tropic thunder tom cruise monologue

Tropic Thunder Script - Dialogue Transcript

Tropic thunder script.

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The Most Hilarious 'Tropic Thunder' Quotes

The best quotes from Tropic Thunder make you realize how funny the movie really is, even if you haven't seen it in a while. Let's rank the greatest quotes from Tropic Thunder , with the help of your votes. Starring Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., and Jack Black, Tropic Thunder was directed by Ben Stiller and released in 2008.

What are your favorite lines from Tropic Thunder ? One of the memorable one-liners was when Kirk Lazarus said, "I know who I am! I'm a dude playing the dude, disguised as another dude!" Another great line from Tropic Thunder is, "I got the TiVo!" spoken by Rick Peck who was played by Matthew McConaughey.

Vote up your top Tropic Thunder quotes, regardless of which character they come from.

• Paramount Pictures

Dude Playin' The Dude

Kirk Lazarus : I know who I am! I'm a dude playing the dude, disguised as another dude!

Tugg Speedman : What is with you people?!

Kirk Lazarus : Huh?! What do you mean, "you people?"

Alpa Chino : What do you mean, 'you people?'

Kirk Lazarus : Huh?

Full Retard

Kirk Lazarus : (speaking about Simple Jack) You went full retard man, never go full retard.

It's A Theme Song

Alpa Chino : As for why I'm in this movie, maybe I just knew I had to represent. Cause they one good part in this movie for a Black man and they gave it to Crocodile Dundee.

Kirk Lazarus : Pump your brakes, kid. That man's a national treasure.

Alpa Chino : I just wanted to throw another shrimp on your Barbie.

Lazarus : That sh*t ain't funny.

Alpa Chino : I'm just f*cking with you, Kangaroo Jack. I'm sorry if a dingo ate yo baby.

Lazarus : You know that's a true story? Lady lost her kid. You about to cross a f*cking line.

Kevin Sandusky : Hey guys could we just cool it...

Alpa Chino : You know what, f*ck that, I'm sick of this koala-hunting ni**a-

Lazarus : For 400 years, that word has kept our people down.

Alpa Chino : ..what the f*ck!?

Lazarus : Took a whole lot of tryin, just to get up that hill, but now we up in the big leagues...

Alpa Chino : That's the theme songs from The Jeffersons.

Lazarus : Just cause it's a theme song doesn't mean it's not true.

Take A Step Back

Les Grossman : Okay, Flaming Dragon. F*ckface. First, take a big step back... and literally f*ck your own face! Now, I don't know what kind of pan-Pacific bullsh*t power play you're trying to pull here, but Asia, Jack, is my territory. So whatever you're thinking, you'd better think again. Otherwise I'm gonna have to head down there and I will rain down an ungodly f*cking firestorm upon you! You're gonna have to call the f*cking United Nations and get a f*cking binding resolution to keep me from f*cking destroying you. I am talking scorched earth, motherf*cker! I will massacre you! I will f*ck you up! (hangs up and asks assistant) Find out who that was.

Tugg Speedman : I killed one, Rick... the thing I love most in the world.

Rick Peck : A hooker. Oh Jesus, you killed a hooker!

DVD Commentary

Kirk Lazarus : I don't drop character 'til I've done the DVD commentary.

A Nutless Monkey

Studio Executive Rob Slolom : Wow. Eight Oscars, 400 million dollars at the box office, and you saved Tugg Speedman's career.

Les Grossman : I couldn't have done it without you.

Slolom : Really?

Grossman : No, dickhead. Of course I could. A nutless monkey could do your job. Now, go get drunk and take credit at all the parties.

Slolom : I wouldn't do that.

Grossman : Ah... joking.

Slolom : Ah, there he is! Funny. You're a funny guy.

Grossman : Yeah. But seriously, a nutless monkey could do your job .

I Don't Read

Kirk Lazarus : I don't read the script. The script reads me.

Textile Factory

Jeff Portnoy : So, what's the plan, man? You gonna talk Vietnamese to those dudes?

Kirk Lazarus : No, no. Mandarin Chinese. What I can tell, it's what they're speaking down there.

Jeff ​​​​​ Portnoy : How the hell do you know Chinese?

Kirk Lazarus : Land of Silk and Money with Gong Li. Second Globe, third Oscar. I prepped for that one by working in a Beijing textile factory for eight months.

Suck My Unit

Tugg Speedman : This is insane. Are you really going to abandon this movie? We're supposed to be a unit!

Kirk Lazarus : Suck my unit.

Master Blaster

Kirk Lazarus : What about you, Master Blaster? You got a certain someone you trying to get with back in the States?

Kevin Sandusky : What, Alpa Chino? He's like ten girls deep, 24/7.

Kirk Lazarus : No, you missin' me, man. I'm talking about something special. Big difference. How about it?

Alpa Chino : Yeah. Yeah, there is.

Kirk Lazarus : Well? What's the skinny? Y'all been on a date or what?

Alpa Chino : No. I mean... I always wanted to, but, I guess I just never had the courage to ask. It's...it's complicated.

Kirk Lazarus : No! It's simple as pie, man. You plant your feet on the ground, you look her square in the eyes, you say, "Hey. Baby, you and me's going on a date." That's the end of the story. What's her name?

Alpa Chino : ...Lance.

Kirk Lazarus : "Listen here, Lance..." Lance? What the f*ck did I just hear? Lance?

Kevin Sandusky : Did you say, "Lance?"

Alpa Chino : No!

Kevin Sandusky : That sounded like "Lance."

Alpa Chino : No, I said "Nance."

Kevin Sandusky : It sounded like "Lance."

Alpa Chino : Look, I'm Alpa Chino, okay? I love the p*ssy, all right? Lay your *ss back down and look at the stars.

Kirk Lazarus : When you wrote "I Love Tha P*ssy", was you thinking of dangling your dice on Lance's forehead?

Alpa Chino : Naw, hell no! What? Come on, look...

Kirk Lazarus : Man, everyone's gay once in a while!

Alpa Chino : I'm not gay!

Kirk Lazarus : God dammit! We lost! We fuckin' super lost, man!

Trained Actors

Alpa Chino : But they're trained soldiers.

Kirk Lazarus : Yes. But we are trained actors.

The Money-Bed

Les Grossman : Which one of you f*ckfaces is Damien Cockburn?

Damien Cockburn : Uh, that's me, sir. It's an honor to finally meet you. Get some face time.

Grossman : And who here is the key grip? You? You! Hit that director in the face, really f*cking hard!

Key Grip : (walks to Damien) Sorry, man. ([punches Damien in the face)

Grossman : This is all your fault, you Limey f*ck! You sh*t the money-bed, my friend.

Rick Peck : Let me get this straight. You want me to let my client of fifteen years, one of my best friends, die in the jungle alone for some money and a G5.

Grossman : Yes.

Pecker : A G5 airplane.

Grossman : Yes. And lots of money. Playa....

Slolom : Yeah! Smack it up, flip up, rub it down, hoo!!

Kirk Lazarus : There ya go, get him chugging on some of Alpa's "*ss-Water" that will bring him around, it's a cure all.

A Blind Kid

Rick Peck : It was like pistol-whipping a blind kid.

Tugg Speedman : It's just corn syrup you guys! Blood flavored...corn syrup.

Blow The Bridge

Tugg Speedman : I was wrong! Blow the bridge! Blow the f*cking bridge!

Damien : Crisis meeting? What does that mean, exactly? I mean, you know, are we in a crisis?

Rob : He's the head of the studio. He's reaching out. We're 10,000 miles away. He just wants a little face-time.

Damien : I know. It's just you said he called it a crisis meeting. So, you know...

Rob : It's Les Grossman. He throws these words around. "Crisis," "explosion," "not rolling," "fired." These are just words.

She Walked Past

Alpa Chino : Hell nah, I ain't pee on that girl. No no listen, here's the story she was in the way when I was peeing she walked past.

Writers Lie

Cody : Dude, dude, what the hell is going on here? Where are we?

Four-Leaf Tayback: I have no idea, I've never been outside the States.

Cody : Wait what?! Are you f*cking kidding me?! Did you make this whole goddamn thing up?! Dude you weren't even in the f*cking service?!

Tayback : Yes! Of course! Coast Guard!

Cody : Coast Guard.

Tayback : Sanitation Department.

Cody : Oh my God! You're a f*cking garbage man! Dammit! F.L. Tayback lies to me and the whole goddamn U.S. of A.

Tayback : I wrote the book as a tribute! I'm a patriot.

Cody : Yeah, you're the Milli Vanilli of patriots okay? You lied about fighting in the Vietnam War. It's like - It's like punching the American flag in the face goddammit! God, to think I believed you!

Tayback : Writers lie all the time!

Cody : Can I be tied to another post please?

Rick Peck : I got the TiVo!

Damien Cockburn : This walkie talkie goes to the helicopter, and the helicopter is God. And I am Jesus Christ. And you are my chosen disciples.

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Tropic Thunder 2008

Les Grossman: [incensed at Flaming Dragon's demands] Okay Flaming Dragon, f***face. First, take a big step back... and literally f*** your own face! I don't know what kind of pan-Pacific bullshit power play you're trying to pull here, but Asia, Jack, is my territory. So whatever you're thinking, you'd better think again! Otherwise I'm gonna have to head down there and I will rain down an ungodly f***ing firestorm upon you! You're gonna have to call the f***ing United Nations and get a f***ing binding resolution to keep me from f***ing destroying you. I am talking scorched-earth, motherf***er! I will massacre you! I will f*** you up! [hangs up; to assistant] Can you find out who that was?

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Silent No More

Tom Cruise Week

The Making of Les Grossman: An Oral History

The year was 2008. Tom Cruise was a national punch line. Then came ‘Tropic Thunder’ and the cameo role of a lifetime.

I n 2008, Tom Cruise needed to find a way to make people laugh. Hard. Probably at him. After two decades as a bona fide Hollywood sensation, the actor found himself in the midst of a crisis that seemed unimaginable. Over the past four years, he’d fired his publicist, who had told him to curb the Scientology talk, and made a fool of himself publicly, jumping on Oprah’s couch and lecturing Matt Lauer about psychiatry. Business had been better, too. On the heels of 2006’s Mission: Impossible III , which made nearly $150 million less than the franchise’s previous installment, Cruise’s longtime studio home, Paramount, severed ties. Company chairman Sumner Redstone delivered a public reprimand by way of a reason. “As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal,” Redstone told The Wall Street Journal . “His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount.”

Grossman gave even fewer fucks than Cruise had seemingly given in the years leading up to the film — and watching Cruise mock his own industry finally felt like he was back in the know. Tropic Thunder was a sendup of filmmaking itself: A troupe of actors shooting a war movie wander into a remote jungle and end up in hostile territory. They believe the dangers mounting all around them are simply there in the service of acting. One of them, Tugg Speedman, played by Thunder ’s cowriter and director, Ben Stiller, is captured and tortured. Grossman is asked to ransom the action star, but refuses. Actors can drop dead. Business is king. That’s the message. In the end, however, the film within the film — a disaster by all accounts — is ironically rewarded for its merits with Oscars. Just as unbelievably, in real life, Cruise came away from Tropic Thunder nominated for a Golden Globe and ready, Les Grossman–style, to shake his ass all the way back to the bank.

Stiller: We had an outline and about half a script. I knew how it should end. Then we brought Etan on and got a full draft.

Stiller: I had been talking to Tom about being in the movie. He read the script and actually came up with the idea for the character.

Cornfeld: Tom read the script when there was no Les Grossman and said, “I think you need another villain other than just the 12-year-old drug king. What about some greedy pig studio executive who really represents the gross part of Hollywood?”

Stiller: His idea to show the studio head actually fixed a problem we had for a long time. We never cut back to the real world for any of the previous drafts. All the Grossman scenes totally fixed the plot holes.

Cornfeld: We did a draft that incorporated that character and Ben gave it to Tom. Then, the frequency of our discussions slowed down. Tom Cruise is a busy guy.

Cohen: The character spent a year being “Studio Head.” July 2003, he becomes Todd Berlinger. October 2003, Todd Green. This was an interesting draft, because here’s the first draft where we really see the guy who became the profane Les Grossman, screaming at Flaming Dragon that if they so much as sneeze on the craft services table, he will fuck them up. Then, a couple weeks later — Phillip Green. For the life of me, I can’t remember why.

Cornfeld: Ben decided he was going to play Speedman, and then he got a phone call from Tom, who said he just couldn’t get the script out of his mind. Tom asked, “What else is open?” And Ben said, “Well, we haven’t cast the Les Grossman role yet.” Tom was like, “I’d play that.”

Stiller: And he said he wanted to dance.

Cohen: I met Tom at the table reading. It’s not a surprise that he is who he is. A lot of actors hold back at table readings. Tom was the opposite. He worked insanely hard at making that character unique. You could tell that he’d never done anything like it before and was embracing it.

Hader: Tom Cruise didn’t know who I was and was trying to figure it out. I said, “Seth Rogen’s a friend of mine and he said he went to your house.” I did a Seth Rogen impersonation for two seconds, like “Tom Cruise is amazing! We rode motorcycles in his backyard!” And it was like I did a magic trick. Tom Cruise started clapping and going crazy and he went, “You do impressions and you’re on Saturday Night Live .” Meaning, I was briefed and I now know who you are.

Connie Grayson Criswell (lead hair-puncher): It was kind of a pain in the butt because we were punching with very curly human hair. Curly hair is very hard to punch because it has a mind of its own.

Burman:   When we needed a point of reference — I didn’t even see this happening at first — people would come to me, because I may be a few pounds over what I should be and I’m sort of bald on top and at the time had a sort of scruff going. And people kept looking at me to see how my hair grows and what the weight is like and how things sit on me. At one point I thought they were trying to turn Tom into me.

Cornfeld: Some magazine said the character was based on me because I’m like, you know, fat and bald, and I thought that was hysterical. The character was an amalgam of a lot of traits. Les isn’t really based on anybody. 1

AP Photo/Matt Sayles Brandon T. Jackson, Jack Black, Tom Cruise, Bill Hader, Ben Stiller, and Matthew McConaughey at the premiere of ‘Tropic Thunder’ in Los Angeles.

Criswell: I didn’t know what the hair was for initially. I’m not fazed by actors. It’s all about the hair work.

Cornfeld: We’re doing the makeup test and it’s the first time Tom’s in the Les Grossman outfit. He stops and says, “Maybe I should dance in this. You know, I haven’t danced in a movie in a long time.”

Stiller: Tom choreographed all his own moves. I remember watching him do this stuff and thinking this is so frigging funny.

Hader: I remember him standing off in a corner just working on his moves.

Cornfeld: Most directors, if an actor in that situation said, “Maybe I should dance,” suddenly, the script has additions to it. All of a sudden the secretary is saying, “Oh, Mr. Grossman, you’ve got to practice your dance routine for your daughter’s bat mitzvah,” or something like that. But Ben was like, “Yeah, that’s good. This guy does what he wants and when he’s happy, he dances.” He didn’t need any explanation beyond that.

Hader: I had a hard time keeping a straight face when he said, “A nutless monkey could do your job.” You notice when he says that I’m not looking at him. Every time I looked at him I’d start laughing.

Burke: One day we were in the makeup room and Tom was rehearsing his lines and they were so vulgar and crass. I was taken aback and I thought something had happened to him. He’s swearing and saying these horrible things like, “Fuck you, I’m gonna fuck you!” Oh my goodness. It was not his normal thing.

Hader: When I was like 5, my dad took me out to these rain towers in northern Tulsa, where I grew up. And he had me on his shoulders and he said, “They’re shooting a movie over there called The Outsiders .” They were shooting the rumble scene in the rain and I was like, “Oh my god! They’re shooting a movie over there!” I told Tom that and he goes, “I was there. You were there. And now we’re here. How awesome is that?”

Caefer:  With such a heavy makeup and the heavy workout he was getting, we really had to tend to the actor all the time because there are risks involved — dehydration — so we had to have water for him all the time.

Hader: Justin Theroux deserves a ton of credit for the Les Grossman character. Theroux was the one when I was around who was coming up with all these Grossman lines. “You shit the money bed” was just so good.

Stiller: We shot all Tom’s stuff in like three days.

Hader: They didn’t put him on any of the posters. And when I did press I didn’t want to talk about it because I just wanted it to be a surprise. 3

Caefer: At the end of the movie, people were seeing his name on the screen, and questioning, Who the heck was Tom Cruise? Which one was Tom Cruise?

Cohen: Les Grossman was so beloved that he appeared at the MTV Movie Awards. 4

Burke: Dancing with Jennifer Lopez.

Hader: I remember even getting phone calls, saying, “Hey, we’re maybe going to do a Les Grossman movie.” And I said, “Hey, that sounds great.” I think one was written, but I don’t know. 5

Cornfeld: So much of it is about availability. Hopefully something will happen because he’s such a great character.

Hader: At the premiere, Tom Cruise was like, “Hey, Bill, how’s it going, man?” And I got a little starstruck. Like, I’d never hung out with Tom Cruise before. I’d just been with Les.

Cornfeld: The whole thing was just a gift. Seeing it come together had this weird cosmic layer. Tom comes up with the idea of the character — the dance, having big hands — and he ends up playing the character. It’s just rare that these sorts of surprises end up working. But think about Tom Cruise’s body of work. Coppola, Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Paul Thomas Anderson. You know Tom Cruise doesn’t do things by accident.  

Playing a round of “Who’s Les Grossman, really?” was a popular guessing game around the time of the film’s release. Sumner Redstone and Harvey Weinstein were front-runners. In its review of the movie, the  New York Times called out  Tropic Thunder , which also employed blackface as a plot device, for perpetuating cartoonish Jewish stereotypes with the Grossman character. “What’s most notable about the film’s use of blackface,” wrote critic Manohla Dargis , “is how much softer it is compared with the rather more vulgar and far less loving exploitation of what you might call Jewface.”

Caefer was also charged with making last-minute cosmetic fixes to Cruise’s headpiece, which included punching individual hairs into a mat of silicone one-eighth of an inch thick and already glued to the actor’s head. “That was terrifying,” Caefer says. “I started punching hairs into this appliance and everybody was suddenly silent. Tom closed his eyes and for half an hour, nobody said anything until I was through.”

After photos of Cruise in a fat suit leaked during filming, Cruise’s lawyers reportedly threatened to take legal action against any publication that used them.

The 2010 MTV Movie Awards, two years after Tropic Thunder’s premiere.

Three days after the 2010 MTV Movie Awards, Entertainment Weekly and Nikki Finke’s Deadline reported that a Les Grossman movie would be made by Paramount — the same studio that had dropped Cruise four years earlier. Ben Stiller is quoted in the release as follows: “Les Grossman’s life story is an inspiring tale of the classic human struggle to achieve greatness against all odds. He has assured me he plans to quote, ‘F**king kill the sh*t out of this movie and make Citizen f**king Kane look like a piece of crap home movie by the time we are done.’ I am honored to be working with him.” A series of reports in 2012 quotes screenwriter Michael Bacall ( 21 Jump Street ) about drafting a Les Grossman script.

Filed Under: Tom Cruise Week , oral history , Tom Cruise , Tropic Thunder , Ben Stiller , Les Grossman , Sumner Redstone , paramount , Justin theroux , Etan Cohen , Bill Hader , Robert Downey Jr.

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Tropic Thunder

Through a series of freak occurrences, a group of actors shooting a big-budget war movie are forced to become the soldiers they are portraying. Through a series of freak occurrences, a group of actors shooting a big-budget war movie are forced to become the soldiers they are portraying. Through a series of freak occurrences, a group of actors shooting a big-budget war movie are forced to become the soldiers they are portraying.

• Ben Stiller
• Justin Theroux
• Robert Downey Jr.
• 744 User reviews
• 325 Critic reviews
• 71 Metascore
• 10 wins & 47 nominations total

• Tugg Speedman - Hot LZ

• Jeff Portnoy - Hot LZ

• Kirk Lazarus - Hot LZ

• Snooty Waiter - Fatties Trailer

• Platoon Sergeant Shot in Head - Hot LZ

• Kevin Sandusky - Hot LZ

• Alpa Chino - Hot LZ
• Chopper Pilot - Hot LZ

• Damien Cockburn - Vietnam Crew

• Damien's Assistant - Vietnam Crew

• Cameraperson - Vietnam Crew

• First Assistant Director - Vietnam Crew

• Script Supervisor - Vietnam Crew

• Cody - Vietnam Crew
• Special Effects Assistant - Vietnam Crew

• Studio Executive Rob Slolom - Vietnam Crew

• Four Leaf Tayback - Vietnam Crew
• Speedman Assistant - Vietnam Crew
• (as Jeff Weideman)
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Did you know

• Trivia Ben Stiller said nearly all aspects of the Les Grossman character were developed by Tom Cruise , including the dancing and the look of the make-up. Stiller said that in addition to the more obvious make-up effects applied to Cruise's face and head, and the extra hair on his chest and arms, Cruise also decided to play the character wearing oversized prosthetic hands.
• Goofs The north Vietnam flag appear early in the film (the read flag with yellow star). But in South Vietnam, it was not used by the VC. However, the Tayback story is set in an NVA (North Vietnamese Army) prison camp, thus it is accurate for them to have a North Vietnamese flag.

Les Grossman : First, take a big step back... and literally, FUCK YOUR OWN FACE! I don't know what kind of pan-pacific bullshit power play you're trying to pull here, but Asia Jack is my territory. So whatever you're thinking, you'd better think again! Otherwise I'm gonna have to head down there and I will rain down an un-Godly fucking firestorm upon you! You're gonna have to call the fucking United Nations and get a fucking binding resolution to keep me from fucking destroying you. I'm talking scorched earth, motherfucker! I will massacre you! I WILL FUCK YOU UP!

• Crazy credits Movie begins with advertisement and fake trailers where the "actors" appear.
• Alternate versions There is a director's extended cut which is available on the 3-disc special edition in the UK which contains more footage - runtime of overall film is 116 minutes on back of DVD case.
• Connections Edited into Yoostar 2: In the Movies (2011)
• Soundtracks I Love Tha Pussy Written by Darryl Farmer , Ronald Jackson , Brandon T. Jackson , Cisco Adler & Micah Givens Performed by Brandon T. Jackson

User reviews 744

• Dec 11, 2023
• How long is Tropic Thunder? Powered by Alexa
• Is "Tropic Thunder" based on a book?
• Are any of the characters based on real people?
• What is "blackface"?
• August 13, 2008 (United States)
• United States
• United Kingdom
• DreamWorks / Paramount (France)
• DreamWorks (United States)
• Sấm Nhiệt Đới
• Kaua'i, Hawaii, USA
• Dreamworks Pictures
• Red Hour Films
• Goldcrest Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $92,000,000 (estimated)
• $110,515,313
• $25,812,796
• Aug 17, 2008
• $195,703,351

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 47 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Conan : How Tom Cruise Embodied Tropic Thunder’s Les Grossman

Remember when Tom Cruise played a shystie studio executive in Tropic Thunder, but it took us all a little bit to recognize him because he was in a fat suit? All Cruise’s idea. Cruise told Conan and the San Diego Comic-Con audience that when Ben Stiller approached him for the role, he had two conditions: “I wanna have fat hands, and I’m gonna dance.” Apparently Cruise takes classes all of the time and incorporates what he learns into characters. For Grossman, Cruise brought back his old hip-hop dance training. To Stiller’s consternation, he insisted that he bring back his old hip-hop dance training. And now we have a gif that won’t die. So never doubt the instincts of Tom Cruise.

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The Truth About Tom Cruise's Character In 'Tropic Thunder'

Tom was supposed to play the leading role that Ben Stiller ended up taking.

Love him or loathe him, there's no denying that Tom Cruise basically stole Tropic Thunder. While the movie was filled with controversy, such as Robert Downey Jr.'s character's acting choices , the 2008 film remains beloved. In the film, Tom Cruise played a vile Hollywood mogul named Les Grossman. Given Tom's incredible filmography , it makes sense that he brought this character to life so well. But given Tom's recent set outburst as well as his not-so-clean reputation among some in Hollywood perhaps his casting was even more calculated. Either way, Tom Cruise absolutely knocked this role out of the park. Thanks to a fantastic article by Grantland , we now know how he was able to do this...

Tom Was Supposed To Play Ben's Role Until He Gave A Very Specific Script Note

Tom Cruise needed to repair his image in 2007. Years of conflict with marriages, jumping on couches, and squabbles with the studio making his Mission Impossible movies put him in a bad light. Ultimately, Tropic Thunder was the film that helped (momentarily) rehabilitate his image. But Tom wasn't supposed to play Les Grossman, the vicious studio executive who clearly believed actors were disposable. Actually, Tom was supposed to play the leading role that Ben Stiller ended up taking. It made sense that Ben wasn't initially interested in the lead role. After all, he was already directing it and writing it with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen.

"Justin Theroux and I had been working on the script on and off for eight years," Ben Stiller said to Grantland. "We had an outline and about half a script. I knew how it should end. Then we brought Etan on and got a full draft."

When Etan Cohen came on in 2002, he basically came up with the idea that would lead Tom Cruise to essentially create Les Grossman.

Related: Amidst The Tom Cruise Controversy, Katie Holmes Seems Unbothered And Is Focusing On Christmas

"We were still figuring out why the actors would get abandoned and no one would notice that all these stars were gone," Etan Cohen said. "So I had written this throwaway thing at the side of the document that said: 'Maybe the studio has an insurance policy on production. When the director dies they recoup all their expenses, so the studio doesn’t care about the actors.' Then we totally went away from that for years."

By that time, Tom Cruise had already read the script and claimed that there was a need for another villain. In fact, he even stated that it could use a greedy studio exec who 'represents the gross part of Hollywood'.

"His idea to show the studio head actually fixed a problem we had for a long time. We never cut back to the real world for any of the previous drafts. All the Grossman scenes totally fixed the plot holes" Ben Stiller claimed.

Related: Tom Cruise Trolled For 'Social Distancing From His Daughter' After Fiery Audio Leaks

Soon after, a new draft was written and Ben gave the role of the studio exec to Tom, who couldn't take it due to scheduling conflicts. But there was no name for the character at first. In fact, it took an entire year for 'Les Grossman' to officially be created.

"Ben decided he was going to play Speedman, and then he got a phone call from Tom, who said he just couldn’t get the script out of his mind. Tom asked, 'What else is open?' And Ben said, 'Well, we haven’t cast the Les Grossman role yet.' Tom was like, 'I’d play that,'" producer Stuart Cornfeld said.

Les Grossman's Look Was Half The Performance

While Tom brought a certain amount of energy to the role, his hair, make-up, and prosthetics were really what made the performance memorable. After all, Tom was barely recognizable.

"I was Tom’s go-to makeup person from Interview With the Vampire on. I did a lot of big, iconic looks for him," makeup designer Michèle Burke said. "I got a text saying, 'Tom wants to have hairy arms.' And I was thinking, Oh, OK, we can get hairy arms. Then they were like, 'We want him to have a hairy chest.' Then suddenly it was like he’s going to have big hands, and I’m sitting there thinking, This is getting bigger than I expected. Then they started sending me pictures of other people who looked a bit like this. You know, with the gold jewelry, the hairy chest. I thought, OK, now I’m beginning to get the picture, this is full-on."

Then, of course, there was the fat suit which was a bunch of custom pads made out of foam and beading from the inside of a pillow. This beading accurately mimicked the jiggle that human fat makes when it moves; something that was vital for the dance number...

All About Tom Cruise Dancing

"We’re doing the makeup test and it’s the first time Tom’s in the Les Grossman outfit. He stops and says, 'Maybe I should dance in this. You know, I haven’t danced in a movie in a long time,'" producer Stuart Cornfeld said.

The Mission Impossible and Eye Wide Shut star ended up choreographing all of his own dance moves which just made everyone on the set burst out laughing.

"I remember him standing off in a corner just working on his moves," co-star Bill Hader explained.

The outrageous costume, hair, and make-up, the hilarious lines (mostly written by Justin Theroux), as well as the performance and energy that Tom Cruise brought to the role, ended up creating a truly memorable character.

Next: Why Did Tom Cruise Agree To A Cameo In 'Austin Powers'?

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Tom Cruise, in Bit Role, Nips Studio’s Top Gun

By Michael Cieply

• April 3, 2008

LOS ANGELES — Take that, Sumner Redstone.

At an industry screening Tuesday night of the forthcoming comedy “Tropic Thunder” from Paramount Pictures and its unit DreamWorks, Tom Cruise brought down the house with his surprise portrayal of a bald, hairy-chested, foulmouthed, dirty-dancing movie mogul of the kind who is only too happy to throw an actor to the wolves when his popularity cools.

The several hundred Hollywood agents, managers, publicists and reporters at the screening on the Paramount lot here couldn’t have missed the joke. In August 2006 Mr. Cruise — after spending many years at Paramount and appearing in some of its biggest hits, including “Top Gun” and the “Mission: Impossible” series — was sent packing by Mr. Redstone, the chairman of Viacom, the studio’s parent.

Two years later Mr. Cruise is back in a Paramount movie, playing a craggy ingrate in what is shaping up as one of the studio’s best prospects for the summer. The movie, a raunchfest directed by Ben Stiller, about a bunch of actors whose jungle war movie turns unexpectedly real, also stars Mr. Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey and Nick Nolte.

The humor may have been heightened by knowledge that Mr. Cruise and Mr. Redstone only last week kissed and made up over a very public lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Mr. Cruise, 45, has been a hunk (“Cocktail”), a heartthrob (“Far and Away”), an action hero (“Minority Report”) and a series of extraordinary ordinary guys (from “Taps” to “War of the Worlds”). He has also done some comic scenes. In 2002, for instance, there was a bit as Austin Powers, in “Austin Powers in Goldmember.”

But nothing on his résumé predicted the rapturous reaction he received Tuesday night. (Only a turn by Mr. Downey — who plays most of the movie in blackface, as a present-day white Australian trying to get inside the head of an African-American grunt during the Vietnam War — received as warm a reaction.)

Mr. Stiller, speaking before the screening, said he expected the movie to be rated R. The first few words out of Mr. Cruise’s mouth would guarantee that. As for his dance, that will be best described by the critics.

Representatives of Mr. Cruise, Mr. Stiller and Paramount declined on Wednesday to discuss the role.

Mr. Cruise’s latest appearance comes on the heels of a flop, “Lions for Lambs,” which was released by United Artists, a studio he now oversees with his longtime associate Paula Wagner. And the comedy’s August release will precede Mr. Cruise’s performance in “Valkyrie,” a fall film from United Artists, in which he plays a German officer who tries to assassinate Hitler.

Mr. Stiller, who played Mr. Cruise’s obsessive stunt double in a popular Web video (and who is expected to co-star with him in “Hardy Men”), first talked with Mr. Cruise, his friend, about taking a role more than a year ago, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with the film’s promotion. Mr. Cruise chose the studio chief’s role, and went through four days of makeup tests in order to get it right.

The director had planned to keep Mr. Cruise’s uncredited performance a surprise. The studio has not included Mr. Cruise in the movie’s trailer and has declined to release any images of his character. But a photo of a mostly bald Mr. Cruise donning a fat suit popped up on the Web late last year.

In any case, the performance is likely to draw attention, since Paramount is weighing a plan in which it would build buzz with extensive screenings of “Tropic Thunder” before its Aug. 15 release, much as 20th Century Fox did in 2006 with “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” At Tuesday’s screening Mr. Stiller told attendees that his new film was still in rough form. “If you have any suggestions, feel free to post them directly on the Internet,” he said.

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Ten Years On, Tropic Thunder 's Still a Brutal Kick In Hollywood's A--

Five reasons ben stiller's controversial, career-reviving satire still sticks in the memory and in the industry's craw..

(Photo by © DreamWorks)

In 2008, Tropic Thunder hit screens like a dynamo, shocking audiences with its stunt casting and blunt satire and racking up $110.5 million in domestic box office receipts. Ten years on, it still stands out as an audacious and controversial piece of American comedy – and we’re digging into why.

Written, directed, and produced by Ben Stiller, the movie sits Certified Fresh at 82% on the Tomatometer and earned  Robert Downey Jr. a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Kirk Lazarus, a white Australian method actor portraying a black character, Staff Sergeant Lincoln Osiris, in a fake movie. It was also blessed by  Tom Cruise ’s brilliant cameo as ostentatious douchebag Hollywood agent, Les Grossman.

Performances are one thing, substance is another. Tropic Thunder might have been just another big studio comedy when it landed in theaters on August 13, 2008, but it had weight to it and stuck in our memories in a way that few comedies-of-the-week do. Here are some of the reasons it cut through, and holds up.

1. It Surpassed Some Of Its Most Notable Influences

Chances are, you’ve seen 1999’s Galaxy Quest , a Star Trek parody so funny, rich, and solid that some Trekkies even hold it among the canonical Star Trek movies. (Critics liked it too – it sits at 90% on the Tomatometer.) The film told the story of a band of down-and-out actors from a  Star Trek -like   series who are forced to play their TV roles when they’re kidnapped by a beleaguered alien race that thinks their TV reruns are real-life documentaries. Chances are, too, that you’ve herd of  Three Amigos! , released 13 years earlier, which also saw a band of actors mistaken for their onscreen characters, this time South of the Border. The two films’ influence on Thunder – in which, yet again, the story of actors mistaken for their characters is used to skewer aspects of the movie-making business – is such that some online writers have dubbed them an unofficial trilogy. The trilogy’s finale, though, takes its satire to the darkest place: the very heart of the dream factory.

If Galaxy Quest captured Star Trek and its surrounding culture in a nutshell, Tropic Thunder captured Hollywood itself. Stiller’s script held a funhouse mirror to his contemporary actors, portraying its entitled prima donna actor characters with zero self-awareness about themselves, their peers, or their impact on audiences. More, Stiller held that same mirror to the Hollywood industrial complex, with the characters’ agents being varying degrees of oblivious, short-tempered, and manipulative. Despite all this, nearly every character in Tropic Thunder learns to get over themselves in a Sullivan’s Travels sort of way (yep, it even had a very Hollywood ending). While Galaxy Quest posits that even disposable entertainment has intrinsic value, Tropic Thunder argues that most folks in Hollywood, while often misguided, ultimately have the best intentions at heart.

Well, everyone but Les Grossman.

2. It Gave Tom Cruise a Much-Needed Post-Couch Big Win

The mid-2000s were rough for Tom Cruise’s image. Mission: Impossible III   didn’t exactly light up the box office, Lions for Lambs bombed outright, and then there was the Oprah couch incident. It seemed like the impossible had happened: Cruise’s star was fading. That was until his explosive performance as Hollywood agent Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder . Rumored to be based on Harvey Weinstein, Grossman was a hilarious, over-the-top deconstruction of the stereotypical Hollywood executive: brash, profane, arrogant, egotistical, manipulative, greedy, and grandiose. He might be a bit much to swallow – and a bit harder to watch, given what we know about the man who some say inspired him – but his meme-able dance moves go down smooth.

3. IT WAS PART OF THE “YEAR OF ROBERT DOWNEY JR.”

Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Kirk Lazarus, who plays the black Sergeant Lincoln Osiris in the movie-within-the-movie, is one of Tropic Thunder’s most memorable — and infamous — elements. Already riding a big career uptick following 2005’s Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang   and 2007’s Zodiac , Downey Jr. had a truly banner year in 2008 with the releases of  Iron Man and Tropic Thunder . The actor proved he could lead a blockbuster with the MCU’s first entry, but Tropic Thunder  reminded people that he also had range to spare. It was an uproarious and uncomfortable satire of Hollywood whitewashing and the industry’s often problematic casting decisions – and let’s face it, one that is still relevant today.

4. IT HELPED KICK OFF THE MCCONAISSANCE

Make no mistake, we were riding the Matthew McConaughey train well before  Tropic Thunder – he was a rom-com king in  Failure to Launch ,  How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days , and Fool’s Gold , and he gave us a decent villain in the apocalyptic Reign of Fire . But he was rarely given serious consideration for roles that were, shall we say, more challenging. He changed that perception in Tropic Thunder  playing Rick Peck, a comically oblivious agent who was absolutely hellbent on getting his client a TiVo. From there, McConaughey enjoyed a string of successes including Mud , Magic Mike , and Dallas Buyers Club , and notably on TV’s True Detective .  Prior to  Tropic Thunder , he starred or appeared in just five Certified Fresh movies across a span of 15 years; in the 10 years since the movie’s release, he’s been in nine.

5. IT WAS WOKE AS HELL, ESPECIALLY FOR THE TIME

Another infamous element of  Tropic Thunder ? Ben Stiller’s action star Tugg Speedman formerly played the titular character in  Simple Jack , an in-universe critical-and-financial failure centered on a young man with learning disabilities. As with the Tropic Thunder ‘s treatment of blackface, the concept of Simple Jack held Hollywood’s feet to the fire, skewering the way able-bodied actors have portrayed people with disabilities to earn those awards-season accolades. Tropic Thunder also featured Brandon T. Jackson as Alpa Chino, a hyper-masculine – but closeted – rapper-turned-actor. When he accidentally comes out to his co-stars, he is met only with encouragement. We also got to see Chino with his boyfriend at the end of the film in a heartwarming moment.

The 2000s saw their share of important comedies, with Superbad , The 40 Year Old Virgin , and Knocked Up digging into a number of issues on the tip of people’s tongues, but Tropic Thunder  cracked the egg of Hollywood itself. For that – and for its rollicking deconstructions of entitlement, race, fame, the creative process, and self-actualization – it won’t soon be forgotten.

Tropic Thunder was released in theaters August 13, 2008

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Tom Cruise rewatch: Shining from the sidelines in Magnolia and Tropic Thunder

Sometimes, the star is at his best when he's not the main event.

Ahead of this Friday's release of Top Gun: Maverick , our writers return to their favorite Tom Cruise movies, in appreciation of an on-screen persona that's evolved over decades.

People like to say that true movie stars — or at least the vanishing few who can still wear that title in 2022 — essentially always play themselves on screen. And they're right of course, to a point: At a certain Mt. Rushmore level of fame, the X-factor presence of a star operating at full wattage can eclipse just about any role or franchise.

Which makes it feel like an almost transgressive thrill when someone like Tom Cruise shows up in project that is not billed, per se, as Tom Cruise movie. There are at least two great examples of that (though they'll probably never appear together on a double bill, unless it's wild-card night at a Cruise Completist festival). The first is Magnolia , the three-hour Paul Thomas Anderson opus released in 1999, in which the actor played a spectacularly toxic sex guru named Frank "T.J." Mackey; the second is his deft turn in the giddy 2008 film-industry farce Tropic Thunder as Les Grossman, a Hollywood mogul whose love languages are rage and Flo Rida .

As diametrically opposed as these two roles are in nearly everything from tone to hairline, they both tap into something intrinsically, ineffably Cruise: the actor's trademark intensity, a trait so inborn that "turned to 11" seems to be his default setting. (Even as a Ray-Banned prep schooler or a moonlighting bartender , his performances tend to vibrate at a frequency best described as code red; do you really think he'd sign up for any mission if it were just... medium possible?)

In the sprawling interconnected storylines of Magnolia , which take place largely over the course of a single day in Los Angeles, Mackey is a very specific kind of motivational speaker, a rabid cad in a half-ponytail selling snake-oil sexuality to a Marriott ballroom of single men eager to absorb his patented Seduce and Destroy pickup system. (Anderson was inspired, reportedly, by O.G. Game guy Ross Jeffries .) Entering triumphant to the crashing strains of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," T.J. is incel energy personified, screaming "Respect the cock! And taaaame the c---!" like both his life and his spotlight in a Tucker Carlson infomercial for manhood depended on it.

But of course, there's an ocean of hurt lurking beneath that glossy leather vest: Mackey's estranged power-player father (Jason Robards) abandoned the family decades ago, and left his teenage son to nurse his own mother through a terrible, fatal cancer. Now, T.J. will have his revenge on the half of the population he can't call "Daddy," and in a seething scene with a Black female reporter (April Grace), his aggressive exuberance devolves into real, messy fury. All those signature Tom charms — the swoop of hair, the can-do grin — have been weaponized, metastasized.

Magnolia , if the Aimee Mann singalongs and raining frogs hadn't already tipped you off, is not a subtle movie. Its emotions run high and hot, and even Cruise eventually falls prey to the melodrama in a sobbing, furious bedside reunion with Robards . Still, he's electric in the part, a deeply damaged man so determined to master the universe — to penetrate it, if you will — that he hasn't truly looked in the mirror in years. The novelty in hearing a star of Cruise's toothy, clean-scrubbed magnitude scream the C-word wears off eventually; the pain and mania behind it stays.

It's also a little bit disconcerting how physically gorgeous he still is, hotel-samurai ponytail aside. But if you feel uncomfortable finding him attractive as a cross between Caligula and Tony Robbins, there's a cure for that: Thunder 's Grossman, the bald, bespectacled studio chief with forearms the size of ham hocks and the core personality traits of an irate water buffalo. (He, too, is said to be based on a real-life character, in this case famed Die Hard producer Joel Silver .) While the cast of a fictional film-within-a-film that includes Ben Stiller (who also directed and cowrote the script) and Robert Downey Jr. in blackface (listen, kids, it was 2008) watches their shoot in a remote jungle go spectacularly awry, Les is the guy back in L.A. playing hardball.

Does he negotiate with terrorists, even when they're holding one of his biggest stars for ransom? Les doesn't play that . Will he shout down Matthew McConaughey 's mercenary agent until he gets him to trade the life of his prized client for a G5? Well, if he must. And does he dance on the graves of his enemies? Just watch him Dougie. Grossman is the monologue king, blithely inured to other human beings and their petty needs; mouths are moving, but only money really makes a sound. The churn of bumper-sticker quotables aside ("I'm talking scorched earth, mother-f---er, I will massacre you"; "That's physics, it's inevitable"), he's just a joy to watch: a giant ball of id barrelling down the lens, without explanation or apology. In these roles, one of the most famously controlled figures in show business seems to find his own sticky sweet spot: Give Cruise chaos, and set him free.

Related content:

• Tom Cruise rewatch: Why Tom Cruise is to die for in Edge of Tomorrow
• Tom Cruise rewatch: 'Collateral' turned him into a villain for the ages
• Top Gun: Maverick review: A high-flying sequel gets it right

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Why Tom Cruise Demanded Dancing And Fat Fingers For Tropic Thunder

Who could forget Tom Cruise 's legendary performance as Les Grossman in 2008's Tropic Thunder ? Not only did he invent the character , but he also almost got an entire movie centering around that character. How cool would that have been? It's no wonder Grossman ranks among Cruise's best characters ever . Cruise's genius, coupled with his innate ability to feel out characters before they're even fully fleshed out, helped turn Grossman into the phenomenon he is now.

Speaking to popular late-night host Conan O'Brien during “ ConanCon ,” Tom Cruise explained how the now-famous character came to be. After Conan showed a clip of Cruise's dance performance from the film's end credits, Cruise said that learning to dance and learning comedy were among many things he wanted to perfect. In his words:

I take classes all the time to learn things or I want to improve a skill… singing, music, something I’m studying. I take dance classes and I took hip-hop classes and then I’ll find a character to put that with.

Because Tom Cruise created one of Tropic Thunder 's best characters, he demanded that his input be put in to the finished product, and he was willing to learn whatever it took to get the job done. It was, and it was glorious. Les Grossman proved so popular and so in-demand that Cruise agreed to bring him to the MTV Movie Awards back in 2010. It's amazing what hilarious mid-credits dancing can do for your career.

After that earlier tidbit, Tom Cruise circled back to Les Grossman and said what everyone in the room (and probably on the planet) wanted to hear:

I said, ‘Look, I’d love to play this character, but I want to have fat hands and I’m gonna dance.'

Man, he's good. I mean, c'mon. Who doesn't love sausage fingers and a proclivity for outrageously bad dancing? The guy has a good eye for what the audience wants, and boy, does he deliver. I'd love to see more of him if the franchise is ever revisited. Here's to hoping it is!

In the last five or so years, Cruise has taken on more serious, more action-heavy roles, some of his more recent ones being Doug Liman 's American Made and the fourth, fifth, and sixth installments in the wildly popular Mission: Impossible franchise. He has always had remarkable range as an actor, a fact that his various film roles clearly reflect.

If you're itching for a new Tom Cruise performance, you can catch him in Top Gun: Maverick when it hits theaters in June 2020. Or, you know, you could just watch him in Tropic Thunder or any of the Mission: Impossible movies for the millionth time. It really doesn't ever get old and it satisfies two very different moods.

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Tropic Thunder

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Release details.

• Release date: Friday 1 August 2008
• Duration: 107 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Ben Stiller
• Screenwriter: Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux, Etan Cohen
• Robert Downey Jr
• Danny R. McBride
• Jay Baruchel
• Brandon T. Jackson
• Steve Coogan
• Matthew McConaughey
• Brandon Soo Hoo
• Ben Stiller

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How tom cruise's bizarre 'tropic thunder' character was created — and why we may see him again.

(Paramount) Tom Cruise as Les Grossman in "Tropic Thunder."

One of the highlights of the 2008 Ben Stiller comedy “Tropic Thunder” is Les Grossman, the venom-spewing, Diet Coke-drinking studio head who doesn’t care that the lead actor (Stiller) in his multimillion-dollar movie has been kidnapped in the jungles of Vietnam.

The reason why the character is so memorable is simple: He's played by Tom Cruise.

Well, it was probably the best time for Cruise to do something that’s not in his wheelhouse. Back then, Cruise was still getting over the box-office disaster of “Mission: Impossible 3,” and his public statements about Scientology caused Viacom chair Sumner Redstone to tell a reporter , “We don’t think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot.”

Thankfully, Cruise's friend Ben Stiller wanted him to be in “Thunder.” And as the movie’s coscreenwriter Justin Theroux tells it, they wanted Cruise to have a larger part.

“We were talking to Tom about maybe doing Ben’s part — we wanted him in the movie,” Theroux told Business Insider while doing press for “Zoolander 2,” which he also cowrote. “We thought it would be a real coup to get him in the movie.”

But Cruise pushed for the minor studio-head role, so Theroux went to work on the character.

(Jeff Spicer/Getty) Justin Theroux.

“I went back and started working on it and sketching it out and basically creating the most vile character I could create,” Theroux revealed. “And there was a moment of going, ‘Oh, s--t, eventually Tom is going to see these pages and he’s going to be like, 'What the hell are you doing?’”

But that was far from the case. In fact, Cruise encouraged Theroux and Stiller to make the character even more offensive.

And when it came to the Les Grossman look — balding and overweight — Cruise suggested another memorable feature.

“He wanted these prosthetic hands — big, chubby hands,” Theroux said of Cruise's pointer.

In many ways. the Les Grossman character made Cruise hip again to an audience that was starting to write him off.

Since the release of “Tropic Thunder,” many have pushed for a spinoff that focuses on Grossman.

Theroux, for one, is game, and it seems like it might be tentatively in the works.

“We’ve talked about it,” Theroux said. “But it’s one of those things where we go, we don’t want to jam anything, we just want to make sure the tone is right and it would be the right story.”

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