"Tropic Thunder" Plays the "Retard" Card

Phil Nugent — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Once upon a time, there was a big-budget movie satire called Tropic Thunder, which was co-written by its director and star, Ben Stiller, along with actor Justin Theroux and Etan Coen (not to be confused with Ethan Coen, but the Mike Judge associate who worked on Idiocracy and th Beavis and Butt-head movie). As those with really long memories may recall, the "controversy" regarding this movie was going to be about a character played by Robert Downey, Jr., an obsessively committed Method actor who is cast in a role that had originally been written as an African-American and who insists on playing it in blackface. (Some have speculated that the actor's Aussie background is meant as a slap at Russell Crowe. In a recent New York Times Q & A with the movie's director-star-co-writer Ben Stiller and one of his co-writers, Justin Theroux, Stiller insists, "He was always an Irishman, and then when Downey came on, he decided to play him Australian because he said he could improvise better in Australian. I don’t know where that came from." We're guessing that it came, at least in part, from this..) But now, in an unexpected twist, the movie is instead being targeted by advocacy groups for those with mental disabilities, several of which are threatening an organized boycott.

The objections stem from a joke involving the Stiller character's attempt to win some respect as an actor by starring in a movie called Simple Jack, which was spotlighted in a website meant to publicize Tropic Thunder; it boasted the fake tag line, "Once there was a retard." The site, which was pulled last week after criticism started coming in, may have cost the joke a little something in the way of context. But the idea is clearly to mock the trend among Hollywood actors, ranging from Sean Penn (I Am Sam) to the likes of Rosie O'Donnell, to seize upon such roles as the actors' equivalent of sitting on the sidewalk with a begging bowl and a hand-lettered cardboard sign reading, "Will Talk Goofy for Awards." (In Tropic Thunder itself, the punch line is that Stiller's character has the shamelessness to take on such a role but not the commitment necessary to carry it off; the demented genius actor played by Downey scolds him for "never going the full retard.") Oddly enough, people seem to be having an easier time of it grasping the logic behind Downey's role, and when Paramount and DreamWorks arranged a screening for advocacy groups, it amounted to throwing gasoline on the fire. Andrew J. Imparato, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, walked out of the theater proclaiming, “It was even worse than the hateful stuff they used in promoting it.” Other groups planning to send picketers to protest outside theaters include the Special Olympics and the National Down Syndrome Congress. This has the makings of the biggest unnecessary fake outrages of its kind since stutterers' groups came down on A Fish Called Wanda.

The Screengrab : etan coen

"Tropic Thunder" Plays the "Retard" Card