One of the characters in Ben Stiller's "Tropic Thunder" is an Australian actor world Health Organization undergoes a deep-tissue pigmentation to go black. One is an overweight, drug-addled comic wHO seems to speak only in farts.
Stiller and ship's company have navigated plenty of minefields in their new Hollywood irony, and the unlikeliest one of all might slip them up. A syndicate of handicap groups has called for a national boycott of the highly anticipated war spoof because of what they see as open ridicule of the mentally handicapped, according to The New York Times.
In the movie, Stiller's character, Tugg Speedman, plays a lineament called "Simple Jack" in a photographic film within the film, a satire of actors world Health Organization chase Oscar glory by portraying the mentally challenged. Disgraced by his performance, Speedman is repeatedly referred to passim the picture as a "retard."
"The to the highest degree disappointing thing, the most incredible thing, is that nobody caught it," Special Olympics chairwoman Timothy Perry Shriver told the paper, adding that he plotted to picket the film's Monday (August 11) premiere in L.A. and postulate Congress for a resolve condemning the movie's alleged "hate speech."
"That will be the take up of a nationwide protest," Special Olympics spokesman Peter Wheeler told Reuters. "We will persist in to be vocal about the destructive effect of this film. We ar asking people not to go to the flick and leslie Townes Hope to bring a consciousness to masses about exploitation derogatory actor's line about this population."
While not denying that ridicule exists in the film, Wheeler, Shriver and the rest of the protesters overlook the point of wHO is beingness made fun of, Stiller told MTV News.
"It's sort of restive territory, only we felt that as long as the focal point was on the actors who were trying to do something to be taken seriously that's sledding too far or wrong, that was where the humor would come from," Stiller insisted. "[The laugh is on] actors stretch for roles in damage of hopefully winning awards."
"Some people have taken this as making fun of handicapped people, but we're really stressful to make fun of the actors who usage this real as fodder for hail," co-writer Etan Cohen echoed to MTV. "The last thing you want is for people to think you're fashioning fun of the victims in this who ar having their lives off into fodder for people to gain Oscars."
The put-on, then, is really on people like Dustin Hoffman ("Rain Man"), Sean Penn, ("I Am Sam") and Tom Hanks ("Forrest Gump"), actors wHO do more harm than good by denying the painful realities of the illness and instead paint their characters as too sunny or bright, Cohen said.
"Movies about the mentally retarded is something we talked about for a long time. My grandpa was adopted by a mentally developmentally challenged man, a man world Health Organization shouldn't suffer been allowed to embrace a kid," Cohen revealed. "When he saw 'Forrest Gump,' you never saw a guy angrier than him. It was non such a picnic to be raised by that guy."
According to The Times, over a dozen groups, including the National Down Syndrome Congress, plan to join the boycott, urging Paramount and DreamWorks Studios to change the film's content.
No such changes volition be made, DreamWorks spokesman Chip Sullivan insisted in a statement released to Ain't It Cool News.
"The film is in no way meant to disparage or trauma the figure of individuals with disabilities. We have had fat discussions with representatives of disability-advocacy organizations and look forward to working with them closely in the future," Sullivan wrote. "However, no changes or cuts to the film will be made."
"Tropic Thunder" opens Wednesday.
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