Now that Brüno is finished and in theaters, what is Sacha Baron Cohen to do next? Surely he can continue appearing in movies not his own, such as he did with Talladega Nights and Sweeney Todd, but will there ever be another shock-mockumentary in the style of Borat and Brüno? Even if he develops some new characters, people don’t believe he could make another one of these kinds of films stealthily enough to make it work.
Well, let’s hope that isn’t true, because we would love to see at least one more. And we think he’s enough of a chameleon that his increasing fame won’t get in the way. As Metromix recently pointed out, there are just so many people (live and dead) who still need to be interviewed and/or pranked by Baron Cohen. Also, there are so many more marginalized people out there who could use a Brüno of their own to challenge the stereotypes and expose the continuing prejudices of our country.
To help Baron Cohen come up with a new character and issue, we’ve selected five already existing scenarios — which should help garner funding since Hollywood is so into remakes — to inspire him.
Black Like Me
With Brüno, Baron Cohen has gone “queerface.” So the logical next step is to go blackface. And the best way for him to do so is to look back to John Howard Griffin’s bold non-fiction book, in which the white author chronicles his first-hand experiences with racism while masquerading as an African American in the South in the late 1950s. Like the 1964 film adaptation, though, the name would be changed and the situations different. Obviously, 45 years later, the direct discrimination will be less, but Baron Cohen in blackface would nevertheless expose a lot of intolerance and separatism still existing in the U.S. Funnier than Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder and harder hitting than Crash, a new Black Like Me done as a comedic documentary may even finally make up for Soul Man.
Lolita
Not to equate pedophilia with homosexuality by any means, but Baron Cohen as a modern Humbert Humbert could do for America’s intolerance of sexual predators what Brüno does for the nation’s homophobia. Of course, this semi-non-fiction take on the Nabokov classic (and Kubrick classic) would potentially be the most controversial film ever released if it insinuated that pedophiles are even close to deserving the respect and tolerance that gays are entitled to. But if Baron Cohen wants to push buttons to the extreme, this would be the way to do it. And he’d be sure to find a number of despicable people in the U.S. who’d admit to being more okay with statutory rape than same-sex marriage. Ultimately, while masquerading as a man with a thing for little girls, Baron Cohen would function like a two-side mix of Humbert and Chris Hansen.
The Road to Guantanamo
The prejudice against former Gitmo detainees is very topical this year, so perhaps the next step for Baron Cohen is to impersonate a British-born Pakistani who has just been freed after years of being wrongly imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Whether taking his cue from Michael Winterbottom’s docu-drama (as a sort of sequel rather than remake) or the later comedy Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, Baron Cohen would take his character on a vacation across America, somewhat like the road trip in Borat, admitting to people along the way that he’s just been released from the detention facility following a five year stay for being a terrorist suspect. Despite his innocence, he’d surely be discriminated against, though Baron Cohen would probably taunt and encourage the profiling with a lot of jokes and gags, which would feed the stereotypes and even set himself up to appear potentially guilty.
Romper Stomper
We’re using Romper Stomper as an example, but Baron Cohen could model a film about a skinhead character off American History X or This Is England or any other movie that focuses on the culture, particularly it’s negative reputation. The twist, though, is that his character would be a SHARP (Skinhead Against Racial Prejudice) — that is, he’d be a traditional skin, not the Neo-Nazi type that most Americans associate with the term and culture. Such a premise might not be as ripe for content as Borat and Brüno were, but we still think it’d be interesting to focus on people’s prejudice of people presumed to be prejudiced. The irony would be stretched in way similar to most one-joke movies, but Baron Cohen’s other films are superficially one-joke, as well. And he’s able to find enough comedy to fill a feature in spite of this. Plus, Baron Cohen’s version of Romper Stomper could also tackle the immigration topic and mine a lot of the issue’s hypocrisies and ironies.
Wall Street
Are bankers and stockbrokers the most vilified people in America right now? Then Baron Cohen should create a character modeled after Gordon Gekko and examine the current attitudes towards capitalism existing around the country. Again, there’s sure to be plenty of hypocrisy and irony to fill a whole movie, one that will probably be funnier and more poignant than Michael Moore’s upcoming documentary and the Wall Street sequel combined. We see Baron Cohen going into poor neighborhoods while flashing his affluence (reminiscent of the Bombay segment of Von Trier and Leth’s The Five Obstructions) and going on talk shows to brag about ridiculous things he’s purchased and lives he has unapologetically ruined in order to acquire his wealth. Meanwhile, he could experiment with situations that expose the intrinsic greed in those who criticize his character.
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