Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder Exists Thanks To This Steven Spielberg Movie That Influenced It

A washed up action star, a drug-addicted comedian, a sell-out rapper, and a pompous self-important method actor walk into the jungle. That's either the beginning of a very tasteless joke or the premise of Ben Stiller's Hollywood satire "Tropic Thunder." This audacious comedy goes further and lower than just about any other movie dares to go, lampooning every layer of Hollywood from the obnoxious foul-mouthed studio bigwigs to the lowly production assistants they disrespect and demean for sport.

The go-for-broke satire in "Tropic Thunder" still causes controversies to this day, with Stiller insisting that he makes "no apologies" for the storyline involving Robert Downey Jr. 's Oscar-winning method actor recoloring his skin so that he can "authentically" play the part of a Black army sergeant. You may have asked yourself where Stiller may have gotten the inspiration for this lightning rod of a film, and the answer comes from a person you wouldn't expect: Steven Spielberg.

Before Ben Stiller was a writer and director, he started his acting career in the shadow of his famous comedian parents Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. After making appearances in a number of small roles on stage and screen, he scored his biggest role yet: as a prisoner of war in Steven Spielberg's World War II film "Empire of the Sun."

Walking onto the massive set was an eye opening experience for Stiller, but its biggest impact wasn't the spectacle of the production, but rather the self-seriousness of the actors pretending to be gritty soldiers. The idea stuck with Stiller for years, and in an interview with NPR ahead of the film's release, Stiller talked about how this ironic spectacle of actors LARPing as troops has only grown more absurd because of the proliferation of "fake boot camps" before production:

"It sort of became a staple. They'd go off with some military adviser and have two weeks of camping out, getting shot at, learning how to shoot their guns and pretending to be soldiers. There seemed something ironic to me about the idea of actors ... [who'd] come back and talk about that experience and talk about how it changed their lives."

Spielberg is no stranger to running these boot camps to help his actors "authentically" play the part of soldiers. He famously put the cast of "Band of Brothers" through the wringer, which star Edward Burns called "the worst experience of [his] life." Matt Damon also had a tough experience during "Saving Private Ryan," and Spielberg was behind it the entire time. 

Stiller took this commonplace practice to its most absurd conclusion, sending a cast of preening, prima-donna actors into the middle of a "real" war zone, only to come face-to-face with a dangerous drug cartel, and the result is one of the 2000s best comedies. Thanks, Steven Spielberg!