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

http://cdbaby.com/cd/coylesharpe

Aquarius has it too, as well as another C&S CD, Audio Visionaries.

As you were.

I think I saw him on Letterman just as himself. He's a charming guy. It was great.

He collected his BAFTA for Da Ali G Show as himself. At first I thought he was doing a comedy posh character, but then I realised that was how he actually speaks.

i liked how he doesn't make the characters out to be this big clever thing (like the crits do with the new BORAT movie), not that they aren't it's just his attitude is very 'yeah they're just these 3 weird tossers' sort of thing.

hooray!

-- deej.. (clublonel...), October 31st, 2006.

I was on the subway today and these two black chix were like,

BC(1): I wanna see that borat movie!
BC(2): Who it is?
BC(1): It's ali g with his beard shaved off
BC(2): ...

Short answer: ppl are stupid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7uvs5sweio

Ask and you shall receive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW8_cz-6qro

After last night I'm already geared up for this.

The HBO show is being rereleased in a complete series box on the 21st:
http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000JBXH82.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_V39215712_.jpg

I'm hoping the success of the Borat movie means that the original six UK episodes will eventually get a DVD release here as well.

ie Ex Leon OTM

Japan already has Hard Gay.

Bruno terrorizes Kansas:

http://www.towleroad.com/2008/03/328sacha-baron.html

let's hope he doesn't ask anyone for their gayest look.

lol @ that clip

http://i17.tinypic.com/6ptj2ua.gif @ going from hating on tim meadows to lolling at "bruno" in like 20 minutes

yer the Rex Reed of comedy apprec, honeybun

i dont know who that is, grandpa

i lolled @ frat dudes

Comments

LOL, oh, my God! I never saw the "Bruno" videos before. Sasha is as brave as Alexander the Great, Richard the Lion Hearted, Shake Zulu, and Quentin Crisp all rolled in to one. It's a wonder those silly-assed jocks didn't try to kill him. The dumb jocks shook their naked butts for "Gay TV" Oh, my Lord! LOL!

Posted by: Derrick from Philly | Mar 28, 2008 10:43:29 AM

Shake Zulu

Also on Towleroad:

http://www.towleroad.com/2008/03/moby-praises-su.html

Shut up, Moby.

Moby must be quite a fun guy.

jeezus, Bruno should visit Moby.

<i>what baffles me is that if you just look at it empirically, gays, women, and Jews are certainly responsible for far fewer violent crimes than straight white guys. They’ve started fewer wars, and they tend to be well educated, fun to hang out with, and they have nice homes, bars, and restaurants."</i>

o_O

"oh, what a nice Jewish bar"

Bar Mitzvah

what baffles me is that if you just look at it empirically, gays, women, and Jews are certainly responsible for far fewer violent crimes than straight white guys. They’ve started fewer wars, and they tend to be well educated, fun to hang out with, and they have nice homes, bars, and restaurants.

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/D/htmlD/documentary/documentaryIMAGE/documentary4.jpg

I never knew Hoover was a Jewish lesbian

who, gabbneb?

http://web.mac.com/ben.gardner/iWeb/Site/Library%2017_files/MyPicture.jpg

lol ethan why you hate bruno??

how could someone hate tim meadows?

I never said that; TM is not significant enough to hate (neither is Norm MacDonald, but why not).

tim's role as sammy davis jr in wayne's world 2 says otherwise.

i was more mad that you insulted kevin nealon

my crush archetype: medium height (5'8" - 5'11"), stocky (not thin), glasses, dark hair, dark eyes, clever, most of the time not white

-- homosexual II, Friday, March 28, 2008 1:32 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

this is mine too but girls not dudes

-- and what, Friday, March 28, 2008 2:01 PM (Friday, March 28, 2008 2:01 PM) Bookmark Link

kevin nealon is a republican

that sounds like a punk song

A Dead Milkmen song at least.

Mike Walker of the National Enquirer reported the following on the Howard Stern Show on Thursday: Ben Affleck called comedian friend Sarah Silverman after completing a sit-down interview with a person he was told was a 'very famous openly gay fashion journalist'. Ben called the interview 'the weirdest sit-down he has ever had with a reporter' explaining that the interviewer’s (wholm he refered to as an 'idiot') first question was 'How Do You Like Niggers?' After a stunned silence, Silverman asked Affleck 'Was this guy’s name Bruno?' Then and only then did Affleck actually realize that the whole thing was a gag. There is no doubt that this interview will be featured in the final cut, which is currently scheduled to hit theaters in October 2008."

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/03/28/sacha-baron-cohen-is-fking-with-ben-affleck/

a brave, brave man

we already have this guy

http://images.eonline.com/eol_images/Articles/20070327/285.punk.kutcher.032707.jpg

easier to tell that diff than between Dems & Republicans

first question was 'How Do You Like Niggers?'

o_O

omg bruno is going to be so much better than borat XXXDDD

omg bruno is going to be so much better than borat 8=====DDD

-- gr8080, Monday, March 31, 2008 2:49 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

http://justjared.buzznet.com/2008/05/19/bruno-arnold-schwarzenegger/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_%28film%29

Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt

http://www.washblade.com/blog/images/ken%20images%20WEB.JPG

Last month in Fort Smith, Arkansas an ultimate fighting cage match was staged. Admission was FREE and beer was $1. Attendees had to sign a waiver saying they could be videotaped but nobody had a problem with it due to the free cage matches and $1 beer. Anyway, according to reports the fighters get going and halfway into the fight they start ripping off each other's clothes and making out. The audience goes apeshit. Takes police 45 minutes to clear the convention center. Speculation is that Bruno was there, filming for next May's Bruno movie. The flyer:

http://www.fayettevilleflyer.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/brunoposterftsmith.jpg

hahaha

Also of interest:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/DN-cohen_0607gl.ART.State.Edition2.460cf7e.html

irl lol

xxp: brilliant despite fish-in-barrel factor

brilliant because of fish in barrel factor, more like

perhaps!

BE IN FRONT OF THE CAMERAS!

I also love the completely homoerotic arrangement of the fighters in the picture.

every time I see UFC on cable they're in that position!

"Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt"

I wish this was the title.

(xp) what position are u in then

BOUNDARIES

alex, according to IMDB that is the full title.

Folks duped by 'Borat' creator Sacha Baron Cohen in Carrollton are really mad

04:09 PM CDT on Saturday, June 7, 2008

By MICHAEL GRANBERRY / The Dallas Morning News
mgranbe✧✧✧@dallasn✧✧✧.c✧✧

CARROLLTON – Last week, at one of those big office parks on International Parkway, a whole bunch of people got really mad.

disregard previous comment.

I was waiting for this thread to be revived.

Ah, so you were one of the cage fighters.

two of my friends were in a bruno segment for da ali g hbo show... i bet they're terrified that they're going to start replaying those episodes all the time when the movie comes out....

"Straight Plainz"

more here

http://defamer.com/5017659/the-curious-case-of-the-fake-defamer-bruno-title-that-ate-the-internets

A Web site for the fight had been taken down as of Monday. The site's registry showed it owned by "Peto Philer" of Kratom, Algeria.

Oh man there's some great detail in that story:

"It set the crowd off lobbing beers," Holland said. "They had beers in plastic cups. Those things can get some distance on them actually."

...

A Web site for the fight had been taken down as of Monday. The site's registry showed it owned by "Peto Philer" of Kratom, Algeria.

XPOST dammit

Peto Philer: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Young Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Catholic Priest in a Mesh T-Shirt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kratom

Although kratom is un-scheduled, and completely legal, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has become aware of kratom in recent months, and has added it to their list of "Drugs and Chemicals of Concern".

http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/drugs_concern/index.html

Good Lord, this banner:

http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/images/bantop/topbanner.gif

What Kind of Interviewer Confuses Hamas and Hummus?

O
M
F
G

Precisely.

i've laughed plenty at his shit in the past. i can tolerate some mean-spirited stuff. maybe it's my defensiveness talking—i live in and love lovely arkansas—but after initially thinking it was pretty lol, i've decided really that it's what we like to call "a dickhead move." i'm not impressed. it's not brilliant precisely because it's fish in a barrel. besides, if it's large angry crowds he's looking to dupe, he could do it in any proper metropolitan area, doesn't matter where, and get even more beer throwers for his buck. quit picking on arkansas! go pick on oklahoma!

With its proper metropolitan areas!

andrew m otm

hey guys did you know rednecks are homophobic

also, I heard Americans are racist

hey the fish are in a barrel but they still deserve shooting

shakey mo criticizes fish in a barrel criticism

SHAKEY MO

I was kinda pissed along the same lines as andrew until I saw that it happened in Texarkana. lol Texarkana, that's what you get for being half Tejas.

the oklahoma thing was a joke, obviously. cuz you know we hate damn okies. also, thank god for mississippi! and fuck texas!

Fuckers don't even pay state income tax down there like the rest of us do.

texarkana, "the city that's twice as nice"

more like MORE SHITTY BY HALF AMIRITE?@#

ah whatever I've spelled out why I don't really like SBC on the other Borat thread already

Save it for when he dies.

"proper metropolitan areas" don't really need SBC to point out their racism issues. Just go to any major city's Yelp page and pick a popular restaurant.

Look Mac you don't know what real AUTHENTIC Korean food is like, okay. I was raised by family of Korean chefs in Seoul and then I moved to Koreatown after college where I bussed dishes and perfected my short-rib marinade and I make my own kimchee in my basement and let me tell you <<insert name of Korean restaurant>> is complete garbage and only know-nothings like you would like it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080926/people_nm/us_italy_fashion_borat

http://ausiellofiles.ew.com/2008/11/sacha-baron-coh.html

Going to be great.

http://www.ifc.com/blogs/thedaily/2009/03/sxsw-316.php

haha holy shit that wrestling scene described in the "quint" clickthrough sounds amazing.

Oh dear:

Presidential candidates will do almost anything for publicity. But Ron Paul's appearance in Sacha Baron Cohen's upcoming Bruno movie suggests he draws the line at making sex tapes with gay Austrian TV hosts.

In a five-minute scene, comedian Cohen tries—and fails—to seduce the Texas congressman and former Republican presidential candidate in a Washington hotel room. A spokeswoman for Paul confirmed the appearance but declined to discuss details.

Pfft, and not TWO MINUTES after I post that, I get this:

Bruno (brunomovie) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out Bruno's profile here:
http://twitter.com/brunomovie

Busy guy.

NC-17 rating, at this point.

In another scene shown at SXSW, Bruno appeared on a daytime program called "The Richard Bey Show," as a single father trying to find a boyfriend to help him raise his adopted black child.

Richard Bey is still on TV?

o man i used to love the bey show

my friend Richard, who is the music supervisor for both Borat and Bruno, was texting with my gf last week and she asked him if he'd seen a rough cut of the film yet. he said yes, a near-3 hour cut, and "you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll evacuate!"

SO CAN'T WAIT FOR THIS!

Yeah well he worked on Life Aquatic too, so

But did he say that that film would make you evacuate?

The Richard Bey Show (1987-1996) was produced from WWOR-TV in Secaucus, New Jersey and later syndicated across the country. It featured such competitive events as the 'Miss Big Butt' contest, 'The Mr. Puniverse Contest', 'Dysfunctional Family Feud' and 'Blacks who think O.J. is guilty vs Whites who think he is innocent'.

uh oh, it's the snark police!

that was quick.

omg

I laughed once or twice, but I don't remember Borat having a very funny trailer either.

ok, only the embedding is turned off. It's still on youtube, where you'll find comments such as the following,

TheNotoriousKoS (29 minutes ago) Show Hide
0

this will be.........................idk i don't think words can describe how great this movie will be.

i can't wait to see how the black ppl react in that one scene.

love the lil gayby t-shirt

I continue to be amazed that Sacha Baron Cohen has not been beaten to death yet.

i wonder if it's a bad sign that he's re-using one of the most famous borat skits from ali g show

http://weblogs.variety.com/hal/2009/04/trailer-bruno-warning-restricted-footage.html

In the trailer shown before Borat on Film Four tonight there was a scene where he gets involved with the Westboro Baptist Church which I haven't seen in the redband trailer.

Another victim revealed.

Eminem gets a tasteof Bruno Arsch

http://defamer.gawker.com/5273616/bruno-gets-up-close-and-personal-with-eminem?skyline=true&s=x

These SBC projects are like Jackass with a college degree.

The lawsuits begin!

Richelle Olson sued the 37-year-old actor-comedian and NBC Universal on May 22, claiming an incident at a charity bingo tournament that was filmed for the upcoming "Bruno" left her disabled.

Olson claims she was severely injured after struggling with Baron Cohen and his film crew at the event in Palmdale, Calif., two years ago. The lawsuit states she now needs a wheelchair or cane to move around.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages of more than $25,000.

...

Baron Cohen was invited to the event because his handlers identified him as a "celebrity" who was filming a documentary on bingo, the suit states. The event was to raise money for nursing students.

According to the lawsuit, Baron Cohen _ in character as Bruno _ started using vulgarities while calling the second bingo game in front of a mostly elderly audience.

A struggle ensued after Olson tried to grab the microphone away from Baron Cohen. She claims he then called his camera crew over, who attacked her for at least a minute, hoping to "create a dramatic emotional response."

Olson's suit states she ran from the stage and was found moments later by a co-worker, sobbing uncontrollably. She then fell to the floor, hitting her head on a concrete slab.

The suit states she suffered brain bleeding as a result.

does she *really* think she's going to win that? fucking hell...

trailer for this looks awesome, way more promising than borat

At the London premiere:

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/06/18/bruno.baron.cohen/art.bruno.gi.jpg

lol so gay!

Wait wait... she fell to the floor after crying, at a completely separate time than the "scuffle"?

people are like "hey it's a guy" and then he takes off his clothes and says "no i'm a gay!" and then they go "oh no! it's a gay!" and then he's like "psych i'm just a guy who takes off his clothes and pretends to be a gay!" and it makes us laugh and think at the same time

omg it's a gay lolz

really tho: worse than DOMA & DADT, why does this exist

because tom green is too lazy to dress up like cultural stereotypes before licking people's faces

very niiiice!!!

is morbs still anticipating this, i wonder

fuck this guy

SBC will probably never be beaten up; he's 6'5" for a start.

yes, elmo.

elmo otm, SBC makes my skin crawl

ffs why morbs

candid camera nostalgia

desperately seeking non-Apatow affiliated comedy

oh man that SBC is totally messing with the squares! on a big studio budget!

i feel bad for giggling at the trailer now :(

I saw the trailer too at the cinema, and it seems there are too many jokes made simply based on laughing at gay stereotypes. I know Cohen's explanation is that his not really laughing at stereotypes, merely people who believe in them, but that wasn't quite the case with Borat, and it doesn't look like it's the case here.

well i don't want to shit all over this because who knows, but it's being marketed as "super gay, so outrageous, omg" which is beyond obnoxious

I know Cohen's explanation is that his not really laughing at stereotypes, merely people who believe in them, but that wasn't quite the case with Borat

oh who are you fucking kidding. Comedian makes comedy out of stereotypes, film at 11.

Well, I've read a lot of comments where people justify laughing at Borat by saying that Cohen is merely fucking people who believe in such stereotypes, whereas in reality only about half of the jokes in the movie were of such variety, and the rest were simply genuine "LOL, people from a backwards country do funny things" gags.

"fucking with people"

The bit I laughed at the most in the trailer is where he's in some bedroom with a dominatrix who commands him to take off his underwear, which he does, revealing ... another pair of underwear. She goes WTF and starts whipping him.

Probably funny though since it goes against the stereotype of the character.

Cohen is merely fucking people who believe in such stereotypes,

in Russia, stereotype fucks YOU

I still think Borat was a funny movie, but unlike some people claimed, it wasn't quite the sort of intelligent satire that would let it get away with the always dodgy issue of laughing at stereotypes. And now it looks like Cohen is doing the same with gays.

(xx-post)

sheesh guys liten up

bruno is funny mkay

that remains to be seen

Yeah, I think SBC has it both ways so that he can indulge in some jokes at the expense of homosexuals but also try to say that he's just creating distance or satire and attempting high-comedy that makes us think (so getting offended at this makes you the biggest fool of all).

if you really want to freak out the squares, you don't stop at dropping brunos ass into eminem's face, if you want to push the envelope you have em stick his face in there and go to town

ok not really but the whole eminem stunt was just bogus fratboy lol-@-gays, if the movie follows suit then why bother with it

borat was funny

the bruno stuff on ali g show was super-funny

i hope this is funny!

^^ding ding ding

ich am not looking forward to this

OMG HAHA HE SAYS "ICH" INSTEAD OF "I" -- AND HE'S GAY

i think this will be funny

Sasha Double-Barrelled will only be redeemed if his next movie follows his "let's laugh at wiggers", "let's laugh at foreigns" and "let's laugh at the queers" films by being based around a whole new character whose premise is "let's laugh at the former public school-boy middle class media darling".

Of course, he won't do that because he's only got three ideas - Ali G, Borat and Bruno. Why else revive a character that's ten years old?

the trailer isn't funny.

there's one scene where he's dressed up all gay and shit, and says to this dude "wazzup -- i'm a gay."

LOL?

$

lol brits bringing the class-based hatred. ali g was funny tbh + he wasn't playing a, er, w*****.

low-brow humor = sticking your ass in a man's face.

high-brow humor = sticking your ass in a man's face and then encouraging people to deconstruct why that's funny, disgusting.

Cohen is probably helped by the fact that he and his family come from academia and people will play up the "but what's he really mocking? This is daring." angles.

did u guys who have very cleverly debunked dude's jokes find the bruno stuff on the show funny?

Cohen is probably helped by the fact that he and his family come from academia and people will play up the "but what's he really mocking? This is daring." angles.

― Cunga, Thursday, June 18, 2009 7:55 PM (17 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wtf are you talking about

o ya, the only reason i laughed at borat was because i knew the performer's family came from academia!! that made it extra funny

yeah most comedians don't provide citations to jokes the way borat did

also just saying "OH HAY A COMEDIAN DOES THIS" does not like somehow disprove it

the funniest thing on the Borat DVD is the deleted scene from the supermarket, imo

what a disaster for sbc

haha

^kudos

xpost

thanks for the kudos kev

lol

psuedo-kudos

I think the thing I enjoyed about Borat is that the character is disarming. He fits the Yakov Smirnoff archetype of the nice, goofy foreigner, so his victims are lulled into a false sense of security. I'm not convinced Bruno can do that, or that what he does will be as enjoyable to watch for me.

SBC originally wanted to go into academia (and did for a while) and his first cousin is the relatively famous Cambridge psychologist Simon-Baron Cohen. When a comic comes from a background like that there can be the tendency, if the media is aware of that background, to say "this is smart comedy look beyond the foul jokes."

Didn't we see a similar thing in the 90s when execs were looking for Harvard-graduates to write for their shows, with the idea being "these guys will write brilliant stuff." Conan obv. cast a shadow but I remember one sitcom having "two guys from harvard wrote this!" being an advertisement's selling point.

"Simon-Baron"?

it's the first thing i look for

all sitcoms have harvard grads writing for them

SBC originally wanted to go into academia (and did for a while) and his first cousin is the relatively famous Cambridge psychologist Simon-Baron Cohen. When a comic comes from a background like that there can be the tendency, if the media is aware of that background, to say "this is smart comedy look beyond the foul jokes."

Who cares? Do you care about other comedians and their backgrounds? And also, isn't part of SBC's intention (misguided as it may be) to point out the stupidity in homophobia or racism or whatever?

He must be posh if he's got a double-barrelled first name.

he figured out why people actually like his stuff - turns out they're just into the academic angle. pwned

and the advertisement for a lame NBC sitcom, so the ad was saying "this sitcom will be heady and smart, we've got Ivy League-types writing for it so it's a guarantee."

Do you care about other comedians and their backgrounds?

Depends on if I find them interesting, but sure.

Who cares?

Just an idea for why the media tends to always think SBC is up to something really intellectually ambitious, when sometimes a cigar is a cigar and an ass-in-the-face joke is an ass-in-the-face joke.

2nd-funniest scene in Borat was the etiquette party, esp. when the hooker showed up and the minister calmly put down his napkin and said, "Well, I have to go now."

well now i just have to know...what was the funniest scene

sadly im blanking on a lot of the punchlines, i can recall scenes but i havent seen this since theaters

I really don't give a fuck about his background, I just think this is some one-note sub-Tom Green shit that middlebrows overrate thanks to zeitgeist-baiting. People try to be polite to him but then he amps the offensiveness until people have to respond to the shit coming out of his mouth or the balls in their face. It doesn't tell us anything about people's secret prejudices or anything if your mission is to make them uncomfortable hell or high water. And while I enjoy embarrassment humor fine and laughed a good bit during Borat (though no more than I did, say, Jackass) I'd be more impressed if SBC could just make an ass out of himself like fellow "omg i can't believe he did that to someone irl!" pioneer Tom Green rather than hide behind a caricature.

he is funnier than Tom Green but that isn't saying a whole lot

i do find it pretty lol that isla fisher has been at all the Bruno premieres so far. Guess staying in character only goes so far.

SBC's definitely more disciplined in his humor than Tom Green but if you say TS: Freddy Got Fingered vs. Borat I'll definitely say Freddy's the more memorable WTF experience.

what a weak man, bringing his wife to his movie premieres

anyway i love jackass, it doesn't really say much to me when people are like "this is like jackass but different in some ways"

being a more memorable WTF experience doesn't actually make you funny, is the thing

Borat picking up prepackaged cheese and asking "what is this?" a million times in a grocery store will always be funnier than Tom Green licking a compound fracture.

slock1 he's prancing around in full bruno regalia with his babymama nearby, it's funny.

x-post that's valid though if I had to save one of these movies from destruction it would be Freddy. We'll still have Yakov Smirnoff.

xpost yes, totally. although tom green riding a cow into a grocery store and asking people to suck on the udders still makes me laugh when i think about it.

isla fisher: appeared at 5 out of 5 bruno premieres. just goes to show ya.

what a disaster for babymamas everywhere

http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/history/assets/lusitania_7_may_1915.jpg

^^^rms baron cohen

http://www.personadondada.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/bm51.jpg

what a disaster

sorry i think it's funny!

oh so NOW you admit he's funny!

i always said isla fisher being there while her fiancee blows minds with his faux-gayness was funny

And also, isn't part of SBC's intention (misguided as it may be) to point out the stupidity in homophobia or racism or whatever?

That's his intention, yes, but half of the jokes in Borat were still of "laugh at the funny foreigner" type. It seems the biggest reason he got away with it without getting much criticism (except from actual Kazakhs) is that he convinced all of it was this genius satire laughing at peoples' prejudices, even though only certain skits (like the "Throw the Jew Down the Well" one) actually managed to do that. And now it seems he's doing it again, except that "LOL foreigners" has been replaced with "LOL gays". So he's having his cake and eating it.

People try to be polite to him but then he amps the offensiveness until people have to respond to the shit coming out of his mouth or the balls in their face. It doesn't tell us anything about people's secret prejudices or anything if your mission is to make them uncomfortable hell or high water.

Wait, are you saying that people will get agitated if an eccentric character harasses them long enough?

And I watched/left on the tv a bio on SBC not too long ago and they actually did spend five minutes talking about how important they thought his intellectualism/scholarly background was to understanding the genius. So this isn't just one of my crazy media theories (a first).

That's his intention, yes, but half of the jokes in Borat were still of "laugh at the funny foreigner" type.

this approach works okay for ILX

Borat picking up prepackaged cheese and asking "what is this?" a million times in a grocery store will always be funnier than Tom Green licking a compound fracture.

otm

That scene alone redeems everything SBC has ever done.

i really think the best stuff in borat is not laughing at the funny foreigner, but laughing at the way people react to him. and that's the same thing with bruno; some of the best episodes were people just going along with his nonsense even though he was talking about fashion in an austrian accent making concentration camp references. there is definitely more to it than some of you are making it out to be and i don't think that because his dad was a weirdly-hyphenated academic.

hyphy nation

i don't think that because his dad was a weirdly-hyphenated academic

yes you do, come on

maybe SBC's next movie will be about making fun. . . of ACADEMICS!!!!

i really think the best stuff in borat is not laughing at the funny foreigner, but laughing at the way people react to him.

Well yeah, but those reactions are provoked by his "funny foreigner" ways. So we're still laughing at that too.

the "oh wow people are going along with this" thing is what i mean by one note. people try to be polite to others. he meets people, starts acting stupid or throws racist shit their way, seeing how much they'll take before snapping. there used to be an MTV show where they'd give you $50 if you stayed polite to an actor pretending to be someone obnoxious. and in the movies cohen sprinkles stereotype jokes in between the candid camera moments.

AND HE TAKES HIS WIFE TO A MOVIE PREMIER!!!!!!

you're not going to stop pretending i said it was anything more than funny, are you

It does seem like a weird thing to find funny. I mean, it's not like he's got his wife in the movie and stops to make out with her every five minutes to reassert his heterosexuality.

And I'm not saying he isn't funny, I laughed like hell when I saw Borat, but unlike his defenders seem to think, I don't see all of is humour as this incredibly clever satire that would allow us too feel 0% guilty for laughing at ages-old stereotypes.

(xxx-post)

nice strawman you have there, Tuomas

just because you can describe what he's doing and relate it to other, less funny stuff that takes a similar approach doesn't make it less funny!

i mean, ya, it is very vaguely like candid camera. that doesn't mean it IS candid camera, only with X instead of Y, and we have all been fooled somehow

very nice

nice strawman you have there, Tuomas

The strawman was actually me. Before I saw Borat I belonged to the "it's such a clever satire" group, but the movie made me reconsider my opinions. Anyway, I've read enough reviews that say Borat is all an ingenuous satire to know that these strawmen do exist outside my brain.

i'm not saying it's not necessarily funny, s1ocki. i'm just saying i think it's more common and less provocative or revealing than it's made to be. And all this strawman talk suggests no one's actually read the reviews that got Borat a 91% on rotten tomatoes.

maybe candid camera was more provocative than anyone gave it credit for - ever thought of THAT

Also, several articles on Borat did mention that Cohen wrote his thesis on the persecution of Jews, as if that would automatically mean everything he does is anti-prejudice.

but seriously, getting people to sing along with "throw the jew down the well," i mean, that ain't the same level as candid camera even if it is vaguely in the same school of comedy. genre =/= subject all the time

xp

why are you guys basing your like/dislike of his humor on TV shows, movie reviews and articles--it's almost as if you're basing your opinions on other people's opinions

THE STRAWMEN EXIST OUTSIDE OF MY BRAIN NOW

very niiice

I have a cousin who just got out of med school who was telling me that sometimes he says that to patients

Tuomas, I really hope "ingenuous" was a typo otherwise you are now contradicting yourself

Also, the strawman is representing the opinions of the people you're arguing with on this thread in terms of "WAU WHAT GENIUS SATIRE".

i've never met a soul irl who thought sbc was genius satire, most of them just think he's hilarious. they may however be middlebrow.

http://costumzee.com/view/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/borat.jpg

http://www.acefancydress.co.uk/images/images_big/BORAT%20THONG%20FANCY%20DRESS%20COSTUME%2029777.jpg

not a good look

http://www.bbc.co.uk/somerset/content/images/2007/08/06/revealing_320x440.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MTxmQmQ6nNM/SAhx3EQNuWI/AAAAAAAAAxM/2dyNVqtSrzU/s400/borat_costume.jpg

I was in college when borat came out and I definitely met genius satire people

well you're going to meet geniuses in college

no that's not what I meant to post

I mean instead of typing genius satire people I typed "tuomas' strawmen" but then I kind of deleted it

borat

slocktire

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/06/18/entertainment/e135152D12.DTL&tsp=1

Actor Sacha Baron Cohen's latest movie character, an Austrian fashionista called Bruno, drew gasps and some cheers as he appeared dressed as a bull in front of Spain's main bullring Thursday.

The British actor-comedian who was in Madrid to promote his new movie — "Bruno" — arrived in a horse-drawn carriage escorted by muscular matadors just as the sun set on the historic bullring Las Ventas.

"Ich have come to redress the wrong done to the gay community by that Hollywood movie on Harvey Milk which was acted by Sean Penn, who's not even gay," Baron Cohen told a crowd of bemused Madrid onlookers in a German accent.

Hahaha

America's leading gay rights group is asking the studio heads behind Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie Bruno to add a tolerance message at the end of the film - because activists fear the funnyman's stereotypes in the film go too far.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) claims Cohen uses every negative gay stereotype in his portrayal of outrageous Austrian Bruno, and leaders feel executives should make amends for the movie's depiction of homosexuals by adding a positive message at the end.

GLAAD spokesman Rashad Robinson tells Eonline.com, "We have very mixed emotions about the movie. Those of us who saw the film agreed that you can't critique it as a single film because it's more like 90 minutes of individual sketches. Some are funny and hit their mark but others hit the gay community instead."

Universal studio bosses have refused to add the pro-gay message.

A statement from the studio's press office reads, "Bruno uses provocative comedy to powerfully shed light on the absurdity of many kinds of intolerance and ignorance, including homophobia."

But Robinson insists, "This movie does not unmask stereotypes... As someone who sat at the back of a focus group audience... I felt they were laughing at us at times."

The film is released on 7 July.

I felt they were laughing at us at times.

Er...

I always saw the Bruno TV sketches as bazooka attacks on the fashion industry scam, tbh ...

you know, those kinds of vacant faggots in particular.

I mean really, most smart gays are 'homophobic' on some level! the ones with brains hate the ones the media dotes on.

provocative comedy to powerfully shed light on... what now?

this justification sounds about as sound as any attempt to justify a gory slasher flick as being "different because it's really psychological, it's about the nature of fear." you can spin it however you like but that's not going to be why people see it and it's not what the audience will take away from it either

Artists are not responsible for the audience's stupidity. Or as Godard said, every good film that becomes a hit owes it to a misunderstanding.

Hollywood studios should limit themselves to distributing movies about nothing, like Star Trek.

wait SBC is an artist

yes. oh no, snobbery vs comedians? The pre-eminent American pop artists.

(so he's a Brit, the point stands)

fine, he's a pop artist, whatever you say. still can't believe that you quoted godard in his defense tho

he's a lot less boring than Godard has been the last 30 years

Morbs is not wrong there.

hasnt the fashion industry been a parody of itself since the 1970s already

and if "vacant faggots" dont realize that well--the fashion industry isnt responsible for its audiences stupidity

Madrid:

http://towleroad.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c730253ef01157035fe4a970c-pi

pretty, vacant, faggots

lol it's a "vacant" gay!

morbs, if you are admittedly "homophobic" towards this type of "vacant faggot" then doesn't it bother you that this movie's humor might be based on the stereotype that that's what ALL gay people are like?

I never saw the Bruno sketches and don't know details about the movie; does he never take the character into settings with actual gay people and highlight the difference between his nonsense and reality?

most are like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pak5ALMdkbE

"ricky martin... keep him in the ghetto or ~train to auschwitz~?"

i dunno, did borat offer a contrasting portrayal of what kazakhs are really like?

Do we know that this movie going to be just like Borat? Based on the clip posted by S1ocki, Bruno is doing a completely different type of manipulation; Borat's comedy comes from aggressive cluelessness about Western culture whereas Bruno's comedy seems to come from a totally meta place where this guy is doing ridiculous, outrageous things entirely for show.

liking picking up a baby at the airport in the luggage carousel

I mean, yes you are absolutely right in saying that a sizable segment of the audience is going to go into this movie and go "lol gay people"; a sizable segment of the audience that saw "Soul Plane" went "lol black people" and it's ultimately abhorrent, but that also doesn't change the fact that when I finally saw the movie I laughed my ass off the entire time.

(and I'm not trying to say that being funny excuses that type of audience pandering; I'm saying that expecting this to be funny can happen independently of being disappointed in the practically inevitable audience-pandering)

I always saw the Bruno TV sketches as bazooka attacks on the fashion industry scam, tbh ...

I think you're confusing this with Zoolander

i dunno, did borat offer a contrasting portrayal of what kazakhs are really like?

Borat had nothing to do with Kazakhstan though, that's just a nationality he picked out of a hat so to speak

xp That was a water-gun attack.

Jack Black: would you give him candy or cancer?

i haven't watched the trailer for this, but if the "vacant" gays in american or at least where i live were more like sbc's bruno on da ali g show, they might actually be fun to hang out with

Borat had nothing to do with Kazakhstan though, that's just a nationality he picked out of a hat so to speak

― Then in walked Barbara Castle with the Lady Eleanor (Tom D.), Friday, June 19, 2009 5:24 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nu-uh. the first bit of the film is set in kazakhstan, and the lol joeks are the women are ugly and the men are all rapists (iirc). there's nothing more to it than that. it gets a bit more complicated when he goes to the US, but what is the gag meant to be, at the start of the film?

For me, the gag is meant to be "lol Third World stereotypes".

yeah there's no way it's plucked out of the air, eg half the film is about backward anti-semitism.

not "lol third world stereotypes", lol eastern european stereotypes.

yeah that is obv what I meant

basically the stuff is pretty offensive but sbc redeems it in places by showing up the offensiveness of other supposedly more "sophisticated" characters.

not sure how bruno will play out this way, prob "oh look how fake these people are" which is a bit less appetising when he himself is in character throughout.

It's set in "Kazakhstan" not Kazakhstan. It's set in some mythical Eastern European anti-Semitic hellhole. Kazakhstan's not in Europe and Kazakhs don't look like Eastern Europeans (or Borat).

it's funny when he talks funny

Tom I think you're splitting hairs here. He could have made up a mythical Eastern European anti-Semitic hellhole if he'd wanted.

Surely most of this film will be 'lol homophobes' anyway?

He could have made up a mythical Eastern European anti-Semitic hellhole if he'd wanted.

It wouldn't have worked as well though, the character needed the credibility of coming from somewhere people might have heard of but knew nothing about - a bit like Staines

i totally sound like a humorless hater of fun on this thread, i know, and i could be completely wrong about this movie. however, i find the "we're not laughing at gay people / foreigners, we're laughing at the stereotypes, do you see, we're helping to exposing those dumb racists and homophobes" is a pretty questionable defense. hell, go ahead and make fun of queers, sure, but just don't pretend you're in it for its socially enlightening aspects

It's set in "Kazakhstan" not Kazakhstan.

haha waht are you seriously making this argument

perhaps we should see the movie before passing final judgment jah?

xp

why start now?

let's just all go see "waht's up balloon to the rescue."

uh, helping to expose

Waiting to exhale

tyler perry's medea goes to kazakhstan

ugh, fucking Tyler Perry

i am not going to read this whole thread, but borat was one of the worst movies i've watched in the last few years. if not THEE worst. brutally unfunny.

xpost

dan i that's not a tweet

I said "ugh" not "uhhn"

i am not going to read this whole thread, but borat was one of the worst movies i've watched in the last few years. if not THEE worst. brutally unfunny.

― ian, Friday, June 19, 2009 5:53 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm. i only saw it, or about a third of it, a few months back and after all the hype wondered if i was on crazy pills for hating it.

very niice

when will tyler perry play an outrageous gay character to challenge our stereotypes and our politically correct taboos

He hasn't already?

i guess u didnt see star trek

Haha just what I was thinking.

ok if tyler perry queens it up in star trek i might actually go see it

He doesn't, alas, but if only.

tyler perry's wrath of kahn

I really don't think the Star Trek franchise needs an infusion of strong Black Baptist morals

I haven't seen Borat since it was in theaters and judging by the ridiculous crowd reaction during the screening (seriously never heard laughing like that in a theater before or since) you guys are probably on crazy pills. Maybe doesn't play as well alone on your couch in 2009 though.

xposts

I really don't think the Star Trek franchise needs an infusion of strong Black Baptist morals

Uhura can do bad all by herself!

she can do bad with me if she likes

Star Trek wouldn't be the right sci-fi franchise for him, though. Maybe Lost In Space.

He'd make a great Buck Rogers.

But who would do this voice:

http://www.currentmarketing.com/undercurrent/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/twiki.jpg

http://www.teddwebb.com/scrapbook/mix_it_up/michael_winslow.jpg

Hahaha

sbc flicks work best when you're in a theater, borat @ home doesn't play that well, at least in feature length

teabagging not so effective on the small screen eh

I am kind of amused that SBC seems to be making "nuts to the face" a staple of his comedy.

pie in the face is so last millenium

1. SBC is a one-trick pony. He is terribly unfunny and, quite honestly, not very clever.

2. Even if he is trying to expose 'racism' and 'xenophobia,' Borat was still a terribly unfunny film that essentially mocked and derided the language and culture of most Slavic peoples. Fuck Borat.

3. This Bruno character is riffing on jokes and themes that are so fucking obvious that anyone who doesn't already get it needs their fucking heads examined. Then again, I think most people need their heads examined, but I'm an elitist fuck.

4. Fuck this guy.

thanks. now i know my laughing was wrong.

actually sbc is three ponies that all do the same trick

Ponies that commit suicide one by one.

I'm not saying anyone's laughter is wrong. I just think you're a fucking idiot.

tbh the racism part of "borat" really gets overplayed - as far as i remember there was the guy at the rodeo who made a disparaging remark about gays even though SBC didn't bring it up and there were those dudes in the RV who said some racist shit but that was like one scene in the movie. most of the gags were just trying to make people mildly uncomfortable - where he learns to drive, learns to tell a joke, meets with the feminists, the supermarket thing - and there was a language element barrier there but i don't think people were like "lol foreigners!" as much as "lol this uncomfortable situation". the office has a sexist and (unwittingly) racist lead character and derives humor our of uncomfortable situations too - i know it's a tenuous comparison but i don't think bruno was that offensive, like at all. that character has much more in common ali g than it does bruno.

good thing i don't think you're a fucking idiot. no, not at all.

you should tell us all what you do find funny so we can judge you for it

speaking of "uncomfortable situations"

1. SBC is a one-trick pony. He is terribly unfunny and, quite honestly, not very clever.

2. Even if he is trying to expose 'racism' and 'xenophobia,' Borat was still a terribly unfunny film that essentially mocked and derided the language and culture of most Slavic peoples. Fuck Borat.

3. This Bruno character is riffing on jokes and themes that are so fucking obvious that anyone who doesn't already get it needs their fucking heads examined. Then again, I think most people need their heads examined, but I'm an elitist fuck.

4. Fuck this guy.

"I shall call him... Mini-Morbs."

as I said on some other thread - I wasn't really offended I just didn't laugh that much. because it was stupid and obvious.

balls in the face are pretty much always funny though, I laughed at that. And when he dropped his suitcase and you could hear the chicken squawk, that was funny.

I think that perhaps my Polish blood gets in the way of my ability to laugh at this schmuck. I leave thread now.

(I find this Galifianakis guy very funny. 'The Jerk' might be one of my favorite movies ever made. )

"I find this Galifianakis guy very funny."

We will not agree.

but to act like his humor is not based on stereotypes - which at their root are ALWAYS racist, because they are generalizations about entire groups of people - just strikes me as being willfully oblivious

u know what would be good is if we could have a discussion about what is and is not funny??? like i dont think weve ever really talked about humor in this board, so maybe we could do that now?

...

No one said his humor was not based on stereotypes. People have said his humor is at the expense of stereotypes (which are always "prejudiced", not always "racist", unless you think of "gay people" as a race).

"but to act like his humor is not based on stereotypes"

Not going to read the whole thread, but is anyone actually saying this?

maybe this would lead to a better understanding of humor and how and why we laugh, and yes, even when we should laugh

havent we squeezed that one dry max

I swear to God, if you start up with the tomato puns again...

J0rdan sez: but i don't think people were like "lol foreigners!" as much as "lol this uncomfortable situation"

which is just bullshit

I mean the whole thing is that the situation is uncomfortable BECAUSE of "lol foreigners"

jesus christ lj

ftr i didn't like borat the movie very much; the sketches and then his own tv show were a) better and b) more than enough exposure

anyway maybe we all need to just relax and watch some Perfect Strangers

very niiiiiiice

good job LJ uniting everyone on ILX in agreement on what is not funny.

SHREEEDDDER!!!!

making fun of one foreigner is a tragedy. making fun of a million foreigners is FUNNY.

this thread is making me racist and homophobic

"I mean the whole thing is that the situation is uncomfortable BECAUSE of "lol foreigners""

Not really. He's using his "foreigness" to get away with doing stuff that make people uncomfortable, but more often than not the joke is really more in seeing how people struggle to deal with him.

i just think that at its root, a large percent of the humor in "borat" is not based on stereotypes really - the "someone who doesn't speak english" part of borat is just an artifice for getting to the point where he can pull out a bottle of liquor while on a driving lesson or so he can take a shit in a bag and give it to a dainty woman. miccio's tom green comparison is a good one.

right exactly xp

can someone tell me who jeff is a sock of

gabbneb, right?

we're not suppost to talk about him^^

Is this in the FAQ?

shhhhh!!!!!!!!!

all he does by adopting the character of a foreigner is buy himself time because mostly everyone is going to be more patient with a foreigner who they feel they aren't communicating well with - the parts where he tries to build borat into a character - porn star brother, sister in a cage etc - are the least funny parts of the film, thankfully it doesn't take up a huge part of the film either

wait is gabby banned or what I never figured this out

Yes, he is. He hit the suggest ban limit again.

Que is making allusion to a locked thread on I Must Protest! where a whole bunch of people were talking about how awful they found him and he started emailing them via the ILX mail system.

lower case j

smoke a lower case j

okay, a little language lesson:
throughout Borat, SBC uses the exclamation 'Jak sie masz' (or as he and all the press for him spelt it, Yakshemash) as a sort of 'token foreign expression lol' at intervals that make no sense logically because:

Jak sie masz means, "How are you" in Polish.

I just wonder what would happen if he made fun of the nation-languages of the Caribbean, whether that would be accepted as funny or not.

guys, i hope you realize that gabnebb was a sbc's new top-secret judgemental nerd character, you're all gonna look dumb when the webisodes come out

don't think he's making fun, think he's creating a character out of a random grab-bag of foreign languages and stereotypes and setting him loose on the u.s., playing up in a way that this character makes no sense whatsoever if you have any knowledge of europe but no one really figures that out. some people like that, i dunno, my fiancee's dad thought it was pretty hilarious that he dropped some yiddish (i think?) here and there.

how is using "How are you" in Polish as a random exclamation making fun of Poles?

i think when he speaks in the "foreign language" to his sidekick or whatever it's in yiddish

hahahaha that puts a totally different slant on the "I am terrified of Jews" thing

very niiiice

haha he is sooooo polish. i knew it!

(he speaks hebrew, not yiddish)

anyone who isnt looking forward to this or is offended by it deserves to get gaybashed

ps. very nice my name-a zohan

hi cankles, nice to see you

you are literal shit

XD

how is using "How are you" in Polish as a random exclamation making fun of Poles?

It denigrates the language by turning an oft-used expression into a linguistic objet that completely lacks any meaning or context, rendering it as just some weirdo 'foreign-speak' to most viewers...

go teach at oberlin

haha

(xp)

i would very much like to teach at oberlin, fuck you very much.

very nice

heh. i like.

The ppl 'Bruno' was yakking at on TV were always the idiots

i always thought the joke was that ppl didn't know it was fake, when it was all really obviously fake

he's mostly speaking hebrew and I don't know any hebrew speakers who found this anything less than hilarious. despite uh being reduced to speakers of weirdo 'foreign-speak'...

i know some people who were wildly offended...but eh.

i'm sure they're all a blast to hang out with

Personally, I am glad I'm no longer a bristly college freshman.

i'm nearly 25.

i am just offended by SBC.

this doesn't make me a humorless asshole.

I always saw the Bruno TV sketches as bazooka attacks on the fashion industry scam, tbh ...

― Dr Morbius, Friday, June 19, 2009 8:30 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is why i always wasn't a big fan of bruno tbqh i thought there wasnt much bite in making fun of the fashion industry, which is mostly what he was used for (plus he was just too realistic), but sittin with those Deliverance ass dudes bein like ZAT IS SUCH A SAMANTHA THING TO SAY.... d-damn that owns.

i am just offended by SBC.

this doesn't make me a humorless asshole.

Your behavior on this thread is what makes you a humorless asshole.

http://www.cuhkacs.org/~scli/blog/img/krang.jpg

LOL FOREIGNERS

tbqfh i think cankles' endorsement pretty much sums up the reasons i will be avoiding this

There is a reason why disagreement with da croupier and elmo is (mostly) good-natured and disagreement with you is not, and it largely has to do with the gigantic chip on your shoulder backed up with the most laughable evidence possible. I mean, seriously; elmo cited the entire opening sequence, which everyone granted was wildly inappropriate although some found it funny regardless, whereas you are mortally offended by the misuse of the Polish phrase for "how are you?"...? Give me a fucking break!

what about krang's endorsement elmo????

if anyone should have been offended it was my fiancee's dad but if he was not at all offended i dunno what to say to those who were...

i would also like to say i am not an asshole (mostly) and i found it to be mostly really funny

http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/dev/diary/media/k.gif

2 APPENDAGES RAISED IN EXULTATION

http://fantasykat.com/ch/Images/ko/krang4.jpg

Jak sie masz LOL

i would probably take krang to see bruno if that's what he wanted, it could be a nice date night

hmmm yeah i guess the level (or at least hint) of real personal danger does add an interesting wrinkle to SBCs business. doing a routine in arabface is one thing but risking a beatdown at a rodeo is something else

Elmo, the scene cankles cited reads very differently to me after watching the clip s1ocki posted. Seeing him basically attempting to do his "manipulation of scenario into bitchy outrageousness" schtick with people who have no interest in playing along comes from a completely different spot than "lol stereotypical gay makes straight guys uncomfortable", which is how that scene came across to me before.

Basically, it seems like you're going to get a different impression of what's going on based on how much Bruno you've seen, and from that angle I think you're right in that a lot of people are going to be laughing at gay stereotypes instead of manipulation of media images, so this entire thing could end up being a total disaster but OTOH it might be fucking hysterical. I don't know yet.

(I keep bringing up "Soul Plane" because I was violently opposed to the ad campaign and the general premise behind the movie, but several years after the fact I stumbled across it on cable and, well, thought it was really fucking funny, to an embarrassing degree; certainly a thousand times better than any Wayans comedy since "In Living Color".)

funniest Bruno sketch I've seen is where he got frat guys on spring break to do increasingly homoerotic things for the camera.

vagina salad hi dere, i probably am taking it too seriously.

have fun watching, i'll be listening to my bill cosby records.

Booka Shade are a bunch of commercial twats. fuck them and their ruining of an awesome song.

(i don't think you were here when the whole Booka Shade debate went on a few years ago-- let's just say that my opinion hasn't changed.)

― the table is the table, Wednesday, April 8, 2009 11:16 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

(and not to diminish your love of the remix. i just really hate them and their loving embrace of capitalism).

― the table is the table, Wednesday, April 8, 2009 11:17 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Whatevs about Booka Shade, <3 MANDY 4ever

also what?

― Plaxico (I know, right?), Wednesday, April 8, 2009 11:17 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

: )

― Plaxico (I know, right?), Wednesday, April 8, 2009 11:17 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

look at their commercials, t, and you will understand my hatred: http://perkypark.com/ .

― the table is the table, Wednesday, April 8, 2009 11:20 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ugh i just think that i'm a bit too 'fuck these euro producers and their raping of black musical traditions fucking fuck commercial dance music it is for dumbshits on drugs' for you, t.

― the table is the table, Wednesday, April 8, 2009 11:25 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

But, table, you're so white!

― I'm crossing over into enterprise (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, April 8, 2009 11:26 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

raised in Philadelphia, which is 44% black. also raised on james brown, the temptations and motown generally.

― the table is the table, Wednesday, April 8, 2009 11:28 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

do you want a medal tabes?

― Surmounter, Wednesday, April 8, 2009 11:30 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

;)

― Surmounter, Wednesday, April 8, 2009 11:31 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fuck you ramz

― the table is the table, Wednesday, April 8, 2009 11:31 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

seriously, go be proud of your exfoliant and don't interfere in conversations that don't concern you.

― the table is the table, Wednesday, April 8, 2009 11:33 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dan, i was referring to where cankles said whatever about how ppl not looking forward to this should get gaybashed, sorry if that's oversensitive of me but yeah, not my demographic

It denigrates the language by turning an oft-used expression into a linguistic objet that completely lacks any meaning or context, rendering it as just some weirdo 'foreign-speak' to most viewers...

― the table is the table, Friday, June 19, 2009 2:53 PM

the blowhard is the blowhard

haha classic xxp

high five!

best bruno tv series bit is where he's trying to persuade this dude to let him into a fashion show "i'll do anything! i'm not even gay! i'll suck your cock! i'll let you do me in the arsch, i'm not even gay!"

and it's not homophobic, the humour is entirely on bruno and his adversaries, not an entire demographic

my two cents

still, this isn't really my kind of humour and i'm not mad keen to launch any sort of impassioned defence

I just wonder what would happen if he made fun of the nation-languages of the Caribbean, whether that would be accepted as funny or not.

Baron Cohen had this character called Ali G; ever seen any of that?

dan, i was referring to where cankles said whatever about how ppl not looking forward to this should get gaybashed, sorry if that's oversensitive of me but yeah, not my demographic

That's not oversensitive!

http://metropolis.co.jp/xmg/498/Thunderpants.jpg

RIP Hard Gay

Is somebody going to talk about the Blue Oyster Bar now?

what is this?
it's cheese.
what is this?
it's cheese.
what is this?
it's cheese.
what is this?
it's cheese.
what is this?
it's cheese.
what is this?
it's cheese.

thought it was really fucking funny, to an embarrassing degree; certainly a thousand times better than any Wayans comedy since "In Living Color"

lolz will they ever top "Little Man"

i am not going to read this whole thread, but borat was one of the worst movies i've watched in the last few years. if not THEE worst. brutally unfunny.

Buddy, you are HIGH!

OK, liking one kind of comedy or another does not make anyone an idiot. Can't we all just laugh (or sit stonefaced) along?

I am totally renting Soul Plane after reading this thread.

The clip from Da Ali G show where he asks if ALL nazis are gay is pretty classic imo

hey, Rosa von Praunheim, a real German gay, asked that question of a Nazi in a '70s documentary I saw a couple weeks ago.

http://www.towleroad.com/2009/06/bruno-jet-skis-opens-pink-light-district-in-amsterdam.html

you can watch that whole movie on youtube btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBTvAHFKbTs

I don't know if this conversation has passed but...

When Borat came out, my parents and all their friends were very conflicted about it. On one hand, they found it hilarious and they "got the joke," ie: That it wasn't anti-Semitic itself, and that the jokes about Jews were absurd enough to be hysterical (like the Jew in the parade laying the egg, the Jews turning into cockroaches to steal Borat's money). But they (and they are all middle-aged strongly affiliated Jews) were worried that the rest of the country wouldn't understand that and would be laughing along with Borat and not at him.

I mean, I disagree with them -- I think the humor is obvious enough to anyone. No one is going to watch Borat and be confused about the politics. And I see a lot of similar concerns w/r/t to Bruno. I understand people feeling protective of their identity groups, or whatever, but I don't think people are stupid enough to watch Bruno and think the humor derives from homophobia. If there's anecdotal evidence otherwise, I'd be open to hearing it, but I've yet to meet someone who didn't understand SBC's shtick.

(I'm way down for Bruno by the way. Cannot wait to see it.)

ok, ppl are pissed about the "misunderstanding" potential here but not at all the Springsteen listeners who took Born in the USA as an endorsement of Reaganism? Shit happens all the time. People are morons.

Um ppl were pissed at/regularly made fun of the "Born in the USA" nonsense

this guy was about as unfunny as it gets on Conan the other night. i switched to Charlie Rose. really not into the whole funny accent/always-in-character shtick at all. in a way this guy strikes me as a water-down easier-to-get Andy Kaufman. bleh. I'll probably still go see it, though.

He also kept slipping back into a British accent.

I laughed at Ali G. I groaned at Borat. I loathe and hate Bruno. Can't this guy get over his fucking decades old characters and come up with some new shit?

agree with that, but you can't blame him for going for brand recognition.

Can't wait for when ilx has actually seen this

He also kept slipping back into a British accent.

I just assumed that was a meta-joke on Madonna.

Can't wait for when ilx has actually seen this

― i want to marry a pizza (gbx), Sunday, June 28, 2009 2:51 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this

http://laist.com/2009/06/30/lausd_super_fumes_over_bruno_photos.php

Nice.

i think you mean

very niice

The Simpson's didn't lead to South Asian bashing, but it sure led a lot of kids to talk in an Apu voice.

chickenshit studio just cut his interview w/ La Toya Jackson btw

Too soon.

ok so the studio is "chickenshit" for hedging against controversy that could hurt their box office returns, makes me really feel bad for renegade professional antagonizer sbc having to compromise such a sterling artistic vision

really morbs, are you actually upset that you're going to be spared some lol pedophile & plastic surgery joeks

He's mad that he's going to have to wait for DVD outtakes to see them.

apparently there was nothing "controversial" in La Toya segment. It might've been about La Toya, you know.

are you suggesting LaToya doesn't not have her own complicated and controversial life story worth discussing in minute detail?

Perhaps the studio thought that making fun of a public figure who just lost an incredibly famous sibling was in poor taste.

avoidance of poor taste is a deathless priciple over at NBC Universal, Inc., distributors of Land of the Lost

stop trolling

it's not trolling to point out IT'S BRUNO, IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE IN BAD TASTE.

also, Jon Stewart just did 6 minutes of yuks on MJ death coverage.

what does that have to do with anything

im sure the bruno people also don't want everyone to be talking about the latoya jackson scene in the days after the movie comes out - it's likely a very unimportant scene and it would've cast a whole cloud over the movie because even people in the theaters would have it in the backs of their minds during the whole movie

the jon stewart thing was funny but yeah that has nothing to do with anything at all

k, seeya at the theater

man see u

man u

n u

lol @ homos

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2009/07/09/bruno_rakoff/index.html

"Baron Cohen's Brüno is a gay minstrel, in the most literal sense of the word. Just as the characters of the burnt-cork vaudevillians had, bound up ineluctably with their dark complexions, traits like being shiftless, lazy, and "a-feared of spooks" as their eyes bugged out in Neanderthal, superstitious terror, Brüno's homosexuality comes bundled up with a lot of unattractive software. He is an open hydrant of empty, venal ignorance, a fame-chasing, grandiose fucktard, all because he is a cockaholic (his term). The repeated pistoning of sucking dick has scrambled his brains, just as surely as a muddler pulverizes mint leaves. Make no mistake: It is gay sex that has made Brüno stupid."

I tend to trust Rakoff; this isn't hustling me into the theater.

I completely buy the "gay minstrel" line but this seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of the character (which plays to elmo's point upthread):

He is an open hydrant of empty, venal ignorance, a fame-chasing, grandiose fucktard, all because he is a cockaholic (his term). The repeated pistoning of sucking dick has scrambled his brains, just as surely as a muddler pulverizes mint leaves. Make no mistake: It is gay sex that has made Brüno stupid.

I thought the point was that Bruno is a shallow dick and is only capable of interacting with things on the shallowest, most surface level, including his own sexuality; everything about him is channeled into a pathological drive to make himself more famous, important and noticed. That entire section seems backwards; the way it comes across to me, Bruno is shallow/criminally narcissistic and that directly informs how he interacts with others and presents himself. That it doesn't come across that way to other people points suggests either that the film misses a mark or people are reading into it what they want to see (likely a combination of both).

Haven't seen the film yet of course, but this isn't the only place this kind of criticism is being levied.
in the times: "An early sequence that graphically shows Brüno and his lover exerting themselves in various positions and with the assistance of, among other things, a Champagne bottle, a fire extinguisher and a specially modified exercise machine, derives its humor less from the extremity of their practices than from the assumption that sex between men is inherently weird, gross and comical. The same sequence with a man and a woman — or for that matter, two women — would play, most likely on the Internet rather than in the multiplex, as inventive, moderately kinky pornography rather than as icky, gasp-inducing farce."

who the hell looks at fucking a fire extinguisher as "moderately kinky"

(I mean I know the internet has ruined sex but I didn't think it had ruined it so thoroughly!)

Also I like the total bait-and-switch of "if this were in a completely different context where you can expect to see things like guys getting fucked to death by horses as opposed to a major studio mainstream motion picture, you can see it isn't actually that shocking!"

clooney's "specially modified exericse machine" in BURN AFTER READING was, im pretty sure, played as "icky, gasp-inducing farce"

i've not been convinced that this movie does what all the write-ups have claimed that it does -- does it really challenge homophobic attitudes, or does it just facetiously engage them with the intent of inducing a uncomfortable laugh? i don't really know if the character of Bruno can be said to be so cartoonishly over-the-top that he is obviously a caricature and not representative of gays at large -- my guess is that point will escape some ppl.

I mean if we're being serious about challenging gay stereotypes and cultural homophobia, why not throw Bruno into a pit of macho leather bears and see what happens when they reject him for being so femme

^^^ I agree with this 100%, actually.

just doesn't look that funny to me? neither did borat or south park tho' and I was proven wrong. this happens to seem a bit more desperate and I never liked Bruno on Ali G in any case.

tho i did laugh when i watched borat it pretty successfully eliminated my taste for this kind of humor.

i am interested to see what reaction this gets at the box office, though -- it's been so heavily promoted it's ridiculous

yeah i'm curious how it will do, too. I have a hard time imagining aggro homophobes sitting down in a theater to bask in the minstrelsy, compared to how Borat could play for xenophobes and "joke"-getters alike.

critical reaction is pretty split, it seems

yeah its metacritic score is 30 point lower than borat's

The repeated pistoning of sucking dick has scrambled his brains

Hot.

points for possibly making ron paul stans feel uncomfortable

seen two facebook statuses already by dudes saying that this movie made them want to vomit

lol did they not know what they were going to see?

when the [~*~SPOILER~*~] cock hole says, "BRUNO!" at the end of the focus group scene i LOST. MY. SHIT.

this isn't very good. one killer scene (karate scene) and one "u_u are there actually people like this" (gay coverter) but most of it is either too forced or just not clever enough. two dudes making out could possibly be funny (in context) for about three seconds but not for five straight minutes. i appreciate the fact that part of his schtick is making audiences feel as uncomfortable as possible some of the times (cf his "in character" irl interviews) but it doesnt exactly make for the best viewing experience.

i will say that i'm glad it wasnt nearly as homophobic as we're all fearing it may be; there are a few missteps as noted above where he reaaallly straddles the line b/w using gayness for social commentary and exploiting the "grossness" and stereotypical extremes of their lifestyles for cheap laffs, but it certainly could have been much worse, and i trust that SBC at least has decent enough intentions

and i trust that SBC at least has decent enough intentions

why?

does it really challenge homophobic attitudes, or does it just facetiously engage them with the intent of inducing a uncomfortable laugh?

It kinda does both (but much moreso the latter), and even though the marks react to him as you would expect them to, it's still funny to watch if only due to SBC's audaciousness. The numerous Hitler references also appear to dredge up the same small-town American xenophobia that Borat did.

Whereas Borat was portrayed as "culturally backwards," Bruno is, as a cosmopolitan Austrian fashionista, "culturally forward," yet it is kind of interesting how the victims of his pranks remain the same.

(The print I saw was missing the scenes with the mall security guard as well as him shopping at Sears.)

nb: everybody in the theatre was drinking, me included, so please excuse my incoherence.

i laughed a lot and i can't say i was ever bored, but i can't say i'd ever want to sit through it again, either. most of the last half seemed like a rehash of borat, like they'd started out intending to ridicule the fashion industry but had to switch to plan B after no one would talk to them. the humor also seemed a lot more mean-spirited than borat -- and not to any real end. what was the point of the 'hamas/hummus' interview?

my good deed of the week: when i went to see public enemies yesterday, there were these five sorta jocky teen guys hanging around the theater lobby, 15 or 16 yrs old. they had money for bruno tickets, but the ticket seller wouldn't sell to them. so i took the cash and went up and bought them. getting jocky teen guys into bruno seemed like a worthwhile cause.

i didn't really think Bruno was funny, it was fairly entertaining, but it didn't make me laugh much. for the most part he never really got anyone to engage with him because he was so ridiculous right from the get go, so it was more just him pulling stunts so you could see people's reactions. most of the people in the film are basically in the same position you're in, you witness this guy doing outrageous things, you feel uncomfortable, kind of shocked and amused, and thats it. there were a couple parts where he did get people to take him seriously for a little bit, but in those instances it was often either something he'd done before, or something i found more sad than funny (e.g. the baby model parents interviews.)

I thought this was hilarious but as mentioned elsewhere on this thread it's all pretty much shooting fish in a barrel.

My favorite LOL: "Bradolf Pittler"

I mean if we're being serious about challenging gay stereotypes and cultural homophobia, why not throw Bruno into a pit of macho leather bears and see what happens when they reject him for being so femme

― fade away & r80-8 (elmo argonaut), Friday, July 10, 2009 2:21 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^
OTM

this was hilarious

insomuch as it being "provocative", it really wasn't, as i dont think anyone needs it illustrated that people in alabama are more prone to homophobia or that gay converters are ridiculous, but the gags were hilarious and i didn't think it was mean spirited at all. the fact that bruno is gay has a pretty minimal effect on the humor in the movie i think (then again maybe i just don't find blurred exaggerated gay sex to be that shocking), certainly not as much as the fact that bruno is aspiring to be an empty celebrity. for instance the part in bruno where he makes the hotel workers uncomfortable really had the same aim as it did in borat - both in the streaking scene and the scene where the guy tells borat that his wife had died - and the fact that bruno and his assistant were bound together was one thing of a potential million ways to make these people uncomfortable and the gay aspect just really felt incidental to me.

if anything i thought that this felt like sbc's ali g movie because so much humor was derived out of him playing up the cluelessness of his character to the point where his zings fly under the subjects radar. you could substitute ali g into so many scenes in this film (in fact the hummus/hammas & whole palestine/israle thing in general was basically the ali g show) and it really wouldn't have affected the humor at all. so basically yeah i didn't think this was really offensive or provocative, it was just tried & true "making people uncomfortable" humor.

and as far as the cage match scene goes, i thought it was AMAZING. it was totally shooting fish in a barrel but the reactions they got were just too priceless. the looks on the faces of the audience when bruno and his assistant kiss reminded me of the sheer terror on the faces of people who were looking up at the twin towers on 9/11. just incredible.

I can't wait to see this.

i've not been convinced that this movie does what all the write-ups have claimed that it does -- does it really challenge homophobic attitudes, or does it just facetiously engage them with the intent of inducing a uncomfortable laugh

I haven't seen it yet, but probably both. Major studio movies like this try to be ideologically ambivalent. No reason to offend a key demographic and lose money, so just put everything in the blender.

The negative effect of being ambivalent like this is that the movie probably has no real point of view, and thus isn't really a satire (or at least on anything important). Some responses in this thread to the effect of "What was the point of this movie?" seem to confirm that the movie didn't take a stand on the issue.

The good part of going after everybody and making no friends is that it will keep the film from becoming didactic and self-congratulatory, and it keeps people on their toes and from thinking they're entitled to full-time coddling (e.g. the GLAAD response to Bruno up-thread, where they essentially said "wait...did the movie poke fun at us, too???" after a screening)

This movie was a carbon copy of Borat in a lot of ways, but I actually think Bruno is a more interesting character than Borat. They had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find people who were willing to be on camera with him, though.

the looks on the faces of the audience when bruno and his assistant kiss reminded me of the sheer terror on the faces of people who were looking up at the twin towers on 9/11. just incredible.

― rubberband canks (J0rdan S.), Sunday, July 12, 2009 2:38 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

totally right, that's an awesome way of putting it.

ha, I did tell my friend I saw this with that that one girl had an expression like the 9/11 crying eagle

if anything i thought that this felt like sbc's ali g movie because so much humor was derived out of him playing up the cluelessness of his character to the point where his zings fly under the subjects radar. you could substitute ali g into so many scenes in this film (in fact the hummus/hammas & whole palestine/israle thing in general was basically the ali g show) and it really wouldn't have affected the humor at all. so basically yeah i didn't think this was really offensive or provocative, it was just tried & true "making people uncomfortable" humor.

I haven't seen the movie, but the idea that Bruno's gayness isn't central to what makes him funny actually ties in fairly well to the "gay minstrel" thing. A lot of minstrel humor didn't require the characters to be black, just stupid and comical. An example is where they took a Bugs Bunny cartoon where he's tormenting a sluggish black child and just re-did it almost note for note with Elmer Fudd. It was kind of shocking when I finally saw footage of minstrel humor to realize how familiar the routines were, and that the make-up was this mindlessly racist stylistic afterthought. Obviously I can't say for myself, but I can imagine how the gay material being only "tried-and-true" window-dressing (be it to "make people uncomfortable" or make it easier for the audience to recognize Bruno as a clown) wouldn't actually make the film any less offensive.

I asked one of my gay friends who saw it in NY last night what he thought and this is what he said:

"OMG. I'm not sure what was more ree-dic, the hootin' and hollerin' queens on the screen or the ones sitting all around us."

Did he really say it like that, or are you just emphasizing his gay for us?

Ha. Nope, direct quote from fb msg.

where was GLAAD when Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was big?

(oh it was busy giving them awards, sez wikipedia)

When is success a disappointment?

The opening weekend of "Bruno" exemplified how one film can be both in Hollywood. Universal's outrageous R-rated comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen opened to a studio-estimated $30.4 million in the U.S. and Canada and $25 million overseas ($5 million of which came from territories owned by other distributors).

Universal paid financier Media Rights Capital $42.5 million to distribute the movie domestically and in eight key foreign countries and negotiated a hefty distribution fee of 25% -- money it takes off the top for its services. The studio is thus well on its way to earning a healthy profit on the project. MRC is also in a good position, having sold rights to the movie for a bigger sum than it costs to produce, and will make even more from its cut of the revenue.

But those totals mask a worrisome trend for the picture: After a strong start on Friday, domestic ticket sales for "Bruno" declined 39% on Saturday. Such a huge drop is rare and almost always a harbinger of bad buzz and a short box office run for a film. The odds of "Bruno" earning a total of even $100 million, let alone the $128.5 million worth of tickets that "Borat" sold in the U.S. and Canada, are very low.

The reason is simple: Many people just didn't like "Bruno." The film's Cinema Score -- an average grade given by a sample of those who see the picture -- was C, very low given what easy graders moviegoers generally are. It's impossible to know for sure what audiences disliked, but the envelope-pushing amount of male nudity no doubt played a major role.

When I saw Borat on opening weekend, it sold out way in advance and there was nearly a riot outside of theater as people tried to leave the theater and enter the theater at the same time.

Last night, there were plenty of empty seats for the 8pm showing in downtown Berkeley. Maybe it's partly because school's out at Cal, but I was pretty shocked.

Bruno is so 2009 - i wonder whats the next rabbit Baron Cohen will pull out of his hat..(if there are any left)

dude could just keep playing goofy foreigners in normal movies like Talladega Nights and Sweeney Todd

yeah, but we don't want him to end like ricky gervies don't we...
i meant more like characteers he create and write for himself...

even rednecks have got to recognize this guy by now. Short of dressing up in a fat suit, this schtick has got to be finished.

Dennis Lim's take.

Contrasting Rakoff and Lim, it seems to be about whether you empathize with the assaulter or the assaulted

Cohen being "not grotesque but defiant, forcing his foils (redneck hunters, straight suburban swingers) to recognize the screaming presence of Otherness" vs. "A theater full of queens come to hear Kristen Chenoweth would respond in much the same manner if the proceedings turned into a monster truck show."

Some unintentional irony and deep insight from the wonderful world of Facebook statuses:

Brüno is a social commentary about how intolerant, ignorant & stupid Americans are. if you didn't get that you're one of them.

One man's film about how ridiculous it is to stereotype and stigmatize is another man's wish-fulfillment to separate the sheep from the goats.

^ would de-friend

dennis lim's article doesn't make sense.

Is any viewer really going to think that this hyperbolically crass and ridiculous narcissist [...] represents "the mainstream of the gay community"[...]? And are the gays who anxiously anticipate the mocking, hostile reactions of the unenlightened really that blind to Brüno's obvious counteroffensive strategy, which is to make that mocking, hostile idiocy the subject of his film? The beauty—and perhaps even the moral logic—of Baron Cohen's method is that those who're not in on his joke are invariably the butts of the joke.

so, we all agree that bruno doesn't represent the gay mainstream, but is a hyperbolic and ridiculous figure. but at the same time, those who respond with mockery and hostility to his antics are idiots and bigots?

But Brüno is less a character than a button-pushing social experiment in locating the tipping point of tolerance: How much can he get away with? What does it take to unleash the inner bigot? For his merciless ambushes to work, Brüno needs to be this flamboyant—and this moronic.

kind of, tolerate anything or you're a bigot? this is bullshit. the thing is, he obviously works quite hard to provoke a reaction.

i think borat failed because it was actually impressive how polite and tolerant most americans were towards the guy. sbc wanted them to react with more hostility to demonstrate what awful zenophobes and rednecks they are, again, because 'how could anyone think this guy is real unless they went around with a ridiculous stereotype in their heads?' it's a pretty convoluted excuse to go around making dick jokes.

It's impossible to know for sure what audiences disliked, but the envelope-pushing amount of male nudity no doubt played a major role.

Doubtful. More likely the closing, mortifyingly unfunny musical number sent everyone out on a particularly sour note.

the lim piece is unconvincing at best, least of all for setting up Bruno as a milestone for cinematic depictions of gays. does he really think this movie is going to be judged as a game-changing standard after this goes to DVD?

Too many rhetorical questions too.

Anthony Lane:

Could that be Baron Cohen’s cunning plan? Might he actually be in the business of revealing our cauterized senses, and the wound where our finer judgments are meant to be? A nice idea, but I’m afraid that “Brüno” feels hopelessly complicit in the prejudices that it presumes to deride. You can’t honestly defend your principled lampooning of homophobia when nine out of every ten images that you project onscreen comply with the most threadbare cartoons of gay behavior. A schoolboy who watches a pirated DVD of this film will look at the prancing Austrian and find more, not fewer, reasons to beat up the kid on the playground who doesn’t like girls. There is, on the evidence of this movie, no such thing as gay love; there is only gay sex, a superheated substitute for love, with its own code of vulcanized calisthenics whose aim is not so much to sate the participants as to embarrass onlookers from the straight—and therefore straitlaced—society beyond.

How efficient, though, is embarrassment as a comic device? It’s a quick hit, and it corrals the audience on the side of smugness; but its victories are Pyrrhic, and it tends to fizzle out unless held in by a plot—as it was in “Fawlty Towers,” which, from its base on the English seaside, fathomed the most embarrassable race on earth. Baron Cohen, in exporting his japes, comes up against a people much less devoted to the wince. I realized, watching “Borat” again, that what it exposed was not a vacuity in American manners but, more often than not, a tolerance unimaginable elsewhere. Borat’s Southern hostess didn’t shriek when he appeared with a bag of feces; she sympathized, and gently showed him what to do, and the same thing happens in “Brüno,” when a martial-arts instructor, confronted by a foreigner with two dildos, doesn’t flinch. He teaches Brüno some defensive moves, then adds, “This is totally different from anything I’ve ever done.” Ditto the Hollywood psychic—another risky target, eh?—who watches Brüno mime an act of air-fellatio and says, after completion, “Well, good luck with your life.” In both cases, I feel that the patsy, though gulled, comes off better than the gag man; the joke is on Baron Cohen, for foisting indecency on the decent. The joker is trumped by the square.

There is, on the evidence of this movie, no such thing as gay love

There almost is, in the (heavily cliched) form of the dowdy, lovelorn assistant.

"A schoolboy who watches a pirated DVD of this film will look at the prancing Austrian and find more, not fewer, reasons to beat up the kid on the playground who doesn’t like girls."
^says a lot

Hell, I would beat up Bruno if he tried to pick me up.

mysterious-skin-shampoo-bottle.jpg

i think borat failed because it was actually impressive how polite and tolerant most americans were towards the guy. sbc wanted them to react with more hostility to demonstrate what awful zenophobes and rednecks they are, again, because 'how could anyone think this guy is real unless they went around with a ridiculous stereotype in their heads?' it's a pretty convoluted excuse to go around making dick jokes.

huh??? the fact that they're polite and tolerant to him is a huge part of the humor! borat doesn't (often) bait people, he plays off the fact that americans are very nice but also often clueless when it comes to foreigners, so he can do and say basically anything.

wait he can do and say basically anything but he doesn't bait them?

yes because those are two different things?

trying to get a reaction vs. not getting a reaction when you probably should be

you're saying he's not trying to get a reaction but the joke is that he should be getting one?

splitting pubic hairs

i mean he doesn't end the scene with the person still being polite if he can help it. the idea is to keep pushing the line until they finally snap. so he's definitely baiting them.

It's the public's fault for not beating him up more often.

when he mentions having a 12 year old wife or says casually drops something anti-semitic and the american nods and smiles politely, yes, that's the joke.

xpost

how is that "not a reaction"

yeah, if the person snaps at his antics, that's the joke too. Whether they take the bait or not, he's baiting them.

ya so he makes lots of jokes

that's what funny people do I guess

the real joke is that foreigners are anti-semites with 12-year-old wives.

laugh! it's funny

yes that is what I got out of the film too

It's the public's fault for not beating him up more often.
so true

the humour in the opening section is based on the hilarious concept that people in whereverstan are backwards.

the rest of it is based on how stupid americans are for being hostile and/or polite towards a hyperbolic racist caricature.

I feel like I can really analyze my laughter better, w/ the above revelations

sexytime!

the rest of it is based on how stupid americans are for being hostile and/or polite towards a hyperbolic racist caricature.

I'm not sure why people think it's such a "gotcha" moment when people freak out, or keep their cool, around SBC's characters. If they freak out it's supposed to be funny because Americans are reactionary, and if they play along and tolerate him Americans are accused of being dumb, permissive and patronizing towards unimaginable weird people.

Are Americans both of those things at times? Sure, but SBC doesn't try to probe the paradox as much as be carelessly ambivalent. What is the foolproof thing to do upon meeting these characters anyway?

fight fuck or run

what a disaster for americans

Nobody is watching this stuff for 'gotcha' moments, they're watching it because they think SBC is funny. (Or, apparently, because they want to explain why he is not funny to the internet.)

Most of the laughs come from SBC saying something rather than laughing *at* someone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb3IMTJjzfo

Like ^^^^ this has a 'gotcha' moment when he gets everyone to sing along - but you're not laughing at the cowboys, you're laughing at the lyrics.

stfu

no wait plz explain to me why some more things aren't funny first

im def laughing at the people who got goaded into singing along as well

I can't tell you what other people found funny in Borat, but I laughed -- as usual with me and comedies -- at throwaway gags and lines, like Cohen saying so-and-so's "vagine" flaps "like wizard's sleeve."

Weird that he trotted out another wizard punchline in this one.

he reused whole skits tbh

i liked the talk show-black baby seen. that shit was great.

hi my name-a bruno

underworld reference?

I'm not sure why people think it's such a "gotcha" moment when people freak out, or keep their cool, around SBC's characters. If they freak out it's supposed to be funny because Americans are reactionary, and if they play along and tolerate him Americans are accused of being dumb, permissive and patronizing towards unimaginable weird people.

Are Americans both of those things at times? Sure, but SBC doesn't try to probe the paradox as much as be carelessly ambivalent. What is the foolproof thing to do upon meeting these characters anyway?

― Cunga

Maybe plays different to an American and in America but basically the reaction of 100% of people I've spoken to about Borat with in Britain is "lol Americans are ignorant, horrible bigots" and laughing at said ignorant, horrible bigots amounts for a large part of the humour.