The story of the movie Tropic Thunder (2008) follows a group of self-absorbed Hollywood actors who are dropped into the jungles of Southeast Asia to film a gritty Vietnam War epic. The "index" or core premise of the story is a movie-within-a-movie that turns into a real-life survival mission. The Core Plot The Production : The film-within-the-film is based on the memoirs of "Four Leaf" Tayback
: Tom Cruise portrays Les Grossman, a megalomaniacal producer who views his lead actor as a "dying star" and is willing to let him die in the jungle for a G5 airplane and insurance money. index of tropic thunder