Sacha Baron Cohen Takes Off the ‘Stache for Rolling Stone
Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen — the 35-year-old comic phenom who launched 1,000 neon green ball hammocks this Halloween — agreed to an interview with Rolling Stone speaking as himself in the current issue, instead of answering questions in character.
Check out highlights from the RS’s interview below or click here for a full excerpt in which Baron Cohen discusses anti-Semitism, anti-ceviche-ism, and sets the record straight on the fact that there’s actually no country where homosexuals wear blue hats and the women live in cages and drink fermented horse urine. (Really? Because we’d kind of be into that…)
On becoming a matter of national controversy:
“I wish I would have been there at the briefing that Bush got about who I am, who Borat is. It would have had to be great.”
On Kazakhstan’s objections to being misrepresented in the film:
“I was surprised, because I always had faith in the audience that they would realize that this was a fictitious country and the mere purpose of it was to allow people to bring out their own prejudices…I think the joke is on people who can believe that the Kazakhstan that I describe can exist.”
On anti-Semitism:
“Borat essentially works as a tool. By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice, whether it’s anti-Semitism or an acceptance of anti-Semitism…I remember, when I was in university I studied history, and there was this one major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw. And his quote was, ‘The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.’ I know it’s not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but I think it’s an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic.”
Source: US
Have you seen Borat? I finally saw it last Friday. I not only thought it was funny – I pretty much laughed from the opening credits to the ending credits. My husband said the funniest part of the whole movie was ME…because I didn’t stop laughing once.
It was freakin funny. What did you think?
