oh YEAH! S.B.C. to follow Borat movie with "Bruno"

Odd that such a successful character comedian should essentially only have three characters.

Yup.

Each time he says something about "that was a bit quiet, can you go a bit more *wild*" in irony, the guys actually manage to put more into it each time. Ironically enough.

Actually Carey had a bunch of characters when he was on In Living Color. That was really what he was widely known for initially.

I seem to remember hearing a Sellers record where he's a colonialist geezer talking about "The Empiyuhhh" and some splendid "wog" he knew -- very acidic and political, just not the kind of thing he got to do much in movies.

You are _MADE_ of crack.
-- Andrew Farrell (afarrel...), October 31st, 2006.M

I've laughed harder at Cohen routines. Sellers' mimicry is overrated (George C. Scott was, for example, funnier in Dr. Strangelove).

George C. Scott was more manic in Strangelove; President Muffley and Capt. Mandrake are both delicately funny, perfectly complementing Dr. S's cartoonishness.

The Ali G movie reviews make it sound as weak as Sellers' mistakes.

uh, see the Magic Christian's finale, as ref'd above

stoked for this, me and jena have talked about how we hoped this was the next move

???

Heheh, characters both.

"but he's been practicing on cats..."

I'm thinking in terms of the highwire aspect to what SBC does, but feel free to be all waspish and dismissive :)

Kaufman, at least once the wrestling started, was less highwire and more highway pileup.

What astounds me MORE is that the camera-people can!

Totally OTM.

However, the other side of the coin is that SBC's humor falls flat outside of this context. Borat's monologue on SNL last weekend and interview with Letterman last night were almost embarrasingly un-funny. I think choosing to do all of the film's promotional appearances in character (including press releases) was befitting for a project like this, and sounded like a really funny idea-- much more funny than SBC going on Good Morning America and waxing political about prejudice in America; much, much more funny than relating hilarious off-camera antics to Jay Leno-- but the jokes just don't work when everyone's in on them.

Sellers was GREAT when everyone was in on the joke, but as pointed out above, we're talking about two different contexts.

Borat in the "real" context = CLASSIC
Borat in the "OMG he's doing his press in character" context = DUD

great, people think I'm 65, a Larouchite or a Bushie ... oh the way character assassination gets around here... NOT bannable tho.

anyway, loved the stage mother interview in Bruno!

Wait, that was you?

I've just watched this for the first time... It's about half as funny as Borat, which is still pretty fucking funny. I loved the climactic cage fighting scene, particularly for the irony that none of the spectators realised that the two performers were possessed of way way more balls than they could ever dream of having.

Loved this.

For reasons that I don't much care to analyze, I think the scene I most lost my shit over was the dominatrix beating him with a belt. Maybe it was the editing.

The climactic self-defenestration was a high point. But I did not like this film overall. Not comfortable with how it maps "being gay" with "being disgusting/being rude/being socially inappropriate", so that people's understandably negative reactions to the latter read as homophobia.

... defenestration in the dominatrix scene was a high point ...

maps x ON (not WITH) y

onto
(sorry my brain is not working today)

Not comfortable with how it maps "being gay" with "being disgusting/being rude/being socially inappropriate"

But that's the point. If that's the map you go by, it's just yours.

If the question is "do all gay men act like this," the answer is obviously no. But if the question is "Do ANY gay men act like this." the answer is still no, but it's not so obvious to some.

this movie is so unbelievably not funny

Not useful to the discussion, but well noted.

"hated-it.xls"

i mean the thing with the original versions of the characters was that on some level they were actually kinda... subtle! in that you could conceivably take them for clueless regional tv hosts. going full-on publicity stunt outrageous and giving them fictionalized scenes with their assistants and stuff is just so boring.

consider that first post a clearing of the throat k-wad.

xpost
I don't think it's just my map. (In fact, it's not my map.) A lot of the unscripted reactions are to stuff that has nothing to with Bruno being gay (although it's of course a factor in some scenes), but I think the movie then frames these reactions as homophobia.

k-wad. Interesting.

A lot of the unscripted reactions are to stuff that has nothing to with Bruno being gay

The I like the Ron Paul scene in this way. There was no way for him not to react, and I don't blame him for being angry. But then he goes on about what a queer etc.

Why peg him as a queer, especially, when he's behaving like an insane person?

to me adding in all the plot-heavy obviously scripted stuff just totally undermines the unscripted parts, which end up being completely predictable and boring.

Nobody is going to argue with your just plain not liking it.

engage with me mofo

fuck this guy

― Kitchen Paper Towel (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, June 18, 2009 6:59 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark

xp No, that's ok.

actually i was just posting to this thread as conceptual art/comedy prank and u completely fell for it

see u on opening night!

Why peg him as a queer, especially, when he's behaving like an insane person?

I haven't seen the DVD outtakes, but apparently they did the same scene with Tom Ridge, Gary Bauer, and John Bolton. Ron Paul was the person they got the result they most wanted out of.

But no one is arguing that it's a documentary.

I'm not

I mean, I can imagine that I would have kicked his freaky ass out, too, but I wouldn't have gotten apoplectic about it, and wouldn't have use gay slurs explaining why I did it. I may have been tempted to describe him at "nuttier than a fruitcake," which might have seemed apropos, even in hindsight.

Yes, it's all very unfair. "Life is unfair," as JFK said.

one croosh difference between borat and bruno i haven't heard a lot of talk about (tho that talk may exist) is that borat is a stereotypical anti-semite, not a stereotypical jew. i think there's a big difference between getting people to sing "throw the jew down the well" and like, putting on a fake nose and trying to lend people money. it seems a little more interesting, a little more revealing, than the bruno tack.

Borat isn't a stereotypical anti-semite, though, he's a cartoon character. Do a lot of anti-semites not understand flush toilets? I would argue that Bruno is also a cartoon character.

I mean, OF COURSE he is!

sl0cki otm though. borat's a cartoon of the stereotypical anti-semite. and bruno is a cartoon of a stereotypical "faggot". agree that the dynamics might have been more interesting/challenging if bruno were, instead, a cartoon homophobe.

yeah, i'm just saying, there's a difference in him being a cartoon racist than being a carton... "racee." xp

i mean the power dynamics are very different in bruno the show than bruno the film cuz it mostly exists in a fashion milieu, where being out and gay is not going to throw people off

I do see the difference, but not the moral difference. Borat is easier to firgive because he's SO ignorant that he can be ignorant of whatever the situation calls for, whereas Bruno exists to be this kind of constant one-man pride parade and piss people off who "don't want to see that".

to me adding in all the plot-heavy obviously scripted stuff just totally undermines the unscripted parts, which end up being completely predictable and boring.

― Alf, Lord Melmacsyn (s1ocki), Thursday, November 19, 2009 6:41 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark

i kinda agree with this - if they didn't need to give a script to the jackass movie (or to 'the ali g' movie) they didn't need to bog 'borat' down with scenes of him & his manager & of him being homeless - same goes for "bruno"

i mean, i'll accept that maybe they were having trouble with getting interviews & things set up, but it didn't make the asshole bleaching & or sex w/ boyfriend scenes any more tedious

any less tedious rather

the dynamics might have been more interesting/challenging if bruno were, instead, a cartoon homophobe.

Lose the accent and the "he's foreign" angle, and there's probably as good a movie in Straight Dave, agreed.

Also, we're all forgetting that a key component of the Bruno character is his obsession with celebrity.

& he loses the most unfunny parts that were just pointlessly "provocative"

xp

Also, we're all forgetting that a key component of the Bruno character is his obsession with celebrity.

― k-wad (kenan), Thursday, November 19, 2009 8:49 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

o ya, that's such a fresh subject for comedy, how could i forget it

I forgot it, too. :(

obsession w celebrity seems to go along with the cartoon homo stuff, for whatever reason