Fancast: The Big Picture

To continue the Robert Downey Jr. lovefest I've been having here for the last couple weeks, here's an image from Ben Stiller's next directorial effort Tropic Thunder, a skewering of insufferable actors. True, Hollywood people are easy targets and audiences can get tired of lame in-jokes, but people also have made Entourage a big hit, so it's not impossible to find an audience with this sort of self-referential product. EW's got more details, including some thoughts from Downey himself on playing a pretentious white man playing a black man.

''If it's done right, it could be the type of role you called Peter Sellers to do 35 years ago,'' Downey says. ''If you don't do it right, we're going to hell.''

"At the end of the day, it's always about how well you commit to the character,'' he says. ''I dove in with both feet. If I didn't feel it was morally sound, or that it would be easily misinterpreted that I'm just C. Thomas Howell in [Soul Man], I would've stayed home.''

Downey Jr. plays Kirk Lazarus, a very serious Oscar-winning actor cast in the most expensive Vietnam War film ever. Problem is, Lazarus's character, Sgt. Osiris, was originally written as black. So Lazarus decides to dye his skin and play Osiris, um, authentically. Downey plays one of a team of self-indulgent stars cast in the modern equivalent of Apocalypse Now. Stiller plays an action hero who has just adopted a baby from Asia but worries that ''all the good ones are gone.'' Black portrays a comedian known for performing multiple roles in a single film — his latest is called The Fatties: Fart 2.

So not only is Downey playing a black man, but Jack Black is playing Eddie Murphy. I tend to dislike movies about Hollywood, but this one may have just sold me. And apparently I should finally see Stiller's last directorial work, Zoolander.