Ben Stiller: Taking Chances with "Tropic Thunder"

Aug. 13, 2008— -- Ben Stiller may be one of comedy's most bankable stars, but for once, the old film cliché happens to be correct: Unlike so many of his movie acting peers, what he really wants to do … is direct.

Stiller, 42, stars in, co-wrote and directed "Tropic Thunder," a $90 million war-zone comedy hitting theaters today.

But in the days before its release, "Tropic Thunder" has been met by protests from advocates for the disabled, who object to the film's repeated use of the word "retard" to describe a character portrayed by Stiller's character, Tugg Speedman, a fading action star, desperate for an Oscar.

"We screened the movie so many times and this didn't come up until very late and I think the guy spearheading [the protest] hasn't seen the movie. So in the context of the film I think it's really clear, they were making fun of the actors and actors who try to use serious subjects to win awards," Stiller said on "Good Morning America" today. "It's about actors and self-importance. I think the context of the movie it's pretty clear."

Stiller said he wanted to try his hand in the director's chair, even as his peers chose to stay in front of the camera.

"You get to, you know, make the decisions and the choices and get to sort of try to make it happen the way you see it in your head, which is what directing is," Stiller told "Nightline."

"Tropic Thunder" serves up a group of pampered, self-impressed actors who are making a troubled Vietnam-era war picture and drops them, unaware, into a real war zone. Stiller said the inspiration for the movie came in the 1980s, as he watched many of his fellow performers head off to actor "boot camps" for films such as "Platoon" and "Hamburger Hill."

"The idea was in there for, you know, something about actors and war movies," he said. "Just a bunch of spoiled actors stars who go off and make a war movie and get stuck out in the jungle. And then, 10 years later, we finally made the movie."

But the target of "Tropic Thunder" is Hollywood, not the military. Stiller himself grew up in a Hollywood family, the son of the comedy pair and real-life couple Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller, who helped along their young son's directing ambitions by giving him a Super 8 camera.