Ep 325: “Tropic Thunder”

We scorch Ben Stiller’s “Tropic Thunder” and discuss:

• Cinematography, selling satire;
• Story & Writing, satire vs tropes;
• and other such stuff and things and stuff.

“I think that the power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you’ve done.“ – Robert Downey Jr.

Notes & References:
*The book is “Hearts of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad; the documentary is “Into the Heart of Darkness”
*”Birth of a Nation” is the D.W. Griffith movie
*Mel Gibson lol, Kirk is a baseball player. (I was on fire today!)
UT Dept. of English “Reading Race” (YouTube)
Mel Brooks on making Blazing Saddles (ew.com) – “Isn’t it strange? It could hardly be made then. Certainly not 10 years before then. And now it’s suddenly, it’s 40 years later, it cannot be made today. That’s weird.”
Tropic Thunder Budget: $92M
Ridley Scott “All the Money in the World” reshoots (vulture.com) – 9 day reshoot; fascinating interview with Ridley discussing his process and sneaking in additional rewrites during the reshoots
More clarification on replacing Space with Plummer via HollywoodReporter.com – “We were pressured with time, and the two gave very different performances, so it wasn’t just a question of replacing [Spacey with Plummer]…The rhythm was very different, his emphasis on the dialogue was very different, and that impacted the other performances in the scene. So we decided to replace complete scenes.”

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This Week’s Recommendations:

“Blazing Saddles” (IMDB) / “The Royal Tenenbaums” (IMDB)

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