Rewatchables Reference

• Winner (Bill, CR): Kirk and Tugg talking about Simple Jack — 'you went full retard, man. Never go full retard.' Van: 'The observation in the scene is so deadly accurate that it is just a genius, brilliant piece of comedy writing — gorgeous writing.' Sean: 'Basically the Quentin Tarantino sleep-with-me Top Gun rant. The peak of Downey's performance — he's pretending to be an Australian guy pretending to be a Black guy commenting on the nature of Oscar campaigns.' Bill: 'Stiller's reaction selling the bit — there were times I felt like I became retired in town — kills me.' Van adds: 'They're in a measuring contest for the starring role, so he's saying you're a moron in the most elaborate way possible.'
• Bill's most rewatchable: the entire opening — the trailers (Booty Sweat, Scorcher VI: Global Meltdown, The Fatties: Fart 2, Satan's Alley). 'The movie hasn't even started yet.' The Access Hollywood segment with Maria Menounos (Joel's pick — 'I felt like I was sitting in an airport bar on any TV from 2003 to 2011'), the ET segment with Nuñez, the disappointing buddy comedy 'Chitlin and the Dude'.
• Bill's other A+ bits: First battle scene where Tugg gets shot 47 times and his hands turn into spiders, McBride's 'mother nature just pissed her pants suit', Cody's 'I think I can put it back' with the intestines, Damien's exploded-head-on-the-rifle ('it's corn syrup, guys, latex and corn syrup'), Jack Black tied to the tree ('cradle the balls, work the pipe, swallow the gravy'), Lance Bass cameo, the fade to Sympathy for the Devil, the climactic Best Picture nominee photos (Hanks in a wheelchair, Jon Voight blind, Tobey in Satan's Alley), the Oscars closing dance.
• Van's pick: Kirk teaching Alpa Chino how to cook — 'I'm a saucier in San Antone. Y'all in for a treat. Crawdads, collared up greens.' 'It's just hilarious to me — Robert is being a Black man and Brandon T. Jackson is just playing off of him. The authenticity plays real.' (All improv — they were losing the light.)
• CR/Van honorable mentions: Less Grossman 'take a step back and literally fuck your own face' / 'first thing's first — get me a Pop-Tart.' The fuck-your-own-face Flo Rida dance. 'I got Atherton number one — well, Joel had Tom Cruise.' Damien getting blown up. Hot LZ.

• Winner: TiVo. The whole TiVo subplot saves everybody at the end. Sean: 'I never had TiVo until DVR on cable boxes' — discussion of going to a friend's house to watch 24 on TiVo. The MOST 2008 thing.
• Other 2008 markers from the list: Rick Peck playing Wii tennis, the Tobey Maguire 'MTV Best Kiss' credit, Less reading Maxim, Tyra Banks, the discussion of HD-DVD vs Blu-ray format wars, Qualcomm phones, Lance Bass cameo, the Spalding NBA ball, the original iPod, a very specific 2008 brand of Chapstick that Tugg pulls out before being attacked.
• Van's structural point: 'Everybody in this movie is in the perfect spot in their career to be in this movie.' All big but a little dinged up.

• Joel: The Les Grossman portrayal of the Hollywood / American CEO class. 'That kind of executive has defined American culture as much as anyone of the past 20 years. He doesn't give a shit if people die. He doesn't have to treat you nice.' Bill agrees that on rewatch it's much more on-the-nose for that era of Hollywood exec than it seemed in 2008.
• Sean: The Cody Underwood (Danny McBride) 'I think I can put it back' / handless-Tugg crying scene, plus 'putting Danny McBride in charge of explosives' as a comedic premise.
• Van: YouTube / pre-social-media casting. 'Everybody in this movie is in a perfect spot.' Plus the fact that 'Funny First' was still the rule in 2008 — if it was funny, that was the most important thing. (We came out of that partly because Hollywood pushed us out of it.)
• Bill: Vietnam-movie parodies (we don't really make Vietnam movies anymore, but he loves the sub-genre); Sandusky's theory about porn validating video formats ('I was thinking about this when we did a physical media pod — well, if porn leads the way, then yes'); an author lying about a personal experience to sell books (4 Leaf Tayback as a perfect James Frey stand-in); Rick Peck's loser son photo on his desk and on the plane at the end ('this is so good — kills me').

• Bill: Tugg running in front of the bridge as it explodes.
• Sean's Sean Fantasy / Great Shot Gordo: The reenactment of the Willem Dafoe death from 'Platoon' — a stealth homage that gives every movie nerd a Criterion orgasm.

• Bill: The last third of the movie. 'They're clearly just shooting from the hip in Hawaii and blowing stuff up.' He wanted two more scenes with the guys hanging out before it got weird and one less Grossman scene at the back end. Sean agrees: 'The third act feels like they're making it up as they're going along — let's have a shootout over here.'
• Van: Jack Black. 'It's rare — Jack Black is normally A+ in every movie he's in. But here, beyond the two scenes that really work, he's kind of just whacked out and pulling away from the funniest parts.'
• Sean: Steve Coogan is much funnier in 'Rains of Madness' than he is in Tropic Thunder. 'They kind of hemmed him in.'
• Joel: Ben Stiller. 'I felt like I'd seen this Ben Stiller before. He doesn't have that much work to do. He gets to be himself.' Bill agrees Tugg is essentially Zoolander with more muscles. Craig's defense: 'Stiller has really good taste — usually the movies he's involved in are good and funny — but he's not always the single best part as just an actor.'

• Sean: The action in the third act.
• Van: The era itself — 'Comedy is not the only thing that matters anymore. Your shit can't just be funny now. There has to be more than that. You have to consider a lot of things before you put script to screen, or people are going to summarize it before it even gets to a theater.' Plus 'movies are still treated like they're for everyone, the way stand-ups aren't anymore — if you go see Louis CK, you know what you signed up for. But when a movie comes out, people feel like, if it's in the theater, I'm supposed to be able to watch it.'
• Joel: 'I thought the comedy just fell flat — it wasn't as funny as I remember.' He'd take Christopher Guest / Best in Show / Anchorman / Step Brothers over this. Brings up Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins as a 2008 comedy he'd put up against it.
• From the half-assed research: there were real protests when this came out — from the Black community, from the Shriver family / Special Olympics, around the Les Grossman character being read as an antisemitic caricature. The Simple Jack website had to be taken down.

• CR: This movie did to 'Platoon' what 'Walk Hard' did to musical biopics. 'I tried watching Platoon this weekend, just couldn't. So many one-for-one shots — there's just too much Tropic Thunder in it now. Like, you know, we're going home, brother — it deflated the ball.'
• Van: 'This is the only time I have purely and sincerely, not even a half a percent, not been offended by blackface. There's no blackface — if you do it, I'm gonna get on your motherfucking ass. Stop with the goddamn Halloween costumes, it's not a tribute to Beyoncé. But in this movie, for whatever reason, it has just never offended me.' Joel agrees: 'It had to be as good as it was for it to meet that bar.' Sean: 'If he had tried to kick hip-hop language, contemporary, it would have blown up in his face.' Van: 'Brandon T. Jackson is constantly reminding you of the absurdity — what do you mean? You people?'
• Bill: You could switch four actors and the movie's better. 'Switch McConaughey and Stiller — McConaughey is the lead, Stiller plays the Tom Cruise agent role. And switch Jack Black for Bill Hader — Jack Black had been around for 12 years; Hader was new and would have brought improv stuff.'

• Stiller wanted Keanu Reeves as Tugg (Stiller was going to play Rick Peck, Cruise was going to be the agent). Bill: 'I don't know if Keanu as Tugg works.' Sean: 'Keanu might be one of the hardest actors to assign roles to — he's been John Wick for 15 years.' Van: 'When he's cast perfectly — Utah from Point Break, Shane Falco, John Wick — he's perfect.'
• Owen Wilson was originally cast as Rick Peck after Cruise vacated; had his 2007 meltdown and had to drop out. Matthew McConaughey was the third choice — 'kind of where he was in his career.'
• Kevin Hart turned down Alpa Chino because he didn't want to play a gay character. Mos Def turned it down too — wanted the character to be R&B instead of rap. Bill: 'I almost felt like Alpa Chino was a rap star five years ago who had now become Nick Cannon.'

Van: Jack Black. The whole detoxing-tied-to-a-tree run — 'cradle the balls, stroke the shaft, work the pipe, swallow the gravy.'

• Sean: Yvette Nicole Brown as Rick Peck's assistant. 'In 2008, more of a background player; she's only got one shot where she's hanging up. Then she becomes Shirley on Community — a cultural mainstay.'
• Bill: Danny McBride. 'When they made this movie, he was kind of a that-guy. Eastbound made Danny McBride.' He's pound-for-pound a top-3 funniest person of the 21st century — Bill: 'I don't think he's out of the top 10.' Van mentions 'Your Highness' as one of his most underrated performances.

• Tom Cruise. The Les Grossman performance is the whole conversation. Cruise wasn't a trained comedian and was overworking the joke a little bit, but his commitment was unreal — he developed the character (oversized prosthetic chest, bald cap, fat suit, Flo Rida dancing). At the time he was 'universally reviled' (post Oprah's couch / Katie Holmes / Matt Lauer / Paramount dumping his deal) — Van saw it at a screening and didn't know it was him. Bill Hader didn't realize Cruise was already cast and audited thinking he might play 'West Coast Les Grossman'.
• Sean's Apex Mountain take: 'It should have been Alec Baldwin in Glengarry. It should have just been one scene and you're speechless after it. The fuck-your-own-face one. Maybe that should have been my hottest take.' But Van defends going further: 'The pure commitment is what made it work.'

• Bill's hottest-take recasts (from earlier): Stiller out, McConaughey as Tugg. Jack Black out, Bill Hader as the comedy actor with the heroin problem.
• No serious other recastings — generally treated as a 'right people in the right spots at the right time' movie. Van: 'Everybody in this movie is in the perfect spot in their career.'

• Filmed in Hawaii / Kauai — first movie shot in Kauai in five years. Sean: 'This is the beginning of people being like, you know, it's cool living in Hawaii. This is when Adam Sandler figured it out.'
• Stiller, Downey, and Black appeared on the season 7 finale of American Idol as The Pips, performing with Gladys Knight.
• Rick Baker designed and created the Downey makeup. It took 1.5-2 hours of makeup per day. Discussion: who's the second-best Rick Baker? (Answer: Stan Winston.)
• The Damien Cockburn arc was originally going to mirror Quint's reveal in Jaws, but they decided it was 'too many homages.'
• Bill Hader audition story: he walked in and saw what he thought was Cruise playing 'West Coast Les Grossman' and panicked — 'this is the most important audition of my life.' Cruise didn't know who he was; Hader did a 2-second Seth Rogen impression and Cruise started clapping like he'd done a magic trick. 'You do impressions and you're on Saturday Night Live.' Hader: 'Meaning, I was briefed and I know who you are.'
• Craig's Steven-Seagal-shitting-on-himself anecdote: Jack Black's tied-to-a-tree 'stroke the shaft, cradle the balls, swallow the gravy' line is supposedly an homage to a real urban legend about Sylvester Stallone — that he went to his trailer with a woman, was wearing his microphone, the sound guy turned the volume up, and everyone outside heard him saying it.
• Downey was so committed to the bit he did the DVD commentary as Kirk Lazarus instead of as himself.
• Brandon T. Jackson on the blackface: 'When I first read the script I was like, what — blackface? But when I saw him act he became a Black man. It was just good acting. It was weird on set because he would keep going with the character.'
• Stiller on the central conceit: 'The movie is skewering actors and how they take themselves so seriously. We're either with us or you're not.'
• Van's wider production trivia: there was extensive viral marketing — fake websites, fake TV special, the Booty Sweat energy drink, multiple Simple Jack movie clips, and the Simple Jack standalone website was protested into being taken down.

• Ben Stiller: Yes (per CR/Bill). This is the peak of his early-40s 'what can we get away with?' moment.
• Robert Downey Jr.: In the ballpark — Iron Man same year. Van argues 'in the game' it's End Game because he's the biggest star, but Tropic Thunder is the actor's apex.
• Tom Cruise: Yes for this kind of role — 'now you can call him,' Van says. Joel: 'You should ask Brandon when you're on the phone with him later.'
• Jack Black: Yes-ish for big-comedy run, plus he had the holiday and Tenacious D not long before this.
• Brandon T. Jackson: Yes (per Van). Career-best moment.
• Jay Baruchel: Yes, this was probably the biggest thing he was in (other than 'How to Train Your Dragon' as a voice lead).
• Matthew McConaughey: 'In the wilderness' here — but Sean argues this and Eastbound start the McConaissance. After this he does The Lincoln Lawyer (a good movie but a footing-finding moment), then Magic Mike / Dallas Buyers Club / Wolf of Wall Street / True Detective / Interstellar in roughly that order.
• Vietnam War parodies: Yes (the only competitor is Hot Shots! Part Deux). 'We're done with Vietnam now' culturally.
• Politically incorrect comedies that got away with it: Probably Blazing Saddles is still the apex.

Bill: Spielberg. Sean: 'Spielberg, I think.' CR: 'I'd say Scorsese — all the heroin in the last act, kind of a darker movie.' Van: 'What's the funniest Scorsese has ever been? Wolf of Wall Street.'

• Bill: Why does Tugg kill the panda? Joel: 'Because that's the thing he loves.' Van: 'Are pandas even in Vietnam?'
• Bill: Why didn't the Flaming Dragons just shoot Tugg the first time they captured him? Joel: 'They thought he was DEA.'
• Bill: None of these guys die. They get shot at for two hours and not one bullet hits. The only things that die are a bat and the panda.
• Bill: Why is Damien Cockburn's plan to film with old high-8 camcorders for a five-time-Oscar-winner production? 'It's going to look like 28 Days Later.'
• Joel: At the open, 4 Leaf says 10 people in the unit, 4 wrote books, 3 got published, 2 became movies. Wouldn't somebody have known he was a fraud before this? Bill: 'You'd figure that.'
• Van: The whole movie is a nit. 'By the time they're walking through the jungle and they're fake-shooting the movie, it doesn't make any sense.'
• Bill: Downey's makeup never melts in five weeks of jungle filming. 'It's surgery.'
• Sean: Kirk Lazarus having more Oscars than Hepburn and Daniel Day-Lewis — 3 would have done the job, 5 was overkill. Maybe that was the joke.
• Craig: Did 4 Leaf need to die? 'They were leading up to him sacrificing himself to die on the battlefield, then they just keep him alive — there's no consequences.'

Bill: Untouchable, the same way plutonium is untouchable. Joel: 'Scorcher 7 is where this comes in — he's moving on, he's won his Oscar.' Discussion of Scorcher 7 plot: 'They go to another planet, like Interstellar.'

• Sean's Robert Evans-as-Les-Grossman: 'You're going to have to call the fucking United Nations and get a binding resolution to keep me from fucking destroying you. I'm talking scorched earth, motherfucker. I will massacre you. The chemical way.' Then hangs up and goes 'find out who that was.'
• Bill: The movie needed Nell. Some Simple Jack/Nell crossover at the Best Picture nominee photo-op. 'They could have done a Nell 2.' (Tangent on how Nell made $106 million, France loved Jodie Foster.)
• Joel pitches Shaquille O'Neal on Inside the NBA reviewing Tropic Thunder, saying 'I thought the best person in the movie was Gozer the Gozarian.'

Implied: Robert Downey Jr. for Best Supporting Actor — which the movie actually got nominated for (and lost to Heath Ledger / The Dark Knight). Bill: 'It's not the craziest fucking thing in the world that he got nominated. Tell somebody now and it'd blow their minds.' Van: 'The Oscar nomination is the thing people most hold on to when they're talking about the negative legacy.' Bill: 'I heard the movie almost got an Oscar.'

• Sean: What if Les Grossman had been a one-scene cameo (the fuck-your-own-face one)? Does it become one of the great one-scene cameos of all time, like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry? CR: 'You don't love Grossman, there's a little bit of...'. Sean: 'Maybe that should have been my hottest take.'
• Why did Tom Cruise never do more Dion Waiters-type 3-day cameos? (Bill's running theory about Leo, Denzel, all the biggest stars.) Joel: 'These people take the craft very seriously.' Sean: 'They were asking DiCaprio to be in Cliff Booth and he said no, not even for a day.' Van: 'Brad Pitt and Matt Damon will do it — Damon in EuroTrip looks so cool.'
• Bill: If you were making Tropic Thunder today, what would you be lampooning? Sean: 'MCU.' Van: 'The high-auteur A24 film-bro movie.' Bill (winner): The Smartless / Call Her Daddy podcast cinematic universe — all the celebrities, hosts trying to make guests cry, the date-driven release stunts.
• Joel: What happened to Brandon T. Jackson's career after this? Van defends the run; Joel pivots to a broader discussion about Black actors not getting follow-up roles even after big wins (Lupita Nyong'o, etc.).

• Bill (winner): The giant cardboard standup of Simple Jack from McConaughey's office where Simple Jack appears to be moving back and forth. 'Like a picture book — amazing.' Sean: 'You're replacing Farrah Fawcett in your house with Simple Jack.'
• Sean: Any of the Bluetooth headsets / BlackBerries / 2008 phones from Les Grossman's office. The Qualcomm phone, McConaughey's TiVo box.
• Joel: A can of Booty Sweat on the desk. 'Original movie-worn Booty Sweat.'

• Sandusky's law: Porn sets the format. Where porn goes, video formats follow. 'If porn leads the way, then yes — there will be 8K.'
• Tugg's epiphany: 'Never go full retard.' (Survival, Oscar campaigns, all of it.)

• CR: Zoolander — another Stiller satire.
• Van: Hot Shots! Part Deux — the reigning Vietnam parody before this.
• Joel: Dead Presidents.
• Bill: The Player — the Hollywood-eats-itself elder cousin.
• Craig (winner-ish): Step Brothers — same year, same summer, same crowd.

• Joel & Bill: Robert Downey Jr. The whole role/comeback is the engine of the movie. Bill: 'It's a low-bearing wall — the movie depends entirely on Downey's performance to be a great one.' Joel: 'Downey, man. Downey to me.'
• Craig (the broader case): The whole 2008 comedy slate. 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Smart, Step Brothers, Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, Role Models — all in one summer when I was 14. I couldn't believe how many quotes I remembered. It's just fantastic across the board.' That's also a strong who-won case for Tom Cruise — 'kind of got to give it to him: the performance is funny, but he came up with the character, came up with the look, and apparently it was his idea to play Flo Rida.'