Could You Make Tropic Thunder Today? w/Robert Downey Jr. | Joe Rogan

Do you think that you could do Tropic Thunder today? Would that be possible? Well, you could do it. And again, like Eddie, you know, I look back to me, that movie to me was a circle back to my dad's movie called Putney Swope, which I highly recommend anyone who hasn't seen to see, about a black guy who takes over an ad agency in the 60s because everyone votes for him when the head of the company dies because they think no one else will. And it's about what happens when someone who is free-spirited takes over an essentially corrupt endeavor. And then he realizes and confronts his own corruption. But I remember I was probably two or three when that was being shot and when it came out and it was so a part of my upbringing. And I just remembered some of the folks that were around my dad at that time. And so when Ben called and said, hey, I'm doing this thing and, you know, I think maybe Sean Penn had passed on or something. Possibly wisely. And I thought, yeah, I'll do that and I'll do that after Iron Man. And then I started thinking, this is a terrible idea. Wait a minute. And I thought, well, hold on, dude, get real here. Where is your heart? And my heart is A, I get to. I get to be black for a summer in my mind. So there's something in it for me. The other thing is I get to hold up to nature the insane self-involved hypocrisy of artists and what they think they're allowed to do on occasion. Just my opinion. And also Ben, who is a masterful artist and director, is probably the closest thing to a Charlie Chaplin that I've experienced in my lifetime. He writes, he directs, he acts. If you had seen him when he was directing this movie, you would have been like, I'm watching David Lean, I'm watching Chaplin, I'm watching Coppola. He knew exactly what the vision for this was. He executed it. It was impossible to not have it be an offensive nightmare of a movie. And 90% of my black friends are like, dude, that was great. What about the other 10%? You know, I can't disagree with them, but I know where my heart was. And I think that it's never an excuse to do something that is out of place and not of its time. But to me, it was just putting a, it was a blasting cap on. And by the way, I think White Chicks came out pretty soon after that. I was like, I love that. I was like, that was great. Well, it might be the last time we see that. Unless things change, it seems like no one can really, I don't think you could do blackface anymore. I mean, we almost lost the Prime Minister of Canada because he did brownface. He pretended to be Saudi Arabian, right? He did Arabian Nights in high school or something like that? It's an interesting and necessary meditation on where is the pendulum, why is the pendulum right? Yeah. Where is the pendulum maybe cutting a little into what could be perceived as heart in the right place, openness of its time. But again, I mean, you know, there's a morality clause here on this planet. And it's a big price to pay. And I think having a moral psychology is job one. So sometimes you just got to go, yeah, you know, I effed up. Again, not in my defense, but Tropic Thunder was about how wrong that is. Yes. So I take exception. No, it's, I think you could do it today. I think you could. I think it could be done today. There would be so much outrage, but there would also be people cheering. And if you, if we got, we boiled down all the bullshit and got to the actual result of what the film did, it's fucking hilarious to this day. I watched it again about a year and a half ago. It's a great movie. It's a great, fun movie. I mean, it's ridiculous, over the top, hilarious. And it worked. And your portrayal, I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't egregious. It wasn't, it was necessary. It made sense. All of it fit. It all, there's square pegs and square holes. I was just thinking square pegs. I don't know why I was thinking, oh, I was thinking about Sarah Jessica Parker on the ride over here. Isn't that crazy? I think I drove by, is there that Warner Park near here? Yeah, yeah. I think she went to school over there when she was doing her show. Anyway, interesting. Yeah, it worked. And, but it was, it might be the last time we'll ever see a studio take a chance on a guy wearing a black face. And the prolific use of the word retard. Those are two things. And by the way, that's a, Ben, the funny thing too was all the heat got deflected to Ben and simple Jack. Yeah. That's what people were pissed off about. And I go, whew, great. But you never know when it's going to be your time in the barrel, you know, sometimes, sometimes life just says, you know what? And I've been on both sides of that coin. Sometimes life just says, you're a symbol now. Did you have anybody that was telling you not to do it? Were there a bunch of agents or anyone? My mother was horrified. Really? Bobby, I am telling you, I have a bad feeling. I was like, yeah, me too, ma. But anyway, how are we? First day on set, when they're putting the makeup on you. How hard are you sweating? There's been a couple of times. I was all the night before and we were on Kauai and I was like, well, here we go. And I was just running. I think I had six lines that day, but I knew that there was going to be choppers. There was going to be a squib fire. There was going to be choreography. There was going to be, you know, it was going to be cacophonous. And the only thing that mattered to me, again, what's my action? My action as an actor in this movie is to know what I'm doing. Even if what I'm doing is insane. So I ran those six or eight lines I had a thousand times lying in bed over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. So the next day I was free to enjoy myself and not be struggling to wonder what it was I was supposed to be doing. And then that's what it is. It was just, you know, it was one little mosaic after the next. And by the end of it, I had some pride that A.I. had made it through, forget that it was, you know, blackface, it was special effects makeup day after day after day after day after day after day after day, except for the odd times when I would have my bleached hair and blue contacts in my eyes or, you know, other characters. And it was just a, it was a piece of work I was doing. And I cared about doing it as professionally and as honestly as I could. So when you memorize lines, that's an interesting thing that you said that you were free to do it. Like when you memorize lines, is there ever a part like when you're acting where you have to think like, OK, what am I supposed to say next? And how much does that get in the way? There's look, I have a very broad band of tolerances. I don't care if the people I'm with happen to not know what they're doing or don't know their lines or stepping on my lines or whatever or want to change their lines and my lines. And it's always a different thing. It's like reading the room. It's like, you know, if I was a fighter, you go into the octagon and they go, you ready, you ready? And you go, and then you just do it. You go in. But so I've had it where I would try to be off book before everyone else. I would get it down to an acronym. So if there was a thousand words I had to remember, I would just remember the first letter of each. And I would put it on a piece of poster board. And then I would stand away from it. Not as far as you and your archery set up over there, but far enough away to where I can see it, but kind of can't see it back when my vision was a little more clear. And I would just run it and run it and run it. When I did the first Sherlock, we were rewriting it so much. And I would have pages and pages of stuff. I was like, give me an earwig. And it helped me with my accent. And then I started getting into like, you know what's so great? I can finish work, go home, hang out with my kids or do whatever I want to do, go train. And in the morning, they can change it all they want. I don't have to trip if it all, if, you know, unless it's some monologue that you want to really be committed to, that's not going to shift. I just go like that. So you'd put one of those little earpieces in and they would feed you the lines. Yeah. And now I've kind of gone as far as you can go with that. And I'll probably go back to a new method or a new version of the old method. So it's basically improvisational. Like you in the moment, you decide with whatever preparation you're going to do for each role, how are you going to do it, whether you're going to go and memorize everything obsessively or whether you're just going to be a little bit more loose and free with it. Yes. It depends on the script, too. Like Tropic Thunder, Justin Thoreau wrote that script with Ben. It was a really good script. I mean, my missus, who next to my mother was, you know, probably more so is the opinion I was really waiting on. And she was reading in the kitchen, laughing her ass off. She goes, this is so wrong. This is so wrong. And she goes, and it's so true. If you do this right, you're you're doing something that's it's about a bunch of self-involved idiots, somehow or other becoming heroes. And she goes, I love that. If that's what it stays, then it's going to be good. And so like, for instance, the, you know, never go. Yeah. Full. No. By the way, I guarantee you, I'm getting out of here. My stock is not plummeting when I leave here. I'm not smoking dope. I'm not doing a musk. I'm going to do everything right. My stock went up the next day. All right. Drop six went up nine. With who? I don't know. I don't understand it. I love that you now have it. Now it's a piece of art. Yeah. With 6% in the smoke. God bless his heart. Yeah. It just changes.