In an article posted on MTV.com, Ben Stiller responds to the planned boycott of his movie by disability groups across the nation. Stiller said that the point of the scenes isn't to ridicule those with intellectual disabilities, but to poke fun at actors who play characters with intellectual disabilities in hopes of gaining critical acclaim. Stiller and co-writer Etan Cohen are quoted:
"It's sort of edgy territory, but we felt that as long as the focus
was on the actors who were trying to do something to be taken seriously
that's going too far or wrong, that was where the humor would come
from," Stiller insisted. "[The joke is on] actors reaching for roles in
terms of hopefully winning awards."
"Some people have taken this as making fun of handicapped
people, but we're really trying to make fun of the actors who use this
material as fodder for acclaim," co-writer Etan Cohen echoed to MTV.
"The last thing you want is for people to think you're making fun of
the victims in this who are having their lives turned into fodder for
people to win Oscars."
The joke, then, is really on people like Dustin Hoffman ("Rain
Man"), Sean Penn, ("I Am Sam") and Tom Hanks ("Forrest Gump"), actors
who do more harm than good by denying the painful realities of the
illness and instead paint their characters as too sunny or bright,
Cohen said.
"Movies about the mentally retarded is something we talked about for a
long time. My grandfather was adopted by a mentally retarded man, a man
who shouldn't have been allowed to adopt a kid," Cohen revealed. "When
he saw 'Forrest Gump,' you never saw a guy angrier than him. It was not
such a picnic to be raised by that guy."
Dreamworks says no changes will be made to the film.
