"Borat" and Giuliani

dann said:
And no, if your belt is too tight, it's difficult to tuck your shirt in while sitting. You will have to either lie back or stand up to do so.
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Maybe I'll try that lying back to tuck in my shirt thing someday.

In the first 58 years of my life I don't think I've ever done it, but there's always a first time.
 
dann said:
No, it's not. He is obviously not an investigative journalist, but his purpose is to see what kind of reaction he can get out of people. Sometimes the reaction makes people look ridiculous, sometimes it's the exact opposite. The two old Jewish ladies in the synagogue, for instance, aren't ridiculous. On the contrary, they come across as very sincere and actually endearing in spite of the character of Borat.
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He told them in advance who he was, what he was doing, and why he was doing it, because he thought the Holocaust was too serious a subject not to.

He claims that that's the one and only time he has done so, but I'm not sure I believe him on that front. I also think that there's more playing along in some cases than he'd like you to believe.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
He claims that that's the one and only time he has done so, but I'm not sure I believe him on that front. I also think that there's more playing along in some cases than he'd like you to believe.
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There were several "real" people in this film who were obviously playing along. I think they were coaxed to do or say things specifically to support the story line.

This one consists more of people reacting to the things Borat and his daughter do than people being coerced into doing or saying outrageous things than in the first one. But, it was still entertaining and occasionally surprising.

I would love to see some behind the scenes videos especially one showing how they got into the Pence event with the Trump suit. At first I thought that it might have been faked with him being filmed in a different setting that was cut together with Pence's event. But, as he is being escorted out, you can see that it was "real." (As real as anything in Borat's universe.)

I think it is great that we finally know the truth about ...

The origin of the COVID-19 pandemic
 
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dmaker said:
But I was struck more by his CT ramblings about China deliberately releasing Covid on the world. That is a dangerous claim that, if truly believed, could escalate hostilities between nations. That will not likely happen, but it's a reckless charge to even flirt with. If you truly thought that an adversarial nation deliberately set in motion a chain of events that has already killed amost a quarter million of your citizens, you would almost certainly go to war, would you not?
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A war with China could kill a lot more people than that, so probably not. Also I think I would need incontrovertible proof, not just a suspicion. The response would likely be less than all-out war. Economic sanctions maybe. Kick them out of the WTO. But we would need pretty strong proof to be able to do that and to get other countries to agree to it.
 
dann said:
And no, if your belt is too tight, it's difficult to tuck your shirt in while sitting. You will have to either lie back or stand up to do so.
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Another helpful tip when tucking is for the old man to ask the young lady for her phone number and address.

Always works for me.
 
jadebox said:
I would love to see some behind the scenes videos especially one showing how they got into the Pence event with the Trump suit.
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They may have had inside help that they won't want to expose.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
He told them in advance who he was, what he was doing, and why he was doing it, because he thought the Holocaust was too serious a subject not to.

He claims that that's the one and only time he has done so, but I'm not sure I believe him on that front. I also think that there's more playing along in some cases than he'd like you to believe.
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In any case, it is obvious that he's accompanied by a camera crew in most situations, which I guess is why the guy who sends and receives faxes for him plays along. He wouldn't need any instructions. At the gun-nut rally, it may not be as obvious that the camera crew has anything to do with him. The two right-wing conspiracy nuts who accompany him there also seem to in on it at least to some extent. The African-American woman who has the serious talk with Tutar in the car also can't be unaware that they're on camera.
The audience to the father-daughter dance must also have been informed that the camera crew was there for particularly for Borat (as professor ??) & Tutar's sake without having been told about the particular stunt they were going to pull there.

They don't seem to be as shocked or outraged as they would have been otherwise, so the scene doesn't really work in the Borat context in spite of being outrageous.
I just found this: They weren't entirely unaware that something was going to happen:


TWITTER REACTS TO BORAT 2’S DEBUTANTE BALL SCENE – “TRADITIONAL FERTILITY DANCE”
 
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The daddy/daughter dance was the one bit that actually made me laugh out loud.

It's interesting that that report is actually wrong about what happens. Perhaps they considered saying the wrong thing to be less graphic than the truth, or perhaps they didn't do their research properly.

But, yes, people have to be aware of the camera crew, and a lot can be done with editing and with priming people, but I think that some people are more aware that they're not interacting with a real person than Cohen would want you to believe.

And it's definitely not true that he's never revealed his identity to someone ahead of time, unless we're to believe that for the first film Pamela Anderson and her security didn't know in advance that he was going to kidnap her.
 
jadebox said:
There were several "real" people in this film who were obviously playing along. I think they were coaxed to do or say things specifically to support the story line.
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It probably also depends on whether they're familiar enough with pop culture to recognize the character and realize that something is up. I wonder what the last movie Rudy saw was?
I remember a sitcom episode back in the `80s in which a man was creating an ad campaign for a bakery owned by a pair of senior citizens. The ad was built around an impression of Rodney Dangerfield, and their reaction was "Who's Robby Dangerfield?"
 
I guess you haven't seen the movie. It is built into the fiction that Borat is now so well-known in the USA that he has to disguise himself, which is why I talked about "Borat (as professor ??)" in post 172. So Sacha Baron Cohen plays Borat, who plays a lot of other characters to avoid being recognized as Borat.
I doubt that I would have recognized SBC as any of those characters. But it takes less than recognizing SBC to become aware that something is going on, that you are being set up.
 
Minoosh said:
He has a cruel streak a mile wide. If you think comedians are supposed to make their audiences deeply uncomfortable, then he’s brilliant. I mean, he *is* brilliant, but a little goes a long way, especially the Borat character. I hate to see practical jokes - “Candid Camera” made me wince as well.
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Some of them were wince worthy, but I think a lot of them, mebbe even most, were fairly light-hearted.

For example, the twelve foot long oil dipstick was a classic, and essentially harmless.
 
At the same time I think part of the social commentary I believe Cohen is making is that there's a lot of people that Borat doesn't make uncomfortable or enthusiastically agree. Particularly when he is being anti-Semitic or Islamophobic.
 
dirtywick said:
At the same time I think part of the social commentary I believe Cohen is making is that there's a lot of people that Borat doesn't make uncomfortable or enthusiastically agree. Particularly when he is being anti-Semitic or Islamophobic.
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Yeah but for being such an important part of the commentary you don't see very many of those kinds of people in these movies. Maybe once in a while; but the vast, vast majority are clearly uncomfortable and making an effort to tolerate him out of politeness.
 
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