A week after I bitched about how tired I was of Sacha Baron Cohen appearing on late-night television shows in character to promote his movies, he went on Letterman as himself to promote Bruno.  And whaddaya know, he was totally funny and entertaining, and it was refreshing to not have a caricature of a flamboyantly gay Austrian flirting with the host for ten minutes.

Anyway, this is great because Cohen talks about his quest to interview an actual terrorist, and in the process reveals that he’s capable of smart, edgy humor that isn’t predicated on tricking people into thinking he’s some outlandish character.  Believe me, it’s not easy to tell jokes about terrorism in this country.  No matter how many times I try them out, my 9/11 jokes always seem to… bomb.   Anyone?  No?  That’s okay, I know where the door is.

UPDATE - Video of the entire interview below. Cohen talks about some of the hijinks while filming Borat. It’s approximately 800,000 times better than him appearing in character as Bruno and starting sentences with “Ich’m…”
Read the rest of this entry »

I was trying to avoid this because all I do is talk about Conan O’Brien all the time, but it seems like Bruno’s appearance on “The Tonight Show” last night (video below) is the big story today.  I like Sacha Baron Cohen, and I’ll probably go see Bruno and think it’s really funny, but  I’m over him constantly being in character.  This happened with Borat, too.  He went on all the late-night talk shows in character and told the same jokes and I was sick of Borat before I even saw the movie (which, of course, was hilarious).

Anyway, I don’t know what my point is.  I’m just kind of grumpily rambling incoherently like Andy Rooney.  “In my day you could appreciate a man’s body without being gay.  And people who were actually gay had the good sense to pretend not to be.  Gay used to mean happy.  But all gay men seem to be happy, so I think it still works.  Is this paint thinner or vodka?”

Read the rest of this entry »

The big deal at Sunday’s MTV Movie Awards was Eminem walking out after Bruno’s be-thonged ass ended up in his face.  Since then, everyone’s been like, “Was it staged?  I think it was staged!”  “No way!  Eminem is a humorless dick!”  Et cetera.  The head writer for the show admitted on his blog that it was staged, but then he removed the post, and basically this story has gone on for way longer than it merits.  Which brings us to this interview from Rap Radar:

RR: Can you clear up the Bruno stunt at the MTV Awards? Was it staged or planned?
Eminem: Sacha called me when we were in Europe and he had an idea to do something outrageous at the Movie Awards.  I’m a big fan of his work so I agreed to get involved with the gag.

If it wasn’t planned the way you agreed to, do you hold MTV or Sacha responsible and will you take any kind of action?
I’m thrilled that we pulled this off better than we rehearsed it.  It had so many people going “nuts” so to speak. Everyone was blowing me up about it.

After you left the ceremony, where did you go?
After the ceremony I went back to my hotel and laughed uncontrollably for about 3 hours. Especially after I saw it on air.

So there we go.  Mystery solved… or is it? MAYBE Eminem is just saying he was in on the joke to save face!!!  Will we ever get to the bottom of this?????????  We should ask Sacha Baron Cohen.  Perhaps we’ll get a straight answer from the British comedian pretending to be a gay Austrian model.

What’s that you say? You already saw Sacha Baron Cohen’s ass lowered into Eminem’s face on FilmDrunk? And I already did an MTV Movie Awards post? So I should have put this video in with the one I did earlier?

Yup, you’re right. But this at least lets you know that I’m back online and working. Not trying, per se, but at least going through the motions. Kind of like you at your job. Or your wife in bed.

Today in Bad Idea Jeans news, “American Idol” is considering having comedian Sacha Baron Cohen appear on the show’s season finale, but the producers are worried that he will do something like, uh, be Sacha Baron Cohen.  From Reality Blurred:

“We’re talking about Sacha Baron Cohen doing something. The trouble is he always goes a little bit off the rails, and we’ve got to be very careful. It’s a family show,” executive producer Ken Warwick told [USA Today].

The possibility of Cohen fabulously wrecking the finale of “Idol” is pretty much the only thing that could make me sit through an hour of that show.  Of course, I also get aroused by footage of the Hindenburg going down.

Earlier, [Warwick] said the same thing—“family show”—when he revealed that they would not broadcast the name of [Quentin] Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. That’s presumably not because of the word “inglorious” and the fact that some families don’t know what that means, but because of “basterds,” which is a word that causes small children to die when they hear it.

Well, hell.  Tarantino’s already spelling things wrong on purpose for no apparent reason.  He should just change the name of the movie to Inglourious  Bass Turds.  It dovetails nicely with the rest of the crap on Fox.