Dangerous fashion (From The Northern Echo)

Dangerous fashion

12:59pm Friday 10th July 2009

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Steve Pratt looks at the strange world created by Sacha Baron Cohen’s antics.

WHEN your declared objective is to become the most famous Austrian since Adolf Hitler, you have to expect a spot of bother along the way. Not that Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Ali G and Borat, didn’t know that already as he filmed his latest movie Bruno. The title character is a gay fashion journalist who tries to solve the Middle East crisis, adopts an African baby (which he puts in a T-shirt bearing the logo GAYBY), goes to a swingers party and ends up snogging his opponent in a cage fight in redneck Arkansas.

It’s a toss-up which was more dangerous – interviewing a terrorist leader in the Middle East or filming a cage fight in which Bruno realises the love of his life is in the ring with him and proceeds to snog and fondle him.

For the latter, the film production worked with a venue in Texarkana, Arkansas. The idea was that Bruno, after months on the road learning how to be heterosexual, would battle it out with anyone who challenged him. The makers didn’t want to break any statues or codes, and felt it vital to keep on the right side of police officers whom they might need to protect them.

The first night, police wouldn’t cover the event when told that the audience might get unnerved when, during the course of the evening’s entertainment, two men kissed. They did promise to attend if any audience members complained.

Moments after the first embrace between Bruno and his male assistant, chairs were pulled up and tossed, a fighter who’d been watching from the audience climbed into the cage and challenged Baron Cohen to a fight.

Director Larry Charles didn’t get the footage he needed, and Baron Cohen and the crew escaped in the nick of time.

Overnight, the production team moved the entire operation several hours to the north to Fort Smith.

The team wired chairs together, but seconds after the kiss, one of the crowd unwired a chair and threw it at Baron Cohen’s head. With the place close to riot, the performers were rushed from the premises. Audience members and fighters surrounded the bus and the field team, shouting abuse. The stand-off lasted many hours, with 40 police officers required to calm the angry mob.

Baron Cohen also hit trouble while sashaying through a Hasidic neighbourhood in Israel. Men and women in this conservative community are forbidden to show much skin, including legs and arms. So you can understand their anger at Bruno’s outfit of skintight short shorts and a Little Debbie-inspired bonnet.

Angry members of the crowd chased him, forcing him to hide in a store befores driven away lying on the floor of the vehicle.

One scene that didn’t make the final cut was shot in the US at the home of a prominent white supremacist. The man, who’d spent a decade in prison for violent hate mongering, reacted badly when Bruno introduced him to his gay lover, Diesel.

The supremacist cocked his fist and went to attack Baron Cohen, who was able to dodge the punch and make it safely out of the house.

He and his fellow writers create scenarios – such as Bruno thrown out of a big fashion event or interviewing celebrities on their humanitarian efforts – and then research to find the best venues to visit and people to experience.

Travelling in five vehicles (three vans, one getaway mini-van and one TV van that doubled as a production room and changing room), the cast and crew made their way across America, Europe and the Middle East. What finally halted filming temporarily wasn’t being injured by the crowd or arrested by police. Baron Cohen was put out of action by a bad case of the flu.

Within days he was chained together with his male assistant, played by Gustaf Hammarsten, on a hotel bed in Kansas City. While in that position, word reached them that the police were in the lobby. As the lawmen rode up in the lift, Baron Cohen and Hammarsten dashed down the emergency exit staircase – only to find it ended at the second storey.

They were trapped. Faced with possible arrest or a 15ft leap to freedom, they chose the latter. Both men took the plunge and fled into the escape vehicle.

■ Bruno (18) opens in cinemas today

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