Though they hadn’t quite achieved legendary status yet, eventual “Bridesmaids” director Paul Feig starred as counselor Tim, alongside Tom McGowan as Pat, and Leah Lail as nurse Julie. Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara would cameo as the previous owners of Camp Hope, with Jeffrey Tambor, Tim Blake Nelson, and Allen Covert also appearing in supporting roles. Most important of all, Ben Stiller, coming off of “The Ben Stiller Show” and “Reality Bites,” was cast as fitness maestro Tony Perkis. Stiller would go on to become a gigantic star in the years that followed.
Stiller, in “The Making of Heavyweights,” wouldn’t drop the joke and seems borderline method in his commitment. He waxed “80% of his body” and worked with a personal trainer to become Tony Perkis, not to mention the black hair dye. “Tony’s not trying to take anyone’s fun away,” Stiller said at the time. “He’s just trying to run a weight loss camp. Now, sometimes, as he says in the film, fun is involved but pain is the ultimate tool in shifting a belief. It’s just the way it is.”
“He would lift weights in between takes,” Apatow recalled of Stiller in a featurette on the “Heavyweights” Blu-ray titled “Video Chat: Judd & Kenan.” In that same featurette, Thompson recalled thinking that the kids didn’t fully grasp what the film was going to be. They were just along for the ride.
“We didn’t really understand the vision, honestly. I didn’t understand the vision of what the movie was going to be. I just thought, ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll go down here with my Mighty Ducks buddies and make another movie.’ But basically just hang out in the woods at camp for a whole summer. Are they filming it? Is it like a reality thing? I really didn’t get it.”
“It was a little darker than your normal Disney movie,” Apatow mused in the featurette. “Why is everybody home? Did someone die?” Schwartz’s Gerry asks casually early on in the film. Later, after Tony takes over, Gerry writes in a letter, “Someone once said, ‘War is hell,’ They’ve never been to fat camp.” So yeah, it’s a little dark by Disney standards.
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