UPDATE : The "terrorist leader" Sacha Baron-Cohen boasts about securing an interview with for his new movie Bruno turns out to be a Palestinian who has worked with Israel to return home captured Israeli soldiers. The Palestinian claims that Baron-Cohen told him the interview would "help the Palestinians" and it doesn't sound like Baron-Cohen was in costume or character as Bruno when he did the interview.
PREVIOUSLY....
A 75 year old southern gentleman who loves ballroom dancing with his friends in Alabama found himself on the receiving end of a Sacha Baron-Cohen prank for his new movie, Bruno. Cohen came to their small dance with his film crew, in character as Austrian gay attention whore, Bruno, and tried to shock these 'old timers' with an 'outrageous' deep kiss with his male dancing partner. Ooooh, cutting edge comedy. How radical. How...last century.
The southern gentleman points out that few of his fiends at the dance were shocked by the kiss. But they were outraged that their southern hospitality had been taken advantage of. So simple revenge was plotted :
And here's an observation that gets rarely mentioned in all the discussions and reviews and fucking endless op-eds about Cohen's 'gotcha' movie-making :Calling friends in other ballroom groups the next morning, I found he'd booked to film more dances – in Huntsville, and also Chattanooga and Nashville in Tennessee. Sacha's organised, but we're very organised, too. We put out the word on the internet and they were all cancelled. He was on our territory, so we could do what we liked. Sorry for messing up your schedule, Brüno.
In the South we are taught to trust people, to show hospitality. In return we were insulted. Baron Cohen, I concluded, was little more than an empty shell. Religion has b,een reported to be important to him, but his personal religion seems to be based on greed and deriving pleasure from shocking others, often being cruel and uncaring – to get what he is after.
...those sheets of paper we signed were release forms, giving our consent to the footage being used in Sacha's forthcoming film about Brüno, the gay Austrian television reporter. We were, it turned out, extras working for a pittance.Or no money at all. Dozens, hundreds of people, appeared in the extremely profitable Borat and Bruno movies, and some had near starring roles, but none of them got paid what any other actor would have received for the same amount of screen time in any other big studio movie. And the 'extras' who populate Cohen's movies don't get a screen credit, either.
And here's a most curious interview of Sacha Baron-Cohen, out of character, discussing how he managed to get an interview with "an actual terrorist". How did this British satirist get to interview a real terrorist? His "contact" at the CIA helped out.
Err, what?
Australians, of course, have seen Cohen's act done before, and better, decades ago.
In the 1970s, we had Norman Gunston. Norman Gunston was a richly-crafted character played by actor Gary McDonald who would front up to interviews and press conferences, as just another reporter, though a uniquely bizarre looking one, and proceed to cause confusion, chaos and plenty of laughs. The difference with Norman Gunston was he pulled his pranks on celebrities and politicians, not everyday people who were kind enough to invite some freak to their dance or dinner party.
Here's Norman Gunston interviewing Mick Jagger :
And here's Norman Gunston interviewing Mohammed Ali :
