Tropic Thunder opens with a batch of fake trailers, each featuring one of the stars of the upcoming war movie in one of their more memorable performances. Black's trailer for his Fatties film definitely brings to mind Murphy's work, but Black doesn't believe Murphy will be offended. "…The whole movie is about making fun of movies and since we have offended every type of movie genre I think he’ll say, 'Oh, all right, I made the cut of things…' He's not the only one who does multiple character comedies," said Black. "Yeah, I love Eddie Murphy. I think he’s great. I thought that trailer was pretty funny. I felt like someone might offer me that movie to really make it – Fatties Fart 2. Just skip the first one."
Black says Ben Stiller, who co-wrote, directed, produced and stars in Tropic Thunder, allowed the actors some leeway with the script. In fact, one of Black's best lines (it has to do with gravy but I won't give it away) is something he made up himself. "I stuck to the script for the most part but, yeah, maybe I should have made up more lines since the gravy one was the big winner. Maybe I should have made up all my lines. The script was super funny and I didn’t go off the rails too often. Yeah, when I was tied up to the tree, yeah I had to go…you know what that was? That was an homage to the urban legend about Sylvester Stallone going to his trailer with like some lady and they were having sex in his trailer and as the legend goes, he still wore his microphone and the sound design guy turned up the volume and everyone outside could hear. And he was like, 'All right stroke the shaft, cradle the balls. Say my name,'" laughed Black. "That’s been going around for decades. The gerbil story… So I was like okay that was my chance to [duff my cap] to Sylvester Stallone."
"We always said what was on the page," said Black. "But then he was open to letting us let our freak flag fly, go off the rails on the crazy train."
Asked about his experience under Ben Stiller the director, Black responded, "The great thing about Ben as a director is he really knows what the actors are going through. A lot of his techniques come from what he likes to do as an actor, and we did a lot of scenes over and over without cutting and that helps to get a really good comedy flowing. Where most directors you’ll do the shot, 'Cut,' and then they’ll come in and give you a bunch of notes. 'Yeah, those notes are really obvious. Yeah, I’ll do that, I was going to do it anyway. Now you are making me mad. And now so much time has gone by, five minutes, and now we are set up to do it again and now here we go and I’ve lost the mojo and the flow…' With Ben, he understands that and he’ll just keep it flowing and he’ll say, 'Take it from the top,' and then yell out one little note for you to think of when you go out to do it again. There is a lot of stuff that we got that was really funny that we wouldn’t have had if he hadn’t finessed it in that way."
One of the more outrageous aspects of Tropic Thunder is Robert Downey Jr playing the role of an Oscar-winning Australian actor who has a medical procedure done to darken his skin so that he can play an African-American soldier in the film. Black was definitely impressed by Downey's multi-leveled performance. "An incredible performance I’d say because he had the hardest part, being a guy disguised as a guy disguised as another guy. He always had like three layers of characters going, but it is kind of a tour de force. Whenever you have to play an incredible actor, when your role is a genius actor, how do you play that? It is not easy. I think he will get mad props for this movie," said Black.
Black should also get mad props for climbing on the back of a water buffalo no one knew was pregnant. "I was terrified of getting on the water buffalo naked. I didn’t want to do it and then Ben convinced me it would be really good for the film, so I did it," revealed Black. "[I said to Ben], 'It would be really funny if I just walked around like I was really jonesing and coming down off my heroin, that would be just as funny as being strapped to the Yak, wouldn’t it?' He’s like, 'No, man, really, it is just so visually funny and great to see you coming down the mountain on the Yak.'"
"I did a lot of buffalo whispering, talking to her lovingly and complimenting her on her beauty and telling her we were going to be really good friends and massaging her hide. I got on her and she was still like [makes a snorting noise while shaking his head from side to side]. I had this feeling that she hated me and wanted to kill me and it turned out that she was pregnant and nobody knew. She had a baby and then everything was good with us after that. They named the baby Jack because we had that special relationship, so they figured that I was the father."
