Recently, official trailers started appearing on the net for the new Sacha Baron Cohen film, Bruno. This follow up to 2006’s Borat features a character that regular viewers of the Da Ali G Show will recognize as Bruno, a homosexual fashionista from Austria. You should be warned the trailer is NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK, but if you’re at home or have a boss with an open mind about these sorts of things, click here at your own risk.
The trailer doesn’t feature these scenes, but Flyer readers will recognize the Arkansas connection to this story from when Cohen, as Bruno, as character named “Straight Dave,” duped a group of cage wrestling fans into seeing what can only be described as a display of male homosexual expression at the Fort Smith Convention Center last summer.
The prank angered Fort Smithians who had bought tickets to the Redneck Rumble and confused the heck out of Craig Cannon.
Last month, there was a 20-minute sneak peak of the flick at South by Southwest in Austin. By all accounts from that screening the movie looks both hilarious and shocking. Even more so than Borat, if that is even possible. (Remember the hotel wrestling scene? Ew.) All reports seem to indicate that one of the scenes they showed resembled what we heard took place in Fort Smith. This is from cinematical.com
“ … Bruno creates his Straight Dave persona — which means, by the way, that Baron Cohen is playing a character who’s playing a character. They set up a new TV series focused on ultimate fighting, with Straight Dave as the host and one of the fighters. He gets the arena audience worked into a lather, eager to see some butt-kicking, and he mentions again that he’s the most heterosexual man in the world. Any gays in the audience should leave now, he declares. A man confronts him over this (another actor, of course), and Bruno invites him into the cage to settle it. Their fight soon turns into a kiss, which leads to making out, which leads further and further. The audience turns into a riot scene. It’s an extraordinary sight to behold. I truly don’t know how Baron Cohen and his crew made it out alive.”
Yup, sounds about right.
This isn’t the first time Cohen, as Bruno, has had fun at the expense of Arkansans. But to be fair he hasn’t just been picking on Arkansas. Pretty much everyone in the English speaking world on both sides of the Atlantic are fair game. It’s just that people residing south of the Mason Dixon Line seem to be comedic gold.
So what do you think? Do you find Cohen’s characters funny but cringe a little about the unfair negative publicity it gives our state? I mean, not everyone here is a homophobe, but this wouldn’t have been nearly as funny a scene if it took place in Eureka Springs (or maybe it would have been funny, but there would have been an entirely different outcome). Or do you just enjoy the humor and think they all have it coming, no matter how close to home they may be?
What do you say to the Bruno movie? Ach ja or Nicht, nicht?
