Ahoy, squirts! Quint here… Today the lack of sleep and heavy film and interview load really collided, with poor ol’ me in the middle. I’m exhausted with a capital E… and maybe a capital D and X and U for good measure.
Anyway, today I got to meet a couple of people I’ve admired for a long while and spent some quality time with one of my favorite working filmmakers. So a good day, to be sure. Jody Hill and Bill Hader were even more down to earth and cool than I expected them to be and the half hour interview I landed with Sam Raimi was energetic and geeky. Here's the most pressing bit of news from the Raimi interview:
He said that Spider-Man 4 is definitely next for him and he has only signed on for Spidey 4, no more like rumored, and that right now his plans are to finally knock out Evil Dead 4 right after the next Spider-Man film. Look for my full interview with him to hit as soon as I can get the transcription done.
And I got to see about 20 minutes worth of footage from Sacha Baron Cohen’s BORAT follow-up BRUNO. That’s what I want to talk about right now before collapsing for a few hours.
Yes, the footage was hilarious and yes, I think what was shown to us is every bit as funny as what was in BORAT or his original series DA ALI G SHOW.
The footage starts with Cohen as himself… or rather, an exaggerated version of himself… sitting in front of a computer monitor with what looked like Avid or some other film editing software. He spoke in his British accent, but with an arty-farty and cockney slant to it. He welcomed us to the footage at SXSW via Fantastic Fest and set up the story.
Bruno is the leading fashion designer in every German-speaking country that’s not Germany. He is banished from Austria and decides to try his luck in America. He is rejected here as well and decides to get on America’s good side by going to the Middle East to put an end to that conflict. When he finishes up there, he takes a detour to Africa in order to adopt a black baby like Madonna… that’ll give him a boost in popularity, right?
So the first bit of footage shown was a real series of auditions for extras in an expensive photo-shoot being planned around Bruno’s new African baby, O.J.. Cohen stressed that the scene was about 3 times longer than what will appear in the final film… so essentially we got to see the flabby version, the full best of the best run on this segment.
And sweet Jesus there are some fucked up parents out there. Basically this segment had Bruno interviewing these showbiz moms about their 3 year old daughters, asking progressively more bizarre questions, probing to find out just where the line was that these women would not cross.
For most of them there was no such thing as a line. It started rather innocently. Is your daughter easily startled by sudden noises? Can she handle stuffed animals? How about reptiles? Snakes and kimodo dragons?
The yeses kept on coming. Can your daughter handle sudden exceleration? How about sudden stops? Would it be okay to take out their car seat if it was needed? How would your daughter handle being dropped four stories? “I think she’d be a little scared at first, but she can do it.”
Then Bruno brings out the big guns and you think… surely, this is the point where the parents step up and say, “Hold your horses,” but you’d be goddamn wrong. Bruno asks how much one woman’s daughter weighs. He gets an answer… about 30 pounds. “I’m not looking for the Scarlett Johansson type, I’m looking for the Nicole Ritchie type… can your daughter lose 10 pounds in 7 days?”
The correct answer is “You’re fucking crazy, I’m out of here.” But that answer didn’t come. Instead what we got was “We can try. I think she can do it.” Would you consider liposuction? Now the responsibility gene kicks in, right? “If she can’t lose the weight in 7 days, we’d consider that as a last resort.”
Whhhhhhaaaaaa… I can only imagine Cohen’s excitement when his craziest thoughts weren’t being deflected.
Then we find out the gig is to hire one girl to dress up as a Nazi officer pushing a wheelbarrow holding a 3 year old dressed as Jew into a furnace. Come on, parents… say no at this point at least… But no. What we get is “It sounds theatrical. As long as she gets the gig…”
The next segment focused on a fake show put in the “giant shithole” Texas (actually up in Dallas) where an audience is brought in to watch an episode being taped featuring Bruno, who has adopted his African baby and is now looking for a well-equipped black man to be his partner so he doesn’t have to raise his new child in a single-parent household.
Again, we got the warning that the footage we’re seeing will be about double what ends up in the final movie.
God, I can’t imagine what you cut from this segment, though. The escalation is what sells it. The audience starts on Bruno’s side, thinking he’s a straight(-ish) single dad. He’s asked what he thinks of America. “I love this country and I love all the African Americans!” There’s a slight pause, but general rousing applause from the 100% black audience. Then he reveals that he wants to find a black man for his next partner.
And the crowd turns on him. Boos and “naw-ahh”s from the audience. The women especially take offense. First it’s jokey. “We need all the black men we got, honey” etc. Then he brings out his adopted child, who you can tell everyone assumed was white… The black baby comes out in a stroller and he’s asked where he got it from.
Bruno reveals he got little O.J. (his traditional African name) in Africa, trading an iPod for the baby. The audience has completely turned on him at this point.
Oh, and the best part… The baby is wearing gay clothes, including a mid-riff exposing shirt with sparkle letters spelling out GAYBY.
It’s not until Bruno shows photos of the baby that I began worrying about Cohen’s safety. Up until then it’s been offensive, but didn’t cross that last line. He would say things like he got his son from the African Americans in Africa. “You mean Africans.” “No, the correct term is African-American. Don’t be racist.” Etc.
But then he shows pictures of his baby… one is from the photo-shoot where his adopted baby is crucified, surrounded by other little babies in guard uniforms, with swords. When this image hit I was just waiting for someone to rush the stage and try to take the baby away.
However the worst was saved for last, a series of (photoshopped) images of Bruno in a hot tub holding his son, surrounded by a bunch of obviously naked men. The last picture had one of his friends with his ass in the air, about to be eaten out by another man, all while Bruno and his little baby smile at the camera.
It was awesome, but Universal saved the best segment for the end. The set-up to this one is that now Bruno has sworn off the gay lifestyle and has reinvented himself as Straight Dave, an EFC style fighter.
Straight Dave has a hillbilly ‘stache (the kind roadies had in the ‘70s, that mustache that wraps around to the sideburns), wears camo clothes, a cowboy hat and boots. He charges into one of these Extreme Fighting scenarios, wading through white trash as he goes. He announces that he’s a totally straight man and hates the fags. He had handed out T-shirts before, with such great sayings as “My Asshole is for Shitting Only!” The crowd is riled up and ready.
Suddenly, someone from the crowd shouts out that Straight Dave is a fag. Straight Dave will have none of this and says for the cowardly motherfucker to come up to the stage, a circular chain-link cage. Through the audience comes a homely looking guy… who was Bruno’s ex-assistant/lover.
They fight, Straight Dave calling him all sorts of names. The audience is whipped into a hate-mob frenzy, cheering for Straight Dave to whip the “queer.”
After a minute of wrestling/bloody fisticuffs, Straight Dave throws the assistant up against the cage wall. He pauses, looking deep into the man’s eyes… then he leans in.
And the reaction shots are priceless… Imagine these skinhead types, veins popping out on their foreheads with bloodlust suddenly going slack-faced as the man they were cheering for suddenly passionately kisses his opponent.
Immediately drinks start flying at the cage, splashing the now heavily-petting lovers with beer and soda as the crowd screams with rage. “Kill the faggots!” and all sorts of really scary shit is being yelled out, but Straight Dave and his partner don’t seem to hear it.
They start removing clothing. Cohen sucks the other man’s nipples and takes off his pants.
Now the crowd is up and pounding on the cage, screaming the most hateful obscenities you could imagine. Trash and debris is thrown in via the open top… one guy throws a chair that barely misses the two.
What’s amazing about this scene is just how quickly the crowd turns on Cohen and not only that, but just how violently they turn. If the cage wasn’t there, Cohen and his partner would have been beaten, if not flat out murdered. The crowd looked offended that these two dare flaunt this deviance in front of their innocent, heterosexual eyes. It’s the monster truck/boatshow/gun show/KKK rally crowd, so what’d you expect?
I guess I was just shocked this kind of shit still exists. I have to believe it’s on its way out with each passing generation. Intolerance will always exist as long as there are differences in human beings, but the sheer level of murderous offense was astonishing. Is this America’s secret face, the one we try to believe doesn’t exist in this world anymore?
The best part about this scene are the reaction shots. From toothless women to skinheads to beer-bellied old men, all staring with their mouths agape… but my favorite was the trucker/skin-head guy with the violence problem… Mr. Vein-Popping-Out-Of-His-Head… he screams the most obscenities, looks the most enraged and violent, throws a ton of stuff at the two men… but the final time we see him he looks defeated, eyes unblinking and watering, tears streaming down his face as he stares at what’s going on in front of him.
What were those tears? I think there could be many arguments. Simple frustration, overwhelming hatred or something deeper and scarier for him.
Cohen then ended the footage with one more address to camera which was short and sweet. “If you want to see any more from my movie you need to buy a fucking ticket.”
Overall, I don’t think I laughed at anything harder than I did the first time I saw the naked fight scene in BORAT, but what really impressed me with the Bruno footage was the consistency of greatness. It was hilarious, envelope-pushing as always, but with Cohen’s talent to layer it with some real hard looks at who we are as a people and a commentary on how people really act. I can’t wait to see the finished movie.
If you haven't seen any of Cohen's Bruno character, check out this clip from his ALI G days:
Okay, that’s enough from me for tonight. I’m going to crash and crash hard. No interviews tomorrow, but the new Broken Lizard, the new Seth Rogen flick and possibly a midnight if OBSERVE & REPORT doesn’t go too long.
Oh, and I recently joined the dark side and started a Twitter page. Click here to follow me there if you’re into that kind of thing.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
