Ben Stiller is a comedian who has produced and starred in some pretty funny movies. One such movie is the 2008 “Tropic Thunder,” which he directed. “Tropic Thunder” (like “Blazing Saddles”) could never be made today. In the film, Robert Downey Jr. Plays a “white dude playin’ a black dude.” He wears blackface and prosthetics to make him more authentic. His character is a method actor so even when he’s not being “filmed” he remains in character. He says he’s a “black dude playin’ white dude, playing a black dude.”
Downey’s character is an “actor” who knows what an actor can and cannot do in character. He laments that a character that Ben Stiller played in another movie went too far. Stiller played a severely mentally-addled man. Downey (the white man playing a black man) tells Stiller: “Everybody knows you never go full retard…you went full…
