It has been two weeks since Ben Stiller’s “Tropic Thunder” was released in America and the mockumentary about the film within the film, “Rain of Madness,” has been released as a complete video for FREE on ITunes. We watched it and it’s pretty amusing. “Created by” Justin Theroux and Steve Coogan,the 30 minute farce and stars both men. Coogan plays Damien Cockburn (“50% Werner Herzog, 50% Hal Ashby, and 50% Peter Bogdonavich”) which is the same character he portrayed in ‘Thunder’ and Theroux plays Jan Jurgen (pronounced Hyan Yorgen) an amazingly pretentious, Herzog like documentarian following Cockburn and crew. ‘Thunder’ stars Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller) , Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), and Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) all make appearances as well as Jay Baruchel, Brandon T. Jackson, and Nick Nolte.
The first half focuses on the casting of each of the characters and where they were before they were brought on to the “Tropic Thunder” project and the constant mentioning of Tom Cruise’s Les Grossman complaining about the budget. Cruise doesn’t appear in the short other than in silly pictures of his character, one of them alongside North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il . “Rain of Madness” contains most of the parts seen in ‘Thunder’s’ trailer that weren’t in the feature itself, like Downey Jr.’s character beating the shit out of a random person on the street.
The short also contains more scenes of “Simple Jack” and a pretty hilarious bit from the advertisement Jay Baruchel’s character was in before he was roped in (he had a non-speaking role in a commercial for an erectile dysfunction treatment made for teenagers called, “Prom Knight.” Pretty good stuff). Janeane Garofalo also makes a brief appearance as a doctor specializing in PPST (Post Platoon Stress Disorder) which is brought on after actors star in war films. Lazarus suffers from it, but his symptoms start before he has completed the DVD commentary, so he’s still acting as the black sergeant, which leads to a pretty funny scene in which he takes the family of the man he is portraying hostage.
