Sacha Baron Cohen's Guerilla Tactics

[brekin]

Sacha Baron Cohen's Guerilla Tactics

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/ye ... runo1.html

How shell companies, web sites help trick rubes for new film "Bruno"
MARCH 19--As he travels the country searching for Americans to dupe into appearing in his next film, comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is operating behind a series of dummy companies and web sites intended to mask his involvement in the follow-up to the hit "Borat" movie. Claiming to be preparing a documentary for German television, Cohen and his production team have recently approached interview subjects (ballroom dancers, Alabama National Guard officials, and a white supremacist) claiming to be affiliated with Amesbury Chase, a Los Angeles-based production company. In his new film, Cohen appears as "Bruno," a gay Austrian journalist who asks embarrassing (and sexually charged) questions. Prospective interviewees have been directed to the Amesbury Chase web site, which describes the firm as having "world class facilities, and state-of-the art equipment to help you create dynamic and compelling content." The firm's address is actually a box at Sunset Blvd. Mailboxes. And the company and its web site were both created within the last 18 months. Three other Cohen front companies--Chromium Films, Cold Stream Productions, and Coral Blue Productions--use the same mailbox drop and phone number as Amesbury Chase. The four firms have nearly identical web sites, all of which originate from the same web hosting firm (on the following pages you'll find screen grabs from Cohen's Amesbury Chase site). In a brief interview, Stephen Strick, a Los Angeles lawyer who formed Cohen's straw firms, told TSG that, "I'm no longer involved in those" and said he would see if "the production's lawyer" would get back to a reporter. Last year, Cohen as "Bruno" interviewed Glenn Miller, a 68-year-old Missouri man who describes himself as a Nazi who hates "filthy Jews." Miller, who told TSG that he was paid $2000 in cash for an on-camera interview, claimed that he knew the interview was a set-up and that his interviewer was "a faggot." Before meeting with "Bruno," Miller crowed on a bulletin board that a German TV station would be paying him for an interview in which he could "air my racist and anti-semitic 'ravings' far and wide." In follow-up posts, Miller, a convicted felon who spent three years in prison for weapons possession and mailing a "declaration of war" to fellow white supremacists, noted that he had met with two female production coordinators who told him that "a German fellow will do the actual interview." He also reported that, according to the two "gorgeous young chicks," the "interviewer is not a jew." In two posts, Miller included the phone number he was given by Cohen's deputies. The number is listed on the contact page of each of Cohen's four front companies.

[Jeff]

I don't think shell companies and hoax sites are terrible stunts for satirists to engage in. Because, well, on a much smaller scale, I've engaged in them.

An example:

The trial of Conrad Black launched last week and Canadian's finally have their O.J. Simpson. Toronto Life has launched ConradBlackTrial.com, a site dedicated to sifting through the coverage, giving the blow-by-blows and de-spinning Black's rhetoric.

Another Black-related site of interest is SupportLordBlack.com. The site was a hoax. Last week, Frank magazine revealed itself as the site's creator and gleefully detailed all the chumps it took in.

Chump #1: Conrad Black. Lord Black had been in email contact with SupportLordBlack.com's fictional creator, Alastair Smith (actually Frank's Michael Bate). Lord Black invited the creator and contributers to his home for drinks. The site proposed a "Caravan to Chicago" to join the trial to show support. "I am again flattered by such a thing," Black wrote in an email. "I will give you all CONRAD WILL WIN shirts when you are here."

Chump #2: The media. All of it. Editor and Publisher interviewed Alastair Smith via email and concluded that the site was legit. In February, the London Evening Standard reported: "In his hour of need the Canadian-born peer can at least count on the support of a coalition of admirers who are clubbing together on the Internet." The National Post called the site one of "the Internet's underappreciated sites." New York magazine ran the story "Wealthy Objectivists to Hit Road for Conrad Black."


Here's the reveal from the magazine (RIP). (pdf. file)

[DrVolin]

I very much enjoyed Ali G's interviews, with James Baker for example. Those were quite clever, sometimes even brilliant satire. But I couldn't even finish watching Borat, and I doubt I will enjoy Bruno. While Ali G tackled public personae on their own turf, and usually made some substantial social and political comment, Borat picks on essentially defenseless regular people on terrain of his own choosing, often for cheap laughs. From what I've read of Bruno, he pushes even farther in that direction.

[Jeff]

I think Borat worked better as television than film. At least that film. The conceit was betrayed by an alleged need for a scripted story. I expect the same for Bruno.

But as television, it's genius.

[AlicetheKurious]

"The Yes Men" did/do a lot of that sort of thing to great effect; I think they pioneered it. But the target of their thought-provoking satire is the self-satisfied greed of multinational corporations.

Yes Men Trailer

The Re-Burger

Slavery

Borat, on the other hand, is an uncouth, contemptuous, smug jerk whose thinly-veiled xenophobia and misogynism is exploitative and vulgar, with no redeeming value:

Borat in Texas

Borat on the Today Show

Ugh.

[compared2what?]

I loved that movie.

[lightningBugout]

i can top that -- I'm even looking forward to Bruno....

[AlicetheKurious]

To each his own.

[lightningBugout]

Andy Kaufman, however, above all and always...

[daba64]

I don't think shell companies and hoax sites are terrible stunts for satirists to engage in. Because, well, on a much smaller scale, I've engaged in them.

Really? Do tell. I'd be fascinated to hear about it.

[Jeff]

I don't think shell companies and hoax sites are terrible stunts for satirists to engage in. Because, well, on a much smaller scale, I've engaged in them.

Really? Do tell. I'd be fascinated to hear about it.

There's an example in the post you quoted.

For some, perhaps, I should add that I don't regard RI as a satirical project, and would never employ such tactics here.

[lightningBugout]

For some, perhaps, I should add that I don't regard RI as a satirical project, and would never employ such tactics here.

At risk of resonating the theremy archetype or nudging the loop into fullblown movement, can I ask - Jeff did you ever make sense of Theresa Duncan's reference to RI as satire in her initial post about your blog? I can reach my own conclusions but am curious how you as proprietor made sense of it.

[Jeff]

No harm in asking, but that's a risk I'd rather not rise to.

[lightningBugout]

Good call.

[brekin]

My concern is the pipeline seems to be getting longer and longer for letting people in on the joke.

Here is an excerpt of an interview with Larry Charles the director of Borat. I don't believe he was the director on Bruno but here you can find him laying out in dizzying doublethink the rationale of casting people in theatres of the absurd without their knowledge and towards the end he talks about how he thinks the longer someone is mislead (or to put more in his vernacular, existing in an alternate reality he has created without their knowledge) the more it ends up validating whatever they do.

But wouldn’t it seem the inverse is true? The more props and accouterments mobilized for a joke, (shell websites, shell companies, deceptive pre-interviews, fake production meetings, etc) and the longer they are employed the less it all becomes a commentary on a reality, but a reality itself. Compare Candid Camera to The Truman Show.

This isn’t an official transcription of the interview but my best attempt at transcribing the audio interview.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=95782738

11:28-13:22 TR=Terry Gross LC=Larry Charles

TR: I want to ask you about directing the movie Borat. This was I think your first experience directing in the real world bringing a fictional character, Borat, into real life settings with people who didn’t know what was really going on.

LC: Yes, right.

TR: Who thought that Borat was a real person.

LC: Well, I wouldn’t say they didn’t know what was going on. I would say, I would put this way more, that he- that we created a reality. And as far as those people were concerned that was the reality. He was a reporter from Kazakhstan. Uh, that reality is created, that is an alternate reality that is created. In fact people would sometimes turn to me when he asked a strange question and go, “Is this real? Is this real?” And I would say, “Yes it is real.” But to myself I would say it may not be the reality you think it is, but it is real.

TR: Did you feel like you were deceiving them?

LC: No, not at all because again they believed, they were, they believed that they were in a reality with an actual journalist from Kazakhstan and they were answering that person’s questions. They were not forced to say anything under those conditions; they chose to say what they said. So no one’s arm was ever twisted in that situation.

TR: I love the film, but I mean a lot of people in it come of looking foolish.

LC: Well that’s their doing not our doing.

TR: Well-

LC: First of all they could of said- keep in mind they could have said no to being in the movie in the first place. See there’s a certain hubris and ego involved in thinking that you’re interesting enough to be in front of a camera. So, uh when we are looking for people to be in Borat we are asking a lot of people to be in it. Most people are going to say no. And then a few people may say yes and not pass the vet or screening process or whatever. And one or two make it through the entire process and wind up being in the movie. So there’s a lot of steps along the way before this person ends up in the movie and have many opportunities to back out and not do it, or even in the middle, in the middle of the interview they can step away. And usually they don’t, so there’s, there’s a human psychology at work that’s deeper than us just deceiving people.

If we look at Bruno now it seems from the Smoking gun article most or even all the steps involved in the “process” are deceptive to the participant. Obviously they are not producing a white supremacist in this case, he was one when he entered the tunnel, but what responsibility do they have to participants in general? Especially when they misrepresent the project from the very beginning?

What is to stop them from pulling some malicious variant of a Bowfinger on someone?

(For the record I've enjoyed some Ali G on television, was so turned off of Borat previews I had no interest in seeing it and will probably not see Bruno.)