At the Los Angeles press junket for Tropic Thunder, Stiller explained how he accomplished directing himself - and his huge cast - while shooting in the middle of a jungle. "You just take it one day at a time. For me, the movie was so long in the process of getting to the point where we were shooting I was so excited to be doing it. I had lived with it for so long that the fact that we were actually making it was so much fun, really. Over the course of eight or nine years [there were] a lot of drafts of the movie and real work on the drafts. [There were] times I’d never thought we’d make the movie and times I thought this was a good idea but how do we figure this thing out? The idea was always there. The first act was always there, and the idea for the second and third act was always there, but the actual articulation of it and trying to keep it going…"
"When we finally got to the point where we were filming I was just so happy that we were doing it. And then we had the cast that we had, and then John Toll shooting it, making it in Hawaii…for me every day there were definitely times where there was a lot of pressure, but I felt like I had such a good group of people around me. When you’re working with people at that level you feel very supported. I always felt supported by the other actors, and it was the kind of movie that I wanted to see. For me, it’s been a long time, I think, since I’ve made that kind of movie where I’m the core audience for myself."
Getting just the right actors for the roles was an important part of the process for Stiller. "For [Robert] Downey’s part it was a very short list of people who I thought could pull that off because you had to buy that he was one of the greatest actors of his generation," said Stiller. "I knew it couldn’t be a comedy guy. It had to be a guy who was one of the greatest actors of his generation. It had to be a guy you bought in that role as a serious actor and yet also the guy had to be funny, too, and be able to pull that off. I think there are very few guys who can do that."
"Jack was always the prototype in my mind so I sent him the movie. It was actually a very easy process with Jack and Robert. I sent the movie to Jack not knowing if he’d want to go for it because he’s sort of so in his wheelhouse, but I knew he’d be the best guy for the role. He responded to it and said, 'Yeah, I want to do this. I’m onboard,' which I was surprised by and I was really happy. Then Downey read it and he got it. I said, 'Oh, great, you want to do it?' He said, "No, I’ve got to think about it.' It was obviously a risky venture for him. He was just about to start Iron Man and I think he responded to it. He’s like, 'I’ll do it,' and I’m like, 'Well, can you do it because you’re doing Iron Man?' He's like, 'I’ve got two days in between and I can start right after.'"
Stiller continued, "I’d just worked with Danny McBride in Heartbreak Kid and I was really a fan of his. I’d just seen his movie Foot Fist Way. I’d been writing the movie with Justin [Theroux] for years, but these guys were all new. Jack was probably the only person I had in my head for a long time. Then it was like, 'I want Danny if he wants to do it because I think he’d be great for Cody.' Then we auditioned other people for the other roles."
Stiller revealed Downey's character was fun to write, although it went through a series of changes leading up to the actual start of production. "Originally he was written as an Irish man. He was Irish up until we started shooting. Then Downey came to me one day and said, 'Can I do him Australian?' We’d already been shooting, but he hadn’t done any of his out of character stuff and he said, 'Can I be Australian because I think I can improvise better in Australian. He’d done Natural Born Killers and he’d done an Australian accent, so that changed while we were shooting. Then also, for a long time he’d drop character in the middle of the movie - like when we were at that river and I split off and go off on my own. In that scene he originally used to drop character and was Irish for the rest of the movie. As we started to get closer to shooting, it just seemed funnier that he just stay in character. Then the idea developed of the guy being lost in his character… Sometimes there were ideas that were funny ideas that we had to figure out a way to get to. It’s funny for him to be in character so we had to justify that. Why would he stay in character?"
But Downey isn't the only actor who takes a huge chance by tackling a character in Tropic Thunder. Tom Cruise practically steals the film playing an obnoxious studio bigwig who only cares about the bottom line. "That’s him. He’s doing that. I give him full credit," said Stiller when asked about Cruise's willingness to just go for it. "He read the script and he was like, 'You have fun with the actors, it’d be great to see you do something with the studio guy.' I didn’t even think of him playing the studio guy, but it helped fill this hole in the story which was what is going on while the actors are in the jungle? Why is nobody going to save them?"
Tom Cruise's Costume, Dance Skills, and Ben Stiller's Character
