In promoting his new film, Sacha Baron Cohen has not wavered in presenting himself as the backward Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev be it in interviews.
November 1, 2006 (Press Release) --
In promoting his new film, Sacha Baron Cohen has not wavered in presenting himself as the backward Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev be it in interviews, at movie premieres or on his thorough MySpace.com page.
Borat has virtually stepped off the movie screen like Tom Baxter in Woody Allen's "The Purple Rose of Cairo" But Baron Cohen's immersion in Borat has numerous predecessors. Character-based humor has long been a staple of comedians, some of whom have similarly pushed the boundaries of reality and fiction.
It's an approach that goes back to Andy Kaufman, Peter Sellers and beyond: Perhaps the tradition's forefather is Jack Benny, the legendary comedian whose stage character was cheap, vain and easily exasperated.
More recent examples of comedic faux personas include Paul Reuben's Pee Wee Herman, the Stephen Colbert of "The Colbert Report" and Martin Short's Jiminy Glick. On Nov. 22, Jack Black and partner Kyle Gass will again transform into the pseudo rock group Tenacious D for the film "Tenacious D in `The Pick of Destiny'" itself owing to the classic 1984 mockumentary "This is Spinal Tap."
Stephen Rosenfield, director of the American Comedy Institute, says it's fitting that Baron Cohen would use the media as an extension of his character in promoting "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," in which Borat (a TV reporter) interviews real people who aren't in on the gag.
"It's a natural other venue for a comedian to go into," Rosenfield says.
Source: http://www.yahoo.com
Borat has virtually stepped off the movie screen like Tom Baxter in Woody Allen's "The Purple Rose of Cairo" But Baron Cohen's immersion in Borat has numerous predecessors. Character-based humor has long been a staple of comedians, some of whom have similarly pushed the boundaries of reality and fiction.
It's an approach that goes back to Andy Kaufman, Peter Sellers and beyond: Perhaps the tradition's forefather is Jack Benny, the legendary comedian whose stage character was cheap, vain and easily exasperated.
More recent examples of comedic faux personas include Paul Reuben's Pee Wee Herman, the Stephen Colbert of "The Colbert Report" and Martin Short's Jiminy Glick. On Nov. 22, Jack Black and partner Kyle Gass will again transform into the pseudo rock group Tenacious D for the film "Tenacious D in `The Pick of Destiny'" itself owing to the classic 1984 mockumentary "This is Spinal Tap."
Stephen Rosenfield, director of the American Comedy Institute, says it's fitting that Baron Cohen would use the media as an extension of his character in promoting "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," in which Borat (a TV reporter) interviews real people who aren't in on the gag.
"It's a natural other venue for a comedian to go into," Rosenfield says.
Source: http://www.yahoo.com
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