Sacha Baron Cohen

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Brüno's Sacha Baron Cohen: More Than a Comedian
By Richard Lacayo
Jul. 08, 2009
time.com

There's a legendary moment in Borat when you stop laughing and move on to a sort of desperate, horrified gasping because what you're seeing is, literally, beyond funny. That moment, of course, is the nude wrestling match between Borat, a hairy beanpole of a broadcaster from Kazakhstan, and his producer, a mountain of bearded blubber. When you're presented with a sight like that — the most purely awful spectacle since Divine sampled dog poop at the end of John Waters' Pink Flamingos — something more than mere laughter is required. Like maybe a call to 911.

There's nothing quite that shock-and-awesome in Brüno, in which Sacha Baron Cohen is a gay Austrian fashionista who sets himself loose upon an unsuspecting world. How could there be? Since we now know there's nothing Baron Cohen won't do, we can't really be surprised when he does it. Make no mistake — the man who once asked an enraged neo-Nazi if he used moisturizer is still willing to go places you wouldn't go in body armor. So he gives us Brüno on a camping trip trying to seduce some revolted Alabama hunters; Brüno getting belt-whipped — hard — by a nude dominatrix; Brüno in a steel-cage match melting into wet kisses with his opponent while the crowd goes wild — and not in a good way. But even when Brüno is in a hotel room infuriating members of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades — a situation that needs to be handled with care, especially if the guy handling it is a fey blond who hasn't heard that hot pants went out with Charlie's Angels — you think, Hey, at least they're not in a bear hug. (See pictures of outrageous Brüno promotions.)

It's safe to say that after more than a decade honing his characters on television and in films, Baron Cohen is more than a comedian. He's the world's most famous performance artist, the inventor of a perfect hybrid of documentary and mockumentary, reality TV and psychodrama, Jackass and Andy Kaufman. When he gets the mixture just right, he creates situations of unbearable tension that at the same time turn out to be unbearably funny. For instance, at one point Brüno does a Madonna/Angelina, coming back from Africa with a baby. Then he appears as a guest on an actual talk show and tells the mostly African-American audience that he got the kid by trading an iPod for him. He also has the boy dressed in a T-shirt that says "Gayby." The crowd goes wild — and not in a good way. Scenes like that are the emotional equivalent of Guantánamo stress positions. They're very uncomfortable, and sometimes you're left in them for a long time. Maybe laughter is the only way out.

For the record, Brüno, like Borat, was directed by Larry Charles. And as with Borat, the story in Brüno is just the merest pretext for stringing together provocations. At the beginning, Brüno is the hip-cocking host of Funkyzeit, a late-night Austrian TV show that tours the world of style. When he wrecks a runway show and ends up shunned by the Euro-fashion crowd, he lights out for the Middle East, Africa and the U.S. to become "the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler." At which point Brüno becomes, again like Borat, a road comedy, the odyssey of an outlandish man whose greatest talent — actually, his only talent — is to bring out the worst in other people. And Brüno's basic m.o., like Borat's, is to go into the world with a camera to bewilder and infuriate people, never failing to prove that anger and stupidity are the permanent default modes of the human brain.

Some parts of Brüno — the weakest ones — are closer to conventional scripted comedy than anything in Borat. A montage of scenes of sexual gymnastics involving Brüno and a pint-size Asian boyfriend could have come from a Will Ferrell movie, assuming Ferrell was willing to have himself penetrated by a mechanical dildo. (And don't bet he wouldn't be.) But Brüno's encounters with real people are priceless, even when the real people are celebrities. When the L.A. house he is renting as a location for a new interview show turns out to be unfurnished, Brüno recruits some Mexican laborers to get down on all fours as human benches. What kind of person would actually sit on other people? Now we know: Paula Abdul, warily, and LaToya Jackson, with gusto. Jackson's scene was cut from the film after Michael's death, so unless it's restored on the DVD, you won't get to see that what really offends her about the situation is not the humiliation of the workers but Brüno's persistent attempts to get her brother's phone number.

It goes without saying that Stephen Colbert owes Baron Cohen a debt too large to repay, but by comparison, Colbert plays it safe. His guests always know that Colbert's right-wing blowhard character is a put-on, and they happily play along. When Brüno tries to start a cuddle party with Texas Representative Ron Paul — "Has anyone ever told you, you look like Enrique Iglesias?" — the flustered former presidential candidate is definitely not in on the joke. As Paul makes his panicky escape down a hallway, he clues in one of his aides: "This guy is a queer!"

You can find sources for Baron Cohen's comic method in a lot of places. He's a great fan of Peter Sellers, and one Sellers role in particular hovers over everything Baron Cohen does — Chance the Gardener, the blank slate in Being There who provokes all those around him to expose themselves in some way. And then there's the other comic who was routinely described as a performance artist: Andy Kaufman. For starters, Borat owes a thing or two to Latka, the Ruritanian innocent that Kaufman played on Taxi. More important, Baron Cohen's approach calls to mind those Kaufman routines — though routine is the wrong word for anything he did — in which he deliberately set out to bore and bewilder his audiences, just to see what would happen. In one he went onstage and simply read aloud from The Great Gatsby. While everyone waited for the joke, the punch line, the something, the anything, he just kept reading. (See pictures of the Kazakhstan Borat didn't depict.)

But Kaufman reserved his passive aggression for audiences, who because they were audiences were already primed for a performance of some kind, even if they didn't always get the joke. Baron Cohen takes his act out into the wider world, all for the fun of proving what fools these mortals be. That includes the mortals called Ali G, Borat and Brüno — Baron Cohen's comic characters are as dumb and deplorable as the people they mock. Ali G is a self-deluding white guy who yearns to be a black rapper. Borat is a rube and an anti-Semite. This is why the inevitable debate over whether the new film is a critique of homophobia or an incitement to more of it misses the point. Brüno sees everybody in the pejorative, including Brüno, who is trivial, narcissistic, mean to his devoted assistant and obsessed with cheesy fame. But even so, he's preferable to a lot of the people he meets, with their ignorance and prejudice, hypocrisy and primitive rage. Brüno may be a bumbler, but he holds all the cards — he's the character who turns out to be lovable, because how can you not love somebody who makes you laugh so hard? Hell, how can you not be in awe of somebody who can persuade a martial-arts instructor to demonstrate the many ways to defend yourself against a homosexual who attacks you from behind with two dildos? Ron Paul, take note.

Brüno could be looked at as the third in a trilogy of films that Baron Cohen has devoted to each of the three characters he developed first on British television and then on HBO. Though Ali G Indahouse was a hit in the U.K., it went straight to video in the U.S. Borat was, of course, a global cultural and box-office phenomenon, except maybe in Kazakhstan, where some people got a bit sniffy. Both characters are too famous now for Baron Cohen to use them anymore as a lure for the unsuspecting. Before the summer is out, Brüno will be too. So this may be the last film of this strange and brilliant kind that Baron Cohen can make for a while, maybe forever. Even Ron Paul wouldn't fall for Brüno anymore. But chances are you will, and hard.

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The non-profit worker from Bethlehem who was branded a terrorist by Bruno
• Christian activist plans to sue Sacha Baron Cohen
• Interview was filmed in hotel, not refugee camp
Rachel Shabi in Beit Jala
guardian.co.uk
31 July 2009

For a supposed terrorist, Ayman Abu Aita is remarkably easy to find. It takes one phone call to set up a meeting with the man described in the hit movie Brüno as a "terrorist group leader". He sits alone at a long, white table in the gardens of the Everest hotel and restaurant in Beit Jala, a mountain village near Bethlehem. This, he says, is the "secret location" where he met Brüno, played by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Popular with tourists, the restaurant sits next to an Israeli military compound, not far from the all-seeing watchtowers of the winding separation wall.

"How could he say this about me?" asks Abu Aita. "He lied from the beginning and he is still lying now." Abu Aita, 44, from Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, is described in the film Brüno as a member of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of the Fatah movement. Now Abu Aita plans to sue for defamation, while Baron Cohen has reportedly received threats from the brigade.

Baron Cohen's film protagonist Brüno is a gay fashion-obsessed Austrian TV host who, in a short clip featuring Abu Aita, asks to be kidnapped in a bid to get famous. He thinks that Palestinian terrorists are the "best guys" for the job, because "al-Qaida are so 2001". Promoting the film recently on the David Letterman talkshow in the US, Baron Cohen explained that finding a "terrorist" to interview for the movie took several months and some help from a CIA contact. He described the secular Martyrs Brigades, most of whom signed an amnesty deal with Israel in 2007, as "the number one suicide bombers out there".

Abu Aita said: "My file is clear with the Americans. I was in the states twice and I travel all the time." He is a Christian Fatah representative – of the movement's political wing, he stresses – for Bethlehem district. He is also a member of the board of the Holy Land trust, a non-profit organisation that works on Palestinian community-building. "I am a non-violent activist and I am not ashamed of that," he says.

The interview with Baron Cohen was set up via Awni Jubran, a journalist for the Palestinian news agency, PNN, who received a call from the film's producer. "My friend Awni told me they wanted a Palestinian campaigner to talk about the situation for a documentary, to show young people what life is like in the Palestinian territories," says Abu Aita. He met Baron Cohen one week later, accompanied by Jubran and Sami Awad, founder of the Holy Land trust – although Baron Cohen described the two to Letterman as bodyguards for "the terrorist". Abu Aita says that Brüno's crew chose the location, which is under total Israeli control – and which appears in the film as Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp, in Lebanon.

"We trust people and we never refuse an opportunity to discuss the Palestinian cause," he says. "We went upstairs to one of the hotel rooms and talked about the Palestinian situation for over two hours," says Abu Aita, adding that Brüno seemed serious – although his knowledge was limited.

At the very end of the discussion, Baron Cohen asked a couple of questions about al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, which Abu Aita considered oddly out of place and which he asked the translator to repeat. Then, when Brüno asked to be kidnapped, Abu Aita says that his actual reply was edited out. "I was angered by the question," says Abu Aita. "I said, first of all I'm not a terrorist. Second, you are a guest here, so I must take care of you until you leave my country."

Abu Aita forgot all about the interview until the the film came out and he started to receive countless calls from outraged Palestinians. "They ask how I could allow myself to be laughed at in this way, how I could agree to it," he says. "They are angry that I have embarrassed the Palestinian people, because we are being presented in this false, disgusting way."

Abu Aita is standing in the Palestinian parliamentary elections slated for January 2010, and opposition candidates are already using this incident to discredit him. He says it is also damaging for him to appear in a gay film, which features nudity and graphic sex scenes. "With our culture and our heritage we refuse such things," says Abu Aita. He is well known in the area and several people testify to his good character and good sense of humour. "Brüno can make jokes about anything he wants, but this is not a joke," says Abu Aita. "Calling me a terrorist is not funny – it is lying."

Discussing his plans to sue, the Fatah official says he did not sign release forms for the footage of him which appeared in the film. His lawyer, a Palestinian-Israeli from Nazareth, says that such cases can result in million dollar compensation payouts in the US.

A spokesman for Baron Cohen declined to comment.

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I hope he gets millions in court for this. And then uses it to promote Palestine...

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A post on Facebook by Lowkey (hip-hop artist):

Taking into account Sacha Baron Cohen's various depictions: Ali (a muslim name) G, Borat (a journalist from the predominately Muslim country Kazakhstan) and this latest situation with "Bruno" and the "Al-Aqsa Brigade".

In your opinion is his "comedy" racist propaganda intended to effect it's audience's perception of certain groups or is it just harmless family entertainment?

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That's not a fair question really... I think he plays on people's perceptions, but a lot of these perceptions are created by the media in the first place, so laying the blame at his feet isn't correct.

I hope he loses a lot of money out of accusing this guy of being a terrorist though.