can Buzz!?Ben Stiller slurps gore from a human head. Robert Downey Jr. wears blackface throughout. Both milk an extended gag about Hollywood’s weakness for what they impolitely call retards.
And the film was not cheap.
“Tropic Thunder,” an R-rated movie-industry spoof set to open on Aug. 13, is shaping up as an unusual parting gift to Paramount Pictures from Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Stacey Snider. The three are expected to leave Paramount shortly over dissatisfaction with its handling of their DreamWorks unit, which the studio bought in 2005.
The movie clearly has hit potential. Directed by Mr. Stiller, it has an ensemble cast also including Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, Steve Coogan and Nick Nolte, not to mention Tom Cruise, in a raucous cameo as a vulgar studio chief.
But Paramount executives also face the delicate task of selling what may be the raunchiest comedy yet in a summer that has seen more than its share. (Next is the much cheaper “Pineapple Express,” a stoner adventure Sony Pictures Entertainment is releasing on Wednesday, with Seth Rogen and James Franco in the lead roles.)
- from NYTimes