If Donald Trump didnt exist, Sacha Baron Cohen would have had to invent him. Not since the halcyon days of Borat and Brno has anyone so effectively goaded Americans into revealing the anger and ignorance that burbles just beneath the surface. The frighteningly popular presidential candidate leading a rally in one of his signature call-and-response moments (And whos gonna pay for the wall? Mexico!) would rank with the British actor/pranksters greatest stunts if only Trump were in on the joke.
Compared to what passes for politics these days, the characters that branded Cohen as the Peter Sellers of his generation almost seem unnecessary. Which may be part of the reason why the relentlessly transgressive Englishman has moved away from the immersive guerrilla comedy he pioneered with Da Ali G Show in favor of more traditionally scripted fare albeit with a film that finds other ways to obliterate the boundaries of good taste. In The Brothers Grimsby, Cohen plays a dimwitted British football hooligan who learns that his long-lost brother is a badass spy. Imagine Ace Ventura directed an NC-17 buddy cop movie co-starring Liam Gallagher and MacGyver, and youll have the right idea.
Sacha Baron Cohen Revives Borat to Mock Trump, Show 'Grimsby' TrailerAli G: Idiot PowerElvis Presley: His 10 Best Country Songs'A Charlie Brown Christmas': The Making of a Classic Soundtrack
A throwback to the gross-out comedies of yesteryear, Grimsby nevertheless findsCohen takingaim at the scam artist who stole his shtick, as the film climaxes with an unauthorized Trump cameo for the ages.In a rare interview as himself, Cohen spoke to Rolling Stone about his billionaire punching bag, his place in the world of comedy, and why he misses the days when he would regularly risk his life for a laugh.
You studied the Holocaust in college has watching Trumps campaign unfold given you a clearer understanding as to how it happened?
Wow. Thats a pretty powerful question. You know what? I dont know if I can actually answer that without getting myself in complete trouble, because Ill be linking the potential future President of the United States with one of the greatest atrocities ever committed.[At the premiere of The Brothers Grimsby the following night, Cohen wore a Make America Great Again hat and told the crowd: A loud, ranting bloke shouting out racial hatred at rallies has never hurt anyone.]
Dont worry about it hes very tolerant of his critics, especially when theyre immigrants.
Well its always great to use the Holocaust when you want people to see a comedy film bring them in out of guilt!No, a demagogue drudges up some very negative sentiments in society. So that can happen, and has happened throughout history. But Im speaking as a complete ignoramus. Im just somebody who makes gags, not a political pundit.
Now that you spend half the year living in the States, do you think that the hate and the ignorance you saw reflected in Borat has intensified in the decade since you made it?
Well, bear in mind that I only interviewed 100 or so people for Borat, so it was a small sample size. But yeah, with that movie you saw this patronizing attitude that people had towards an ignorant foreigner with slightly obnoxious views. Well,veryobnoxious views. And yet, nobody actually hated Borat. With Borat, I didnt have that many occasions when people were trying to kill me, apart from maybe when I sang the national anthem at that rodeo.
The hatred that Ireallyencountered was when I was filmingBrno the kind that some have towards gay people. I remember being at a gun show in Alabama and a six-year-old kid coming up to me and giving me a note that his parents had written, and it said Youre going to hell. So I think there are some good things about how America has changed since then. When we madeBrno, the idea that gay marriage would be legal felt like a dream. That was the first movie from a major studio where the gay lead character doesnt die at the end of the movie he doesnt die from AIDS, he isnt beaten to death. We actually had a kind of happy ending where he ends up with an adopted kid and married and they sort of live happily ever after.
You paved the way forCarol.
Exactly!
Are you able to get the same rush of adrenaline from nailing a gag in a scripted movie as you did from the guerrilla-style ones?
The honest answer is that I cant. Because during those other movies,Ali GandBoratandBruno, everything is really about getting away with it. Its about getting into the room and getting out of the room without getting caught.
Or killed.
Yeah. And what you actually do in the room is secondary. The first thing we do is find out where the escape routes are in case things go wrong, and we have a car running by the exit so I can get out fast if need be. We knew that if I got arrested then the movie was over, because they could take away my work visa. For Bruno, we actually hired someone whose only job was to prevent me from getting arrested. In the end, the guy actually ended up breaking my ankle by getting me to climb out of a 14th-story fire escape in Kansas and jump two floors down while wearing high heels and an S&M outfit that chained to my co-star. But I didnt get arrested.
In other words, yeah, I miss the adrenaline. But the problem with adrenaline and those kinds of movies is that you start taking more and more risks, and you can only be lucky for so long.
Grimsbyhas a scene involving elephants thats unforgettable and unforgettably gross. Do you push boundaries like that in the hopes ofgiving yourself thatsame kind of thrill in a scripted movie?
Yes. I always put myself in the position of the viewer, and I think,Would I actually pay money to see this film? And if I would, I would want to see things that I had never seen before, and Id want to laugh as hard as Ive ever laughed. If I cant do that and thats been the case with other films that Ive developed I end up not making it. Thats why I make so few movies. Most comedians make two to three films a year; I make one every three to four years.
Youre like the Daniel Day-Lewis of comedy.
[Laughs] Thank you. But you know, I think Hollywood has become more conservative sinceThe Interview, and its harder to get edgy comic material shot. Something like the elephant scene issoextreme and so wild that the immediate response from the studios we pitched it to was obviously youre not going to shoot that scene. Which, of course, triggers a light bulb above my head, and I think, Well, thats obviously going to be a really good scene, then.
I realized that we had to do it as if it was in a very high-end action film, as if that scene was happening inThe Bourne Identity. So we hired Ridley Scotts prosthetics team, and theyre all a bunch of Oscar winners. We ended up making 14 tons of a particular type of fluid, which I wont give away, and we had this incredibly complicated hydraulics system with two divers who were positioned in a specific way in case we drowned in the aforementioned fluid. It wassucha big operation and that kind of thing does excite me, the idea of pulling off something like that.
When youre doing a gross-out gag like that in 2016, do you feel like youre an outlier in a comedy world thats largely defined by, say, Judd Apatow and Melissa McCarthy?
I love Judd Apatow movies and Melissa McCarthy movies, and I think theres a lot of really brilliant American and English comedy right now. But I dont think that anyone has the same twisted sense of humor that I do. What Im striving for is this uncontrollable laughter that I find it very hard for me to experience. It goes back to when I went to see the Python movies as a kid. I saw The Life of Brian when I was eight, and I remember being in the cinema with hundreds of people who were just rocking with laughter. I think that was the first place I had seen a naked woman, actually.
But after seeing Ali G resurface at the Oscars, it seems like the guerilla-type comedy is still an itch that you need to scratch.
I do miss it. But I think its a young mans game. When you do that stuff, you have to be prepared for a small amount of risk. And my philosophy was always: Well, if something bad happens, Im single and everyones going to be alright if I end up in hospital for two weeks. Now that Im married with kids, its more difficult to justify. Its also much harder to do in the world of Twitter and email. Back on Ali G, we spent three days in Washington so I could interview the majority of George Bush Sr.s political cabinet. Today, youd interview one of them, theyd send out a general email to everyone else and youd be done.
Only Donald Trump was smart enough to see through the ruse.
I dont think he did! I dont think he saw through the ruse. I think hes a guy whos not known for his patience, and the people I spoke to for those Ali G interviews were picked because they were incredibly patient people who were trying to explain an issue to a slightly or completely idiotic reporter.
Has being able to disappear behind them and keep a certain distance from the public helped you to stay grounded?
Yeah, thats one of the best things about my work; essentially Ive had my cake and eaten it too. I remember one time when there was a scandal in England where Ali G was accused of being racist. I wasnt accused Ali G was, because people believed that he was real. I was living in a block of flats that was mainly populated by 80-year-old Jewish women, and nobody really knew what I looked like. So even though there were press waiting outside of the apartment, they published photos of the guy who lived across the hall from me because he came out one day wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses. It was great!
I remember the first time theAli Gvideo came out, in the days before DVD, I went to a video store as Borat and stood next to the Ali G tapes, and it was a great feeling just being completely anonymous. This was before Banksy, so the idea of being a completely anonymous famous person was a new one, and it upset a lot of journalists. TheSunday Timesasked to interview me a few weeks later and I refused to do it, so they wrote a massive piece saying that I was the most arrogant performer, that Id been famous for 30 seconds and already thought that I was above doing an interview. But really it was just driven by the fact that if I revealed myself and that I was tricking people that I wouldnt be able to continue doing the work. I intentionally kept myself away from the whole celebrity scene so that I could infiltrate it as different characters.
So youre the Daniel Day-Lewis of comedy, and Banksy is the Sacha Baron Cohen of art.
Ha, exactly. I know Banksy, and he would probably agree with that!
Posting Komentar
Posting Komentar