Simmering anger came to a head Monday at the Los Angeles debut of 'Tropic of Thunder,' as dozens marched and chanted slogans expressing their displeasure with the movie's depiction of the mentally disabled.
The primary focus of the protesters' ire is 'Simple Jack,' a film-within-the-film bearing the tag line "Once there was a retard." In it, Ben Stiller's character plays the title role, a mentally disabled man, in a failed effort to win an Oscar.
“You never go the full retard,” Robert Downey Jr. tells Stiller in explaining why he didn't win an Academy Award.
"When I heard about (‘Simple Jack’), I felt really hurt inside," Special Olympics global messenger Dustin Plunkett told the Associated Press. "I cannot believe a writer could write something like that. It's the not the way that we want to be portrayed. We have feelings. We don't like the word retard. We are people. We're just like any other people out there. We want to be ourselves and not be discriminated against."
Following the original complaints from advocacy groups, DreamWorks took down a Web site that promoted the film-within-a-film. DreamWorks spokesman Chip Sullivan previously said in a statement that "no changes or cuts to the film will be made."
Of course, Downey's portrayal of Kirk Lazarus, an Australian actor who undergoes a surgical procedure to darken his skin so he can play a black character, posed its own obvious risks of racial insensitivity.
The success of Downey's character is thanks in large part to co-star and real-life black actor Brandon T. Jackson, Stiller told Entertainment Weekly.
“We were rehearsing in Hawaii and we got to (a scene where Lazarus uses the N-word) and I said to him, ‘What do you think of this?’ Brandon said, 'This feels wrong.' It was definitely a constant process of feeling it out.”
Downey’s portrayal of Lazarus is earning raves from all corners. David Edelstein of New York magazine said, “As much as Downey sends up the ‘Shafts’ and ‘Super Flys,’ he respects the beauty and weight and potency of the archetype. He drops his voice an octave (at least) and what comes out is gorgeous. He really does make a damn fine Negro.”
'Thunder' also features a potentially controversial cameo by Tom Cruise as a balding, foul-mouthed Jewish film executive named Les Grossman. The character's little dance and appearance were partly Cruise's brainchild.
"It wasn't in the script," said Stiller, reports People magazine. "He was like, 'You know, I really feel like I want this guy to dance,' " and “'I really want to have some big, hairy hands,' " says Stiller.
‘Borat,’ Sasha baron Cohen’s 2006 movie about a reporter from Kazakhstan traveling across America, was the last comedy hit to elicit this level of anger for its alleged racial insensitivity, upsetting Kazakhs, Gypsies and Jews – despite Cohen himself being a Jew.
Cohen said he was trying to offer a "dramatic demonstration of how racism feeds on dumb conformity, as much as rabid bigotry," reported E! Online.
