From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

You can also hear the show at KCRW.com.

My guest you may know from the Ben Stiller show on MTV or the Ben Stiller show on Fox or

movies he's produced, such as well, one of my favorites dodgeball, a place of glory, or the movies

he starred in like Zoolander and Meet the Falkers and Meet the Parents. His new film, which he

directed, co-written and stars in as well is, of course, Tropic Thunder, my guess, has Ben,

thanks for doing this.

You're welcome. Tell us a little bit of what the movie's about, just for listeners.

Yeah, I mean, it's about a bunch of actors that go off to Vietnam to do a Vietnam War movie,

a bunch of stars. And basically, the director wants more reality, so he sort of takes them out into the jungle

and they get stuck out in the jungle up in the Golden Triangle area and get involved in a real

situation where they basically have to defend themselves against real drug runners.

But you also, in the writing, chose three different kinds of, well, let's say archetypes

of current movie stars. Yeah, yeah, let's say archetypes of current movie stars.

Yeah, yeah, there's, well, there's sort of the fading action star that I play Tug Speedman.

It's sort of like the guy who is like, you know, was big a few years ago and has done the sequels,

and he's on, you know, Scorcher 6 now, which is this post-apocalyptic sort of, you know,

a guy who saves the planet from destruction because the Earth's rotation has stopped.

And now it's gotten to Scorcher 6 and it's basically run its course and he needs a hit.

And his last outing didn't do that well either where he tried to be taken seriously.

So he wants Tropic Thunder, the movie, which is the name of the movie within the movie, to work.

...