I thought too much of the film was staged, but what else could they have done? There's a lot of unscripted deleted scenes on the DVD and they're all as hilarious as ever.

I don't think it's the end of Sacha's antics. If it's true that he's going to do something with the Bruno character I think he can get away with it. Most people just think of Borat now. Only people who've seen the HBO Ali G show will recognise Bruno. If he went into middle America as Bruno no-one would know.

I think it'll be harder to make the Bruno film, surely "fashion" is one of the industries where Baron Cohen will be fairly well known? He'd probably have more luck with a Borat sequel, I'm sure there's plenty more old right wing loonies who've no idea who he is than there are fashion designers. Still, I'll look forward to it, even though I've never thought Bruno was nearly as funny as Borat.

I'm sure he'd target much more than the fashion world if he did the Bruno film.

Yeah Bruno was a bit shit. Unfortunately a film of that character will be made, it says so.

Bruno is by quite a distance my least favorite of his characters, but that's mainly due to the fact that I'm not interested at all in seeing fashionistas contradict themselves. (Call me crazy!)

It's far more interesting to me to see that Ali G genuinely reflects a lot of people's ideas of youth culture, and that Borat can go to extremely disturbing lengths without anyone thinking his behavior is out of place for a foreigner. That's entertaining as well as eye-opening.

But the fashion industry doesn't care that it charges thousands of dollars for clothes they admit are shit? Whoopie. Not interested.

That said, Bruno is an extremely good character when he plays against homophobes. Just as Ali G exposed our stereotyped view of youths and Borat exposed our stereotyped views of "outsiders," Bruno could well make for a painfully interesting exploration of general knee-jerk reaction to homosexuality.

After all, a lot of people went out of their way to accomodate Ali G and Borat, despite their absurd behavior. Would anyone do the same for a homosexual? If his past interviews are any indication, the answer is an emphatic no. Bruno is kept at a distance by everyone except fellow homosexuals or fashion designers. Take him out of his element. Put him in middle America. Let's see what happens there.

If the film happens to be fashion-oriented however, yes, it will suck.

Basil Fawlty is not Britain and Homer Simpson is not America.

But the important difference is that John Cleese *is* British and the Simpsons *is* made by Americans.

>But the important difference is that John Cleese *is* British and the Simpsons *is* made by Americans.

Well, that actually only matters if you subscribe to the "it's only okay for you to make fun of something if you are that very thing yourself" mindset.

Which I emphatically do not. And it's not a mindset I think most successful artists would have either.

Someone stole and reprint this article you wrote!

http://douglaswnt.wordpress.com/2008/03/21/in-the-wake-of-borat/

Just so you know.

We're technically under a Creative Commons Licence - so people can copy the work provided they attribute the author, and don't use it for commercial purposes.

But to me, that looks like something I've seen before - a blog with no coherent content (the Abput text is still the default!), which just takes text from all over the web. I have NO idea what they hope to achieve with it, unless they're trying to get their Pagerank up before adding a load of spam...

But thanks for the heads up!