Once upon a time, there was a big-budget movie satire called Tropic Thunder, which was co-written by its director and star, Ben Stiller, along with actor Justin Theroux and Etan Coen (not to be confused with Ethan Coen, but the Mike Judge associate who worked on Idiocracy and th Beavis and Butt-head movie). As those with really long memories may recall, the "controversy" regarding this movie was going to be about a character played by Robert Downey, Jr., an obsessively committed Method actor who is cast in a role that had originally been written as an African-American and who insists on playing it in blackface. (Some have speculated that the actor's Aussie background is meant as a slap at Russell Crowe. In a recent New York Times Q & A with the movie's director-star-co-writer Ben Stiller and one of his co-writers, Justin Theroux, Stiller insists, "He was always an Irishman, and then when Downey came on, he decided to play him Australian because he said he could improvise better in Australian. I don’t know where that came from." We're guessing that it came, at least in part, from this..) But now, in an unexpected twist, the movie is instead being targeted by advocacy groups for those with mental disabilities, several of which are threatening an organized boycott.
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