Tropic Thunder storm brewing

If your film is controversial, you’d better be ready for someone to take offense. And while you’d think Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder would already have enough on its hands with Robert Downey Jr’s blackface satire, the film is finding itself in hot water with a very different group.

Seems advocates for the disabled are objecting to the film’s portrayal of Stiller’s character Tugg Speedman and his fake film-within-the-film featuring a character called Simple Jack. Despite its focus on actors who think of mentally handicapped characters as Oscar bait, the groups are enraged with the constant use of the word “retard”. “I came out feeling like I had been assaulted,” David C Tolleson, executive director of the Down syndrome group who saw the movie told The New York Times in its report on the issue.

The complainants have already been in to meet with the DreamWorks team to see if a compromise can be worked out, though while a poster for Simple Jack has been removed from Tropic Thunder’s website, DreamWorks says it has no plans to make cuts to the actual film. The disabled rights’ groups are now planning to protest at the premiere and boycott the film when it arrives across the pond. Click the link for more on the story.