"Tropic Thunder" Goes Viral with Hilarious-Looking "Rain of Madness" Mockumentary

By: Adam Quigley Posted: July 9, 2008 Filed under: Posters, Trailers

In what I would argue is one of the most ingenious marketing tactics ever executed, an official site, trailer and poster have been released for Rain of Madness, a supposed documentary about the chaos that was the making of the Vietnam war epic featured within Tropic Thunder.

This is clearly a play on Hearts of Darkness, the acclaimed documentary that detailed the making of Apocalypse Now.

Click to see the full-sized poster.

Although it's not yet been confirmed whether there is actually a full mockumentary that's going to be available, my guess is that there is, since there's clearly a lot of effort that's gone into the creation of everything that's been released thus far. The only question is when we're going to be able to see it and how.

Here's the trailer...

You can also watch it in HD at Apple.

There is also more faux-info at the official site, talking a little bit about Jan Jürgen, the German filmmaker behind the documentary.

As hilarious as all this is though, I can't help but think about how much funnier it would've been had they made the mockumentary focus on the making of the actual Tropic Thunder, and not the Vietnam epic within it. Not only would it have allowed the cast and crew of the film to poke fun at themselves (similar to how the Judd Apatow clan have done on their film's DVDs), but also, then it would've been a documentary about the making of a movie that's about the making of a movie. For some reason that concept amuses me.