Although it’s not on our list of R-rated comedies that earn their R ratings, I’d say Tropic Thunder definitely qualifies. The controversial 2008 movie, which can be streamed with a Paramount+ subscription, follows a group of actors becoming stranded in the Vietnam jungle while shooting a movie about the Vietnam War. In the midst of all the swearing, gore and gunfire, Jack Black’s Jeff Portnoy is shown going through drug withdrawal after losing his stash of “jelly beans” to a bat, and eventually he ends up tied to a water buffalo. As it turns out, shooting the movie with this animal resulted in Black storming off the Tropic Thunder set, but fortunately, this story ends on a heartwarming note.
Jack Black recounted the incident with the water buffalo while appearing on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. After the title host shared his story about the time he got on a water buffalo for his TBS show, was thrown off and ended up with a hematoma, Black confirmed that he’d gone through the same experience when he was working on Tropic Thunder in Kaua’i, Hawaii. The School of Rock alum admitted that he’s “afraid of animals,” so he was understandably concerned about being put onto the water buffalo for a scene. He continued:
To provide a little more context, Jeff Portnoy was strapped to the water buffalo not just because of the withdrawal, but because he was pretending to be the prisoner of Robert Downey Jr.’s Kirk Lazarus, who was disguised as a rice paddy farmer, so they could break into the Flaming Dragon heroin factory and rescue Ben Stiller’s Tugg Speedman. Alas, the Tropic Thunder script did not call for the water buffalo to toss Portnoy off, so it’s fortunate that Jack Black landed the way he did, or he could have been badly injured. Upon getting his bearings, Black lost his cool, though given what he said below, I don’t blame him:
Because of this harrowing ordeal, Jack Black’s stunt double, Jimmy Waitman, stepped in and got onto the back of the water buffalo so the rest of those scenes could be shot. But here’s the final twist: the animal didn’t toss Jack Black off just because it was angry. As the actor explained:
Isn’t that sweet? I agree with Jack Black that it would have been nice if the animal trainers had known that the water buffalo was pregnant, but at least he got a water buffalo named after him. Does that make up for what he went through? Definitely not in Conan O’Brien’s eyes, but Black capped off that portion of the podcast episode saying he’d like to meet Jack the Water Buffalo.
Jack Black’s latest movie, Borderlands, is now playing on the 2024 release schedule, and he’ll next be seen co-starring with Jason Momoa in the 2025 movie Minecraft. In 2022, it was reported that there are still plans to bring back Tom Cruise’s Tropic Thunder character Les Grossman for either his own spinoff or as a supporting character in a different movie, but there haven’t been any updates about that since then.