A Hollywood Story – 8

Our goal in looking at films about Hollywood is for you to come up with your own Hollywood film. There are so many ways to go at it, and we’ve been examining a few. The category of films about Hollywood that we started exploring last week is that unique film that is about someone making a movie. We looked at S.O.B [1981] last week and this week we’re going to turn our attention to Tropic Thunder [2008] written by Justin Theroux, Ben Stiller and Etan Cohen.

One thing to realize, most of the world is not waiting for the next movie about Hollywood or the movie business! Amazing to realize if your personal interest is the movie business, but the reason most films are about monsters or super heroes or regular people is that they’re stories that people want to know more about. And, for the most part, people aren’t that interested in Hollywood talking about itself, whether it’s satire or comedy or melodrama. So often, even though clever, movies in this category aren’t big hits.

But Tropic Thunder was both an industry and public hit. People in the business loved all the inside jokes and people who weren’t in the business liked the non-industry jokes. There were laughs enough for all.

The film tells the story of a bunch of prima donna actors who are on location in Vietnam to film a big budget action pic. The characters are all in crisis in their careers—trying desperately to make comebacks or to just hold on to the small piece of the Hollywood celebrity pie that they can claim. But things go crazy on the shoot, the actors are all out of control, and the studio boss back in L.A. is about ready to pull the plug on this money-sucking disaster. Then someone has the bright idea to drop these annoying actors into a real jungle and use the studio explosives to inspire real fear in them.

And that’s the beginning of hilarity.

Why does this film work? Because it takes stereotypes and forces them to revert to their true selves when faced with disaster. And, for the audience outside the city limits of Los Angeles, they get to laugh at the ridiculousness of these actors. After all, isn’t it more fun to believe that all these stars are idiotic megalomaniacs whose lives are really not that great? Isn’t it better to believe that my life out in Podunk Wherever is better than these stupid egocentric actors?

In that way, this movie is a release for the public’s mistrust and downright hatred of Hollywood… because laughing at Hollywood is a great way to feel you’re above it! And boy oh boy, does Tropic Thunder provide laughs.

Copyright © Diane Lake

28Apr19

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