Jesus H, the “Tropic Thunder” viral campaign just refuses to quit. There’s already websites for the “Hearts of Darkness”-esque “documentary” of the film, “Rain of Madness,” Ben Stiller’s dullard action hero, Tugg Speedman, Robert Downey Jr.’s overly-serious Lee Strasberg-ian actor Kirk Lazarus, Jack Black’s puerile gastropodic comedian Jeff Portnoy and now there’s, yes, there’s another… a website for “Cody Effects” the pyrotechnic company run by Cody Keith Underwood (aka Danny R. McBride from “Pineapple Express” and “The Foot Fist Way“).
We kind of suggested we’d snap if Paramount made any more of these sites, but with the old-school ’96 website design complete with animated fire, oversized bullet points and cheap-ass design, we have to smile and admit this one is pretty clever too. His bio:
“As a young man, Cody worked briefly as an apprentice pyro-technician for the bands Dokken, Dio, Stryper, and Warrant. On the road, it didn’t take long for Cody to master the art of blowing things up. After just eight months of apprenticeship, Cody moved north to tour with the band WASP, and agreed to manage and maintain their special effects and pyrotechnic light show. The job was short lived however due to creative differences with the band’s lead singer.”
The best part? He’s apparently done pyrotechnic work previously on films like, “Driving Miss Daisy,” “Remains of the Day,” “Freaky Friday” and “Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood.” Ha, ok, that’s funny. McBride already stole a big chunk of “Pineapple Express,” so it’s plausible he could do the same in ‘Thunder,’ though granted he looks like he has an even smaller role in the Vietnam war comedy. Either way, his break-out success this year come end of the year retrospective time is almost already guaranteed.
Jan Jürgen (Justin Theroux ), the ‘Madness’ documentarian says of Cody/McBride, “His continued ignorance and arrogance is awesome.” Theroux is totally channelling Werner Herzog in his pretentious narration (see clip below of Lazarus) and man, it’s kind of amazing well played.
God, for a film that we still think doesn’t look that funny, and by the sounds of the reviews out there isn’t that funny (and sounds like it’s surely not up our alley), we’ve surely spent a fuck of a lot of time parsing the viral sites of this film. We should be getting paid for this or something. Sigh…
We’ve also got three more songs from the soundtrack to preview including a sneak peek and a first listen of The Mooney Suzuki’s spot-on cover of “I Just Want to Celebrate” (it sounds so exactly like the original Rare Earth track; you kinda wonder why they bothered do do a cover in the first place). The NY rockers actually make a cameo in the movie and the other songs are the classic ’60s tune “I’d Love To Change The World” by Ten Years After and the theme to TV’s “The Jefferson’s” by Janet DuBois (that’s presumably played in the movie when RDJ turns black – note there’s even a site for this! It’s called Make Pretty Skin Clinic and it has a Lazurus testimonial, jesus). Man, no wonder they say Paramount spent $30 million dollars marketing ‘Thunder.’
Cody Keith Underwood Blows Shit Up
Jan Jürgen on Kirk Lazurus: