Tropic Thunder

Downey stars in action comedy film Tropic Thunder directed, produced and co-written by Ben Stiller. He plays multi-award winning actor Kirk Lazarus who gets cast in a huge Vietnam war film along with Tug Speedman played by Stiller, and Jeff Portnoy played by Jack Black. Their outrageous antics causes their director, played by Steve Coogan, to place them in a real jungle and film them there. On preparing for his role:

(There) were two things. One is I said at one point, I didn’t want to do this. I said at one point, “If he goes too far, it’s good,” provided Brandon (T. Jackson who plays) Alpa Chino, gets to pull up the slack and say, “Dude, you are so stereotyping yourself right now that I’m embarrassed for you and you wouldn’t last a second in my neighborhood,” type thing.