Can Ben Stiller Cap Off Paramount's Summer?

The biggest battle in Ben Stiller's new war-movie satire Tropic Thunder won't appear on screen. And, despite an arduous shoot in Hawaii, it didn't happen during production.

The fight will be in theaters, where the distributor, Paramount Pictures, will not only have to overcome an 'R' rating (teen-age boys being a large part of the comedy's natural audience) but also the inside-Hollywood jokes that pepper the spoof of actors and action movies.

At stake may be Paramount Studios' bragging rights--and a test of their ability to deliver for the film's creator, DreamWorks, the audience numbers the potential tentpole should command. After scoring big with Iron Man and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in May, Paramount crowed in June press releases that that it would reach the billion-dollar mark in first international, then domestic distribution earlier than any other studio.

One website even predicted the studio's summer pictures alone could tally a billion, but those hopes faded after The Love Guru tanked in June, selling only $35 million worth of tickets worldwide.

Besides, as pundits noted, the bulk of the proceeds for hits like Indy and Iron Man went to the studios that created them -- Lucasfilm and Marvel, respectively. Paramount was earning only distribution fees.

To cap off its summer and to help make Tropic Thunder a hit, Paramount scheduled an uncommonly large number of promotional screenings. It was the best way to generate a lot of word-of-mouth buzz for a $150 million movie whose raunchiest bits can't be shown in trailers.

In that, it worked. But the screenings also gave disabled rights groups an early heads-up about a controversial subplot that has been attacked for Ben Stiller's portrayal, as fictional actor Tugg Speedman, of a developmentally disabled character.

Filmmakers have been quick to try to defuse that little bomb before the movie opens on August 15.

"We never had the intention of being cruel, or kicking Hollywood in the nuts," says screenwriter and executive producer Justin Theroux. "We just sort of wanted to make each other laugh."

At one point in the movie, the character played by Stiller -- who wrote, produced, and directed, the film as well as starred in it -- recalls making a fictional film called Simple Jack, about a man with a severe mental handicap.

The reference pokes fun at Sean Penn, who portrayed just such a person in the earnest 2001 movie I Am Sam. In Stiller's satire, though, fellow fictional actor played by Robert Downey Jr., slights him for going "full retard" -- as seen in a flashback showing him as a hapless bucktoothed character.

"I hope they don't prejudge it, " Theroux says of disability groups that have raised concern about the portrayal. "It's actors talking about [acting] ... when we were working on that scene we were very careful to aim our arrows at the actors and the way in which they think about playing mentally challenged people -- and making sure the joke was on the actors and not on the people themselves."

As Theroux notes, the production might sooner have drawn fire from other offended quarters. Jack Black portrays a Chris Farley-esque drug addict, for example; Robert Downey Jr. portrays an Australian Oscar winner who acts in blackface, and Nick Nolte does a turn as a slightly insane Vietnam veteran.

"It's the same thing with drug addicts or African-Americans or Vietnam vets," Theroux said. "We're not taking aim at any of the above. We're always trying to keep Hollywood in the scope. That's our satirically intended target."

With just 10 days until the film's wide release, however, it turns out that first at bat among the naysayers will be a coalition of disability organizations who, as reported by disability issues blogger Patricia E. Bauer, will be meeting with representatives of DreamWorks, the movie's producer, at 5 p.m. Pacific time today.

Among the suggestions sent to Bauer's website have been mandates that the studio pull all references to "retard" and similar words, lose all the Simple Jack material in both film and marketing, apologize to those offended, and fund corrective, disabled advocacy programs.

You can hear the disappointment in Theroux's tone, because the film has a good head of steam from well-received promotional screenings and early reviews.

Newsweek critic David Ansen described it as a "giddily entertaining, wickedly smart, and cinematically satisfying comedy." He added that the film could be a "breakthrough" for Stiller as a director.

Other raves are emerging for Stiller, whose Zoolander was a similarly satirical romp; it suffered badly at the box office by coming out in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

DreamWorks is looking optimistically at the results for other comedies that thrived even with an R rating, like Borat (which earned $128 million at the box office), Knocked Up ($148 million), and The Wedding Crashers ($209 million).

Tropic Thunder is expected to sell around $30 million worth of tickets on its opening weekend, even though it will come out only a week after the Apatow-school comedy Pineapple Express. If it can keep its feet, Thunder won't face another major comedy for weeks.

Paramount didn't really need to be juggling this hot potato so close to the expected end of its partnership with the DreamWorks dream team, led by Steven Spielberg.

The production company is ironing out the final details of its funding deal with Reliance Big Entertainment, part of an Indian conglomerate. When that deal is sealed, it's widely assumed DreamWorks' top draw, Spielberg, will move and set up shop at Universal, Fox, or some other studio.

Paramount is hoping that Tropic Thunder's take will be buoyed by Stiller's typically good results in international box office and in DVD sales. (Stiller will be helped in this case by favorable word of mouth about Tom Cruise's turn as obscenity-spewing, bald-headed studio executive.)

Theroux, who made his reputation acting for David Lynch in Mulholland Drive and played opposite Paul Giamatti in the televised John Adams, was in Los Angeles this week to attend the premiere of Tropic Thunder and to work on the screenplay for Iron Man 2.

Theroux said doesn't expect Hollywood's denizens who see Tropic Thunder to recognize themselves too willingly. "They're very good at saying, 'That's just like someone else I know in this business,' " he said. But he is happy enough to take the heat himself.

Having lived through the film's arduous shoot in Hawaii, he says, it was hard to separate fact from fiction. While the movie was being made, he says, "We all got a big chuckle out of being the object of our own ridicule."