Larry Charles to direct Borat movie

where is the trailer milo?

Equal-Opportunity Offender Plays Anti-Semitism for Laughs
By SHARON WAXMAN

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 6 — Fall is traditionally when Hollywood turns to more serious films, and the Toronto International Film Festival is where they are frequently shown. But a new movie that seems certain to raise hackles and induce squirming is a raucous comedy that makes its points by seeming to embrace sexism, racism, homophobia and that most risky of social toxins: anti-Semitism.

Screening at midnight on Thursday in Toronto, “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” stars the chameleonlike comedian Sacha Baron Cohen as he impersonates a Kazakh reporter touring the United States, bringing his version of Kazakh culture to real-life Americans.

In one scene Borat insists on driving to California rather than flying, “in case the Jews repeat their attack of 9/11.” As he tours the South, he becomes terrified when he learns that an elderly couple who run an inn are Jewish. When cockroaches crawl under the door of his room, he becomes convinced the innkeepers have transformed themselves into bugs, and throws money at them.

In another scene Borat returns to his home village and participates in an annual ritual, “The Running of the Jews,” complete with giant Jew puppets that the villagers beat with clubs.

This anti-anti-Semitic humor is mixed in with other outrageous behavior, including slurs against Gypsies and gays, and a nude wrestling match. But in a world in which resurgent anti-Semitism has become — sometimes literally — an explosive topic, the movie may well hit a particular nerve, especially in Europe.

The British-born Mr. Baron Cohen, who calls himself an observant Jew, has performed this same high-wire comedy act for his HBO series, “Da Ali G Show,” in which he plays three characters, including Borat, each hilariously offensive in its own right.

The title character of the show, Ali G, is a vaguely Muslim British idiot with a hip-hop persona, who was the subject of a rather tame, and unsuccessful, film in 2002, “Ali G Indahouse,” released straight to video in the United States.

With “Borat,” Mr. Baron Cohen — who shares screenplay credit with several others — decided to head straight for the most sensitive areas of politically incorrect global culture, and for the first time will be doing so for a mass audience, far beyond the sophisticated niche of HBO. The film is to be released by 20th Century Fox on Nov. 3 on more than 2,000 screens nationwide.

(Borat is not explicitly Muslim, but Kazakhstan has a large Sunni Muslim population along with a sizable contingent of Orthodox Christians.)

Mr. Baron Cohen, who is appearing in Toronto as Borat, declined to be interviewed for this article and will be conducting interviews ahead of the film only in character.

20th Century Fox also declined to comment for this article or otherwise participate. Executives at the studio said that they were concerned about overemphasizing the political aspects of the humor, or otherwise labeling the movie, which they said they hoped would have broad appeal to a young audience.

The film is experimental and highly unusual for Hollywood, in some ways reminiscent of the guerrilla humor of Andy Kaufman, who baited members of the unsuspecting public with his characters, or the buffoonery of Charlie Chaplin as a Hitler-esque tyrant in “The Great Dictator” in 1940.

Film historians said that Hollywood was usually reluctant to take on controversy in general and had particularly avoided treating anti-Semitism in the past.

“Hollywood has a history of avoiding controversial topics, and notably did so at the end of the 1930’s, with the rise of Nazism and anti-Semitism,” said Jonathan Kuntz, who teaches American film history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Studios “were afraid of offending audiences, and of limiting their popularity in the European market,” he added. “And because so many moguls were Jewish, they were afraid this would be used to attack Hollywood as anti-Nazi.”

Today too Hollywood is often reluctant openly to discuss anti-Semitism, as was evidenced by the careful debate over Mel Gibson’s 2004 blockbuster, “The Passion of the Christ.” Only when Mr. Gibson was heard making anti-Jewish slurs this summer during a drunken-driving arrest did a few Hollywood veterans speak out against him.

“Borat” was to some extent made outside the Hollywood system. Fox kept the film off its production list and created a separate company, One America, to be the nominal producer. Mr. Baron Cohen also ran into creative differences with his first director, Todd Phillips, who left the production last year, while the film shut down for five months. The veteran comedy director Larry Charles eventually completed the film.

A spokesman for Mr. Baron Cohen said that Mr. Phillips’s departure was “a mutual decision.”

During the shoot Fox ignored numerous protests from the Kazakh Embassy in Washington, whose officials were concerned about the depiction of their country as prejudiced.

Early indications are that the film will be a hit. It rocked audiences with laughter at the Cannes Film Festival, where Mr. Baron Cohen was photographed on the beach wearing a neon-green kind of thong, and won an audience award at Michael Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival in Michigan this summer.

Still, “I can almost guarantee you that not everyone will get the joke,” said Richard B. Jewell, a professor of film history at the University of Southern California. But he added: “In my opinion it’s a very healthy thing. Some of best films that have been made in the last 50 years have been black comedies.” He cited “Dr. Strangelove,” which poked fun at nuclear holocaust.

“What can be more serious?” he asked. “It makes people think about these things in ways they don’t when there are more straightforward, serious, sober films.”

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

hahahahahaha

after reading that in the times i was wondering what the kind of part could mean, now that i see the picture...

i'm amped for this, so so amped.

My sister is already going crazy for it. Wouldn't stop talking about it this past weekend (and I don't blame her).

hahahahahahahah again

rofl

http://thedailytransom.observer.com/2006/09/toronto-film-festival-borat-breakdown-total-freakout.html

http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/sept06/borat089903.php

But after about an hour of chaos, it became evident that the film would have to be abandoned. As Borat, Baron Cohen told one festival organiser: ‘If you don't give these people money back, I crush you.’

...Before the fiasco, all was looking well. Up to 1,000 fans had filled the Toronto streets chanting ‘Bo-rat’ and waving Kazakh flags, while the character strode down the red carpet accompanied by a horse and cart and women dressed as peasants.

The show had long been sold out, and many rush-seat hopefuls went home unhappy, and one desperate fan trolled the line on Gerrard St., offering $80 for a single ticket - four times the regular price. There were no apparent takers.

http://www.thestar.com/images/thestar/img/060908_baron_cohen_300.jpg

You mean "Not that I'll be able to actually go to a movie theater to see it."

oh thank god.

Somehow I think his retiring Borat is part of the plan. (Letterman has never been funnier than when he'd go out on the streets of Manhattan in '82 w/ hidden camera and ask "What's in that bag? I'm Mr. Curious" and get ppl rushing away from him.)

Cohen's representatives refused to allow him or his alter ego to respond to the controversy because it's not close enough to the film's release date.

hahahahah between all these great quotes and the "anti-Borat hard-liners" phrase, somebody had fun writing this.

someone upthread mentioned that Nathan Fielder is the king of this kind of comedy and I agree, mainly because he actually lets his marks reveal themselves as strange and often endearing characters rather than just yell "LÖÖK AHT MY ÀHNOOS" at unsuspecting copy clerks

I still think Ali G was one of the funniest series ever, it's strange that SBC thinks its because his characters are so funny and not because of the exasperated reactions from everyone he dealt with

i disagree but i actual LOLd at LÖÖK AHT MY ÀHNOOS so im probably the wrong person

i love nathan obv but i think SBC is the GOAT, even if he’s fallen off lately, judged on full oeuvre

Chappelle genuinely has several dumb and retrograde opinions though, he's not trolling ironically

― Un-fooled and placid (sic), Wednesday, October 28, 2020 3:34 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

ya this is otm

When was the Ali G movie? 2002? That was such utter garbage that it was a wise move for him to forget about the UK and turn his attention to the US.

The UK famously unaccepting of wildly sub-par film spinoffs of TV comedies.

yeah I watched it at the age of 17 at a time when I thought Super Troopers was the funniest movie ever made and don't think I laughed a single time, it was stunningly unfunny, not only that but it was a premises that didn't even make any sense, like "hey what if we made a Jackass movie that's a fictionalized account of some epic college party?"

(xp) Which tells you something about SBC's critical standing in the UK even 18 years ago.

forgot abt Ali G movie. abysmal. im like the only person who liked the dictator tho

No, I liked The Dictator

I thought it was funny, just kinda forgettable. was pretty amused by them giving a comedy about global politics a sitcom-level plot

lol: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/kazakhstan-tourism-campaign-borat-intl-hnk-scli/index.html

Couldn't finish this one. It just feels like they are just baiting people throughout, and the fact that there are cameras everywhere seems to make everyone feel like they are in on some joke rather than having authentic reactions to all of SBC and MB's antics.

― DJI, Monday, October 26, 2020 5:58 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i like this review, written by someone who was apparently frozen in amber since 2003 and then defrosted in 2020 to watch borat 2

― flopson, Wednesday, October 28, 2020 7:07 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

For the first movie, I could at least consider the possibility that the victims had never heard of SBC. In 2020, it feels impossible.

Liked 1st movie alright and the original segments in Ali G Show were awesome. Haven't seen the movie but seen couple clips of recent interviews and they're painful to watch. Just seems like such a hack bit now, he should retire the character. It def doesn't work when the interviewer and crowd are in on it and like they're watching an aging musician: "play 'Very Niiice' for us!!! Omg he said vajeen" etc

xp- i think they must have had some pre-screening procedure to identify people who somehow hasn’t heard of him? it’s hard to imagine some of them are just people playing along

The first part of the movie used a bunch of footage where people recognized the character and chased him down the street and it worked in that context because it felt like Borat was a real person whose initial exploits legit made him infamous in the US.

we might be over estimating how many people in Brandonville, Texas or wtv know/remember Borat is

The Ali G film is weak but I liked the bit when the message between all the young guys gets mixed up as it passes along and that part with his dick falling out in his dream made me laugh as hard as anything ever has. I think I was laughing for a full 15 minutes.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CHGL-emhxt9/

We tried to watch the new one and found it unwatchable. Bailed at the debutante ball scene. Not enough laughs to make up for the embarrassment. Jokes were hacky and didn’t land.

I found myself asking what we need this for -- a brit making a hamfisted attempt to show us the American heart of darkness through satire or whatever it was. And there's something very have-it-both-ways about the whole thing, getting to indulge in racism and sexism in order to "expose" racism and sexism (and often just bait people into appearing racist or sexist out of their own niceness and embarrassment). A revealing moment for me was the debutante stage-whispering to her father "this guy is so fucking gross." I thought that really disrupted SBC's smug "I'm revealing the horrors of this culture" schtick, where I'm sure he was trying to make some kind of point about the parallels between his cartoonish attempt to deliver his daughter as a gift and American conservatism or something. I don't think the daughters of wealthy southerner conservatives are being sold into sex slavery, I think they're mostly just fine.

Apparently the whole debutante ball thing was a scripted, staged scene with dozens of paid extras playing the attendees. Not that it makes any difference to the inherent unfunnyness of it all.

I found myself asking what we need this for -- a brit making a hamfisted attempt to show us the American heart of darkness through satire or whatever it was.

"a jew who has lived in the USA for fifteen years" is possibly the more apposite descriptor here

Apparently the whole debutante ball thing was a scripted, staged scene with dozens of paid extras playing the attendees. Not that it makes any difference to the inherent unfunnyness of it all.

― everything, Friday, November 20, 2020 11:58 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

fertility dance is the funniest scene in the whole movie

there's something very have-it-both-ways about the whole thing, getting to indulge in racism and sexism in order to "expose" racism and sexist

while i agree that Borat 2 sucks, this is true of everything SBC has ever done, a lot of which is v good

yeah I think you're right about that

while i agree that Borat 2 sucks, this is true of everything SBC has ever done

but the having it both ways thing seems to be a feature of almost all acclaimed adult comedy from around the late 90s until some point last decade

“Your Kanye. He tried to move to Kazakhstan and even tried to change his name to Kazakhstan-ye West. But we said no. He’s too antisemitic even for us.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/dec/05/borat-targets-trump-ye-and-antisemitism-at-kennedy-center-honors

lmao Borat at the Kennedy Center Honors what a vision