Episode 683 - Sacha Baron Cohen
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:Welcome to the show.
Marc:I am Mark Marin.
Marc:This is WTF, my podcast.
Marc:Thank you for joining.
Marc:I appreciate it.
Marc:I am excited about today's show, as you should be as well.
Marc:It's a pretty special show, my friends.
Marc:A pretty special show because you will listen to a conversation I had with Sacha Baron Cohen.
Marc:who does not do many public conversations, not out of character, and usually those are short, but we talked for a long time.
Marc:Seemed like he was ready to talk about some stuff.
Marc:And it was pretty fascinating, man.
Marc:It was pretty fascinating.
Marc:I really didn't know what was going to happen.
Marc:I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it.
Marc:Apparently, he...
Marc:He was sort of defied or requested to do it by a friend of his in England.
Marc:Because, you know, he goes out and when he has a movie coming out, which he does, he goes out and does some stuff, but he usually does it in character of some sort or he's got a shtick.
Marc:And not this time, people.
Marc:I guess that's what I'm trying to tell you.
Marc:Not this time.
Marc:The comedian and writer Peter Bainham, a British fellow who's a friend of Sasha's, told him that he had to do the show.
Marc:And he came over a couple weeks ago.
Marc:And we sat in here and I gave him some coffee and he got lit.
Marc:And we went at it.
Marc:It was really great.
Marc:It was one of those things where when somebody creates... I think that Sasha has created a couple of real cultural masterpieces and real comedy masterpieces with Borat and Bruno and the Ali G stuff.
Marc:And he has done stuff that has such a punch to it and is so visceral and so immediate...
Marc:uh also character driven but but revealing a lot satirically uh about uh the world and people in our culture and he just those are amazing contributions uh to the world of comedy and to satire he's got a new movie coming out it comes out march 11th called the brothers grimsby which is a um
Marc:A narrative film, a pretty exciting and goofy hybrid of kind of action movie and doofus movie with some of the most crass filmic joke experiences that I think you'll ever see.
Marc:That's where he's pushing the buttons in this one.
Marc:But the bottom line is I didn't know what to expect.
Marc:And we had a very full ranging conversation about comedy, about art, about education, about, you know, a little bit about religion, about the power of comedy and why we do it.
Marc:And I don't know, man.
Marc:It was it was exciting for me because I don't I don't know about you.
Marc:I've always wanted to know what was inside that guy and what drove him.
Marc:And and I got as close as you're going to get to to getting some answers.
Marc:So that's coming up in a few minutes.
Marc:It's you know, his commitment to characters is is astounding.
Marc:And, you know, as I talked to him about, you know, how he puts those characters together, why he puts those characters together.
Marc:I mean, what I found out about him and you'll find out, too, as you listen to it, is that he loves the rush.
Marc:He's a real comic.
Marc:You know, he you know, he didn't.
Marc:He's a natural, but you'll be surprised to listen to how he trained and what he really wanted to do and what you know, what is the real intent.
Marc:of his movies and his characters.
Marc:And it's not unlike a comedian or somebody who does things that are provocative, somebody who takes the risk of putting themselves out there in front of other people or in situations for that adrenaline, that juice.
Marc:yeah man i mean i just i think about that a lot i've been thinking about that a lot lately in relation to my life and how long do we have to live and what's really happening and what choices am i making what do i need to do what do i don't need to do at this point at this juncture in the history of me who am i
Marc:It's weird, man, because I come full circle a lot of times.
Marc:I'll go years where I feel like I've made strides and I have in some areas, but the same shit in my head.
Marc:You hit these cycles.
Marc:You have these moments where you're realizing, holy fuck, am I just a collection of ticks and habits or a repetition of behaviors and actions that circle back around?
Marc:It's amazing the limitations that you find in yourself.
Marc:And then when you talk to somebody like Sasha, who has this freedom of...
Marc:of talent to immerse himself in characters on purpose.
Marc:It seems very liberating to me because a lot of times we just become the characters we are in as a reaction to the situation we're in.
Marc:I guess my point is that, for fuck's sake, don't be too hard on yourself if you're a freak inside.
Marc:And you just say, like, all right, maybe some of that will come out in a healthy way.
Marc:And maybe some of that shit I'm just going to have to live with and die with.
Marc:There's no wide open, man.
Marc:There is.
Marc:You know, but it's a pretty fragile place.
Marc:And it's a pretty fucking rough world.
Marc:I do think I did get certainly more than I expected and had a great conversation with a guy that has been privately hiding behind characters for a very long time.
Marc:So enjoy my talk now with Sacha Baron Cohen.
Marc:I'm very happy you're here.
Marc:You seem like an elusive character.
Guest:Yeah, what?
Guest:Today I do?
Marc:No, in general.
Marc:You're like a rare... We started.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:We're on.
Marc:A rare animal of some sort.
Guest:Like a yeti.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Who is that guy?
Marc:Does he do anything outside of the thing?
Guest:not really louis ck yes who i heard your um interview podcast what would you yeah what term would you use uh yeah my conversation your conversation he actually he once came and we employed him for two days to work on bruno the movie a movie i did called bruno oh did you really like what did he do
Guest:Well, a lot of it was, I don't know if you've seen the film.
Guest:It's a gay Austrian character.
Guest:I know the character.
Guest:And in it, he has a transformation.
Guest:He goes into self-hatred and he becomes an ultimate homophobe.
Guest:And so Louis came in just for that kind of transition bit.
Guest:And he was saying, there was a lot of advice on how I could build up muscle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he basically came like, wait, this brilliant comedian.
Guest:A lot of it was like, if you just, you know, when you're talking to people, just bend, just, you know, lift, do the curls continually while you're talking.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And actually he came up, he said, you should do something in the ultimate fighting arena.
Marc:Oh, that's he came up with that.
Guest:Well, he said, do something in there.
Guest:I don't think he quite had what we're actually going to do there, but that was it.
Guest:He had the kind of brainwave off.
Guest:That is something that would be great to stick a gay man in.
Marc:And that was sort of a hairy scene, right?
Marc:I mean, that almost caused trouble, didn't it?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So that was a tricky scene, actually.
Guest:It was tricky.
Guest:So Louis came in.
Guest:He had the idea of the ultimate fighting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I'm with my friend Ant Hines.
Guest:He's this great, bald writer that I've been working with for about 18 years.
Guest:From Britain?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah and we were thinking um you know we want to finish the movie yeah in this arena like a normal romantic comedy has the guy proposed to the girl in a stadium full of sports fans they kiss and they're on the video thing yeah it's on the video yeah we thought all right let's do that let's have all the sports fans yeah but let's do it in an ultimate fighting arena and let me make out with the guy yeah
Guest:so so we wrote in the script all right we're going to do this and it's going to turn into a riot and we knew it'd be a security issue yeah you know like how do you so you you know i don't know have you ever been to see an ultimate fighting no it's not if it all it doesn't go well with comedy generally comedians don't really for no i mean well i mean rogan's like an actual uh announcer
Guest:Seth Rogen.
Marc:Joe, Joe Rogen.
Marc:He's a comedian.
Marc:He's actually an announcer for ultimate.
Marc:It's just not my thing.
Marc:I can't even deal with it ironically.
Marc:I just, being around that much alpha male insanity just kind of creeps me out a little bit.
Marc:So they don't know you're a character.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:So basically, I thought, how do I get out of there?
Guest:We're going to have 2,000 rednecks.
Guest:We want to have a riot.
Guest:But how do we get out of there?
Guest:But aren't they even rednecks?
Guest:They're more bros.
Guest:They're more sort of muscle bros, right?
Guest:Well, we did it.
Guest:The first one we did was in Texarkana, which I've been to once before.
Guest:Texarkana is only famous for one thing.
Guest:They pulled an African-American man.
Guest:Well, one person pulled an African-American man behind a pickup truck until he died.
Guest:So that's the town's place.
Marc:So they're almost like wrestling fans.
Guest:They're wrestling fans.
Guest:It's an extreme place.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Basically, we were there on the day, and the question is... We were 200 people short.
Guest:We didn't have the 2,000.
Guest:And one of the judges worked at a prison.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At jail.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, all right, I can get 200 guys.
Guest:And suddenly, 200 guys come out.
Guest:They're on parole.
Guest:And these guys had swastikas on their heads.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So, it's pretty great.
Guest:Crazy.
Guest:So, basically, I do the... I'm told by my lawyer beforehand, because...
Guest:What, to make a will?
Guest:Well, firstly, the studio, we did it through this company called MRC, and they go, we just want you to sign this document.
Guest:I go, what's this document?
Guest:And it's basically an insurance policy that if I get killed during filming, that they get all their money reimbursed.
Guest:So I'm like, why?
Guest:I've never had to sign this.
Guest:Why don't they go, just sign it, please.
Guest:Otherwise, we won't make the movie.
Guest:So anyway, get to the thing.
Guest:And I have this.
Guest:The night before, I'm on the phone with my lawyer.
Guest:I've got this great lawyer who basically is this gay Southern man.
Guest:He's a genius in the First Amendment.
Guest:He lives in India.
Guest:How does that happen?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:He's kind of moved to an ashram.
Guest:He's like a dude.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And he's got 15 lawyers working for him.
Guest:And whenever we're in trouble, we call up and they're like, okay, in the case of Smith versus the state of Arkansas, it's very clear that the indemnity.
Guest:So we call them up and it's really good for us because we can call them up late at night and they're experts.
Guest:So he has 15 guys.
Guest:You know, one guy is just Arkansas, Texas.
Guest:Just all constitutional lawyers.
Guest:Yeah, all constitutional first amendment law.
Guest:And so they go, it goes, all right, there's like 12 things you need to know.
Guest:None of these laws can you break.
Guest:You know, and the big one was, he said, whatever you do, you know, don't, don't incite a riot.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because that's a federal offense.
Guest:You know, if you are crossing a state line to incite a riot, then that's punishable, you know, by minimum, I think three years.
Guest:And it's a federal offense.
Guest:Right.
Guest:uh that's what the chicago seven were up for actually right but you but you would not it's sort of a gray area i mean it's not what you wanted to do yeah the problem was it was what i wanted to do so i said there's a problem because i am crossing a state line in order to incite a riot at the end because i thought it would be a great thing for the movement insanity
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so there were about 15 things.
Guest:He said, whatever you do, you know, so we went through all the nudity laws and the decency laws.
Guest:Obscenity.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we had to like let people know that there would be nudity.
Guest:So as a result, I had this poster printed, which had like,
Guest:You know, girls in bikinis, really hot girls in bikinis going, there will be nudity, ultimate fighting.
Guest:Obviously, when they got there, there was male nudity.
Guest:And then there were about 15 stipulations of like, you know, I can kiss him on the mouth.
Guest:I can kiss him on the nipple.
Guest:I can't put a finger in his rectum.
Guest:He can place a open net palm on my...
Guest:Yeah, ass cheek, but not the moment it gets within two centimeters of the rectum, you're done.
Guest:So basically, Arkansas ended up being one of the only places in America we could get away with it because there was some, the indecency laws were kind of framed wrongly.
Guest:They put the punctuation in the wrong place.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And so essentially, we thought we could win in a court case.
Guest:if what if you put a finger in a rectum well no even those would still be illegal but the idea of kind of you know making out making out with the guy yeah being almost naked was okay and but so what ended up happening and how the hell did you get out of there because it was it was bad right yes it's pretty bad so i interviewed a bunch of security guys before and i go all right here's your setup i'm in an ultimate fighting cage
Guest:2,000 guys, they get angry.
Guest:I'm going to make out with the guy.
Guest:How do you get me out?
Guest:And the seven guys all failed.
Guest:And then one guy came in.
Guest:So you had to tell them the joke.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I told my security guy that we were hiring.
Guest:And then a guy came back.
Guest:He'd just been in Afghanistan looking after Karzai.
Guest:And he said, all right, sir, you know, trap door.
Guest:And he said, that's the only way to get out, which is a trap door.
Guest:So we built a trap door in the cage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then this guy, when he shouted, go, go, go, the rule was I had to go.
Guest:So also for the night, they hired like eight security guys to be around the cage.
Guest:They're like, there's no way anyone is getting in that cage.
Guest:And I go, all right, great.
Guest:So it was interesting, actually, because we're doing the scene, but it's in a real environment.
Guest:And it's the end of the movie, so it has to work.
Guest:And so our aim is...
Guest:I've got to make it.
Guest:My boyfriend's going to come into the arena, into the ring.
Guest:I haven't seen him for six months.
Guest:I become this homophobe, disgusting guy called Straight Dave.
Guest:And he's going to see me.
Guest:I'm going to fight him, beat the shit out of him.
Guest:And then when I'm going to give him the final death blow, I'm going to kiss him instead because he breaks my heart.
Guest:And we're going to make love.
Guest:And there's going to be a riot.
Guest:So that's the aim.
Guest:And that's the end of the movie.
Guest:And that's what we have to do.
Guest:We've got one opportunity to do it.
Guest:And I said, listen, just in case it doesn't work, let's book another place in Arkansas the night after.
Guest:So anyway.
Marc:It's like Buster Keaton with the general on the train.
Guest:You only got that one shot when the train blows.
Guest:If you didn't get it, it's over.
Guest:So I get there and I made a mistake.
Guest:I made a mistake, which was in the writing.
Guest:This shows you when a scene is wrong and a scene is right, the audience know it.
Guest:So we're there and I'm straight Dave.
Guest:Come on, you fuckers, everyone, you know.
Guest:And I get everyone drunk and they love me.
Guest:And I go, okay, who wants to fight me?
Guest:And my boyfriend comes into the room.
Guest:I haven't seen him.
Guest:And the first thing I do is I attack him.
Guest:And I beat him up and he's got fake blood in there.
Guest:And he's like a weak looking guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's bleeding at the end.
Guest:And the crowd stopped booing me.
Guest:because you're beating him up yeah because i'm beating him up and he's bleeding and he looks weak and so i did the one thing that the lawyer told me not to do which was i challenged the audience to fight me i said all right because i've been told by the bodyguards there's no way anyone's getting in so okay come on any of you fuckers want to have some shit kicked out of you i'll beat i'll rip you apart
Guest:and and i knew no one could get in the cage and then at that point i see like some kind of six foot ten giant you know 250 pound yeah yeah huge muscly neanderthal man run stop running towards the cage i go there's no way this guy's getting over i got security around it i look down the security are gone they're looking off there's a big fight is broken out with all the prison get the guys from the jail
Guest:and there's no one there here i go all right he's not getting over this cage one hand two hand and he does a flip and lands does this somersault lands and he's huge this guy's ripped he's an ultimate fighter right and he you know puts his arms in the air and the crowd roar and basically at that point i hear go go go i jump out the the trap door anyway my friend aunt who's the writer with the co-writer
Guest:We're in this tunnel.
Guest:So we have a trap door.
Guest:The trap door leads to a tunnel.
Guest:The tunnel goes straight to a car that's got its door open with the engine running.
Guest:Because we know if we've got to go, everyone's going to run after us.
Guest:So anyway, Ant comes into this tunnel and he says, all right, get back in there.
Guest:Come on, Sash, get in there.
Guest:Go back to the ring.
Guest:Yeah, go back in the ring.
Guest:There's a guy in there.
Guest:He's going to kill me.
Guest:and and not only that they start throwing metal chairs into the ring the guys you know the inmates in the crowd he goes get in there finish the movie come on we've been working this movie for two years finish the movie go in kiss your boyfriend finish the movie we go home i get but they're gonna kill me so i said to the bodyguard i go
Guest:I go, all right, pop your head in.
Guest:And if I can get in without going to hospital or going to hospital for a long time, then I'll do it.
Guest:And he goes, all right.
Guest:I go, are you a Korean?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So the bodyguard puts his head in and he goes, get out of here.
Guest:We run, we jump into the car.
Guest:Then so we drive away in Texarkana and word has obviously got out that I'm in town.
Guest:They know it's you now.
Guest:Yeah, they know it's me.
Guest:There's 2000 people there who are looking for me.
Guest:We get straight in the cars and we drive through Arkansas to the next place.
Guest:The police find out about it.
Guest:I can't remember which town we went to.
Marc:So how did you get that last shot?
Guest:So I set up the same ring the next night.
Guest:We had 2,000 people the next night.
Guest:And what we did was we couldn't put barbed wire on the top because I had to have some way of stopping people jumping in.
Guest:So I put faked barbed wire on the top of the ring so that people psychologically wouldn't want to jump into the ring.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:We had all the chairs kind of stuck down with metal, basically metal chains to prevent them going.
Guest:And yeah, we did it the next night.
Marc:To an unsuspecting audience.
Guest:Unsuspecting audience.
Guest:We had the police there.
Guest:There were about 15 cops there.
Marc:And you had the trap door and everything.
Guest:Yeah, we had the trap door.
Guest:And basically the cops said, listen, we know, we heard about Texarkana.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Word is out.
Guest:Yeah, if you break any of these laws, we're arresting you.
Guest:So it's a bit like the end of the Blues Brothers.
Guest:I had the cops there.
Guest:They were going to get me if I break the law.
Guest:It's like a Doors concert.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:They're just waiting for you to show your dick.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And then I sort of just want to make sure that nobody got in.
Guest:And in the end, it kind of really worked.
Guest:We changed the scene a tiny bit.
Guest:So I realized that there was a problem with the scene.
Guest:Because I attacked him, the crowd booed me.
Guest:This time, I said, you know, I'm going to turn my back to the crowd and you're going to go and punch me in the head.
Guest:And he did it.
Guest:And it was great because he was playing unfairly.
Guest:The crowd were on my side.
Guest:I then hit him.
Guest:He hit me.
Guest:He was tougher.
Guest:I had some blood.
Guest:And then the crowd were on my side.
Guest:And they were fully behind me.
Guest:They were ready for me to really hurt him.
Guest:And that's when I kissed him.
Guest:And that's when they freaked out.
Guest:But they couldn't jump over.
Guest:And then somehow, so I'm kissing and making out.
Guest:And all the time I'm thinking of all the legal laws.
Guest:You know, I can stroke his ass.
Guest:He goes to put a finger in my ass.
Guest:I'm like, whoa, whoa, pull it away.
Guest:Kissing him.
Guest:And then at one point, I see another chair flying in.
Guest:It's a metal chair flying in.
Guest:And I'm thinking...
Guest:what the fuck how did this happen what happened was somebody had got a knife in and was soaring through the chains commitment so committed to hurting me and then eventually so I thought I'm lying on my back and I'm thinking if I hold my co-star tightly I can move from left to right and dodge the chairs yeah
Guest:But eventually, after two chairs, I hear go, go, go.
Guest:And the rule was, once you hear go, go, go, you have to go.
Guest:Go into the tunnel.
Guest:Yeah, so go into the tunnel, into the waiting car, drive off.
Guest:What we didn't think about, though, was that we had left the crew there with 20 ultimate fighters who didn't know what was going on and were really pissed at the crew.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And these 2,000 guys.
Guest:So it turned into this riot.
Guest:And in the end, I think it took about 40 cops to march into there to rescue the crew.
Marc:Did they get hurt?
Marc:Anybody?
Guest:No, I mean, we had like Larry Charles was the director.
Guest:He picked up the monitor.
Guest:You know, the monitors really happened.
Guest:He was like threatening to smash people in the face of the monitor and they managed to get out.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But like when you're working with Larry and you guys know what this is going to happen, you know, this shit is going to happen.
Marc:I mean, I can see when you're talking about it that there's it's the excitement of a guy who jumped off a mountain and lived, you know, like the thrill of it all.
Marc:I mean, you're entering this situation knowing full well that this shit is going to be on some level life or death.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like, you know, Larry knows that.
Marc:You know that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So so like it was worth the risk to you, obviously.
Marc:But how much of that was really the reason you did it and how much of it was, you know, to sort of make this provocative piece of film?
Marc:I mean, it almost seems like extreme sports in itself.
Yeah.
Guest:So is the question whether we did it for the film or just the buzz of it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, well, that's a really interesting question.
Guest:Okay, I think you get to the heart of it, actually, which is, so when we're making the film, we're like 10 guys on the road.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:This is for all of them, for Bruno and Borat.
Guest:Yeah, for the allergy show.
Guest:And you get addicted to the adrenaline once you beat the cops once.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You go, all right, you know, great, let's do the next one.
Guest:What can we do now?
Guest:Yeah, what can we do now?
Guest:Then you beat the FBI and then, you know, you start winning.
Marc:You beat the FBI with the Ali G show in terms of getting access.
Guest:Yeah, getting access to the FBI.
Guest:Well, on Bull Rat, the FBI started following us.
Guest:They got so many complaints that there was a terrorist.
Guest:traveling in an ice cream van that really it was you know it was you know we shot it uh 10 years ago so it was a couple years after 9-11 um when we actually so that's interesting because that's like weird backstory that really adds to the message of the movie that they were that paranoid
Marc:Of course, the terrorist would be a little fat guy and this guy in an ice cream truck.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:We're the classic.
Guest:So the FBI got so many complaints that they started, you know, compiling a little file on us.
Guest:And eventually they came to visit us at the hotel and we, you know, I obviously went missing, you know, when I heard because they're like,
Guest:fbi's downstairs sasha disappear oh really yeah because you don't want me to be apprehended i mean we had one time in new york when we're making you have stayed in character well the first time i used to stay in character with the police yeah the first time i think was in sedona in arizona right and we didn't really have our shit together and we didn't know the law well enough and
Guest:And so I thought... This was with Borat.
Guest:Yeah, with Borat.
Guest:We were doing the Ali G show.
Guest:And there was some kind of psychic masseuse who... He was trying to get me to relax.
Guest:I was being very tense.
Guest:He goes, listen, I'm going to go out the room.
Guest:Pardon my terrible American accent.
Guest:When I come back in, I want you to be relaxed.
Guest:He comes back in and I'm masturbating.
Guest:Well, I'm masturbating under the cloth.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I thought, what's the big deal?
Guest:He calls the police...
Guest:So the police turn up.
Guest:I'm at the next place and I'm alone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the police sort of surround.
Guest:I thought, okay, I'll pretend to be asleep.
Guest:The police pull me out of this car and they start questioning me.
Guest:And I'm going, I don't know what the problem is.
Guest:And they go, what exactly did you do?
Guest:I go, I was touching my crumb and making a swift movement.
Guest:And they go, sir, what is a chram?
Guest:A chram, I'm a chram.
Guest:And, you know, I go to, you know.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And then, so I stayed in character.
Guest:Mike, the crew wasn't around.
Guest:No one was around, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went, I remember, I went to blow my nose, put my hand in my pocket, and the guy pulled his gun.
Guest:which you realize by the way when you hear about all these kind of african-american kids getting shot you've got to be so well trained to not get shot right if you're in that part right it's so easy right you know i was going to blow my nose the guy was going to shoot me well it's sort of like you you sort of deal with that in the new movie when you finally get the gun yes yeah there's that moment oh my god yeah when you've got a gun you want to shoot it yeah
Guest:You know, a cop's got a gun.
Guest:He's going to use it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we handed over the tape, actually, because we didn't realize there was a problem.
Guest:They wanted the tape.
Guest:They said, stay here.
Guest:You're going to have to come back and arrest you.
Guest:And what we didn't realize was we called up the lawyer, our lawyer in India, and he said,
Guest:Simulating masturbation in Arizona is a crime.
Guest:And it's two years imprisonment.
Guest:And actually, I think R. Kelly went to jail for that.
Guest:One of the things he went to jail for.
Guest:So we said to the lawyer, okay, what do we do?
Guest:He said, get on a plane right now.
Guest:Get out of Arizona.
Guest:Because they've got the evidence.
Guest:You gave over the tape, which is the worst thing you could ever do.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So again, getting back to it, so there was some part of you, even though you had the conceit and the structure of what this character was capable of in provoking a social message or a satirical message, but there was some other part of you that was like, how far can we push the law?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And that became very exciting.
Guest:Well, everything I've ever done, lawyers have immediately said their knee-jerk reaction has been, it's illegal.
Guest:We can't do that.
Marc:Impossible.
Marc:Yeah, they do that with everything.
Marc:Why not just err on the side of like, don't do that?
Guest:yeah exactly i mean lawyer their aim and i have to always you know explain it to the sort of heads of the channels or studios is the aim of your lawyers is not telling what's legal it's to prevent your company from getting sued right and it was in borat we ended up getting sued i think you know 150 times but it ended up being very beneficial for fox um because you knew you were okay
Guest:Yeah, we were all right.
Guest:We knew we were on the right side of the law.
Marc:But they still got to pump some money into making that clear.
Marc:The lawyers still have to go like, no, and that costs $1,000 a second.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:So you get insurance for the kind of lawsuits.
Guest:So in the script writing stage of the movie, it's all about what will make the greatest movie and what will make the best, not the greatest, what will make the best film.
Guest:But yes, there is that problem.
Guest:And obviously, criminals must have the same thing as well, which is once the adrenaline kicks in, you get addicted to the adrenaline.
Guest:And that's when you start making silly mistakes.
Guest:And the crew would say, come on, let's just do this and do that.
Guest:And that's when actually people can start getting hurt or arrested.
Marc:Isn't it interesting because that momentum, like especially Borat, because that's sort of a masterpiece.
Marc:And, you know, and it's considered that and it deserves it.
Marc:And it did show a lot of us more about our country.
Marc:And it also was hilarious and whatever.
Marc:But the idea that, you know, that if people aren't inherently prejudiced, they are inherently, you know, complacent.
Marc:That they, you know, out of politeness, they'll go ahead and sing, you know, throw the Jew down the wall.
Marc:Even in that moment, like, you didn't get the feeling, like, what, that's a room full of anti-Semites.
Marc:It's actually a room full of fucking hicks that are sort of like, well, let's indulge this guy, you know.
Marc:But on the other side of that, the flip side that is dangerous is what you're talking about, which is where you get a group of people that get so adrenalized by the possibility of starting shit that shit happens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a few interesting issues he brought up there because he...
Guest:You're right.
Guest:Throw the Jew down the well.
Guest:You know, what does it really show?
Guest:Does it?
Guest:And I suppose for people listening out there who haven't seen it, I Google throw the Jew down the well.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:It's much.
Guest:I don't need to explain it.
Guest:OK, yeah.
Guest:So what does it show?
Guest:Does it show that the people in that bar are anti-Semitic?
Guest:No, not really.
Guest:They probably don't hate Jews.
Guest:They probably.
Marc:Well, here's the moment as a Jew.
Marc:Here's what I felt.
Marc:Was that, you know, at first they were like, who the fuck is this guy?
Marc:And then next they realized you're not a threat.
Marc:He's sort of a clown.
Marc:So, you know, the song's stupid.
Marc:He's stupid.
Marc:Okay, let's indulge the foreigner.
Marc:He seems to be sort of trying to speak our language.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But once they all started singing, I had this feeling that, you know, when you started talking about Jews and money and, you know, taken by the horns, that there is part of their, you know, limited intellectual narrative that involves Jews, you know, running the government.
Guest:So, yes, of course.
Guest:That is in place.
Guest:And I think you're right.
Guest:I think it's, you know, what does it show?
Guest:Is there any satire in it?
Guest:I think it shows not necessarily that they're anti-Semitic, but...
Guest:I think the dangerous thing is people who are indifferent about evil people, you know.
Guest:So essentially somebody comes up and says, has an incredibly racist song against African Americans.
Guest:It's vicious and about them being, you know, the worst stereotypes of African Americans.
Guest:for a crowd to just come and sing along and go, yeah, with the black, you know, whatever the lyrics would be, is almost more dangerous.
Guest:I mean, I, at university, I studied Nazi Germany amongst, especially in the 20th century.
Guest:history yeah and uh there was the main historian at the time was this guy called ian kershaw who was the main historian of sort of that period and his thing he had this sentence which was the path to auschwitz was paved with indifference right which i thought that was it's a great comment it's not that people are actively hate black people it's not that people actively hate gypsies or actively hate jews
Guest:It's that they're ready to let it happen.
Marc:Well, Sam, this is one of these things, like as an American Jew, you're sort of brought up with this Holocaust awareness that is sort of plowed into you.
Marc:And even when I was a kid, I'm 52, they'd show us the movies at Hebrew school.
Marc:You really can't wrap your brain around that experience.
Marc:I mean, it's not that I'm indifferent, but it's like, how do I really understand that that really happened and that's possible and it's happening?
Marc:And then there's like outside of the sort of indifference, there's the good German thing, the people that go along with whatever authority is in place.
Marc:And I think also like what you see in the Borat movie is that
Guest:is that as long as it's not us yeah fuck it yeah do you know what i mean maybe they are a problem i don't know yeah but you went to where'd you go to college i went uh i went in england i went um to cambridge so that's a good school yeah i mean it's good i went there mainly because of the cambridge footlights that so monty python came out of the cambridge footlights so that was i wanted to do comedy
Marc:Which is what, the sort of non-theater, theater group?
Guest:Yeah, it's like the comedy group.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And ironically, so I went there to get into this group.
Guest:It's a bit like the Lampoon, and I was never allowed in.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:so that was you know i got there the first week great do the audition and couldn't get in and as a result of that i um ended up doing straight acting a rumor went around the university that i was this brilliant actor even though i'd never done any acting before i got given this lead in a checkoff play yeah and the rehearsal started happening and the director said wait a minute you you can't act
Guest:And so he said, I'm going to sack you from the get rid of you.
Guest:You know, you can't act.
Guest:And the rest of the cast, they really liked me.
Guest:And they're like, you sack him, we all go.
Guest:And so I ended up actually doing this checkoff play and ended up doing kind of straight roles.
Guest:And how did you do with it?
Guest:It ended up being fine.
Guest:In the end, I did a kind of sort of funny version of the Chekhov.
Guest:It was a Chekhov comedy.
Marc:But you're always compelled towards comedy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So wait, so where'd this start?
Marc:Where'd you grow up then?
Marc:What part?
Guest:So I grew up in Northwest London.
Guest:And what's that like?
Guest:It's a kind of pretty Jewish neighborhood.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sort of middle class.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And your dad did what?
Guest:Accountant.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what did your mom do?
Guest:She was like a keep fit teacher.
Marc:Keep fit?
Guest:Yeah, keep fit.
Guest:Exercise.
Guest:She taught classes?
Guest:Yeah, taught classes in the living room.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:In the living room?
Marc:Like a few ladies?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Some Jewish ladies would come over.
Guest:Yeah, some Jewish ladies from nearby.
Marc:Do the movements?
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:You had a pretty big living room or was it a very small class?
Marc:It was a small class.
Marc:She would make a living at it necessarily, but her heart was in the right place.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:And how many siblings do you have?
Guest:I've got two brothers.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And are they in show business?
Guest:Well, one is the composer for... He's a composer.
Guest:He does all the movies that I do.
Marc:Oh, that's nice.
Marc:Is he out here or is he in London?
Guest:He's in London, but he was... So we grew up.
Guest:He was a jazz musician growing up.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:And so the house was always full of music and he'd take me...
Guest:older brother older brother yeah older brother and so from the age of kind of 12 he was taking me out he used to do sort of late night jams you know that's the only place you could sort of practice your jazz and he was trying to get into jazz college so you'd have to go to these clubs so i would go somehow my parents allowed me to go to these midnight jams yeah we'd get back at like four in the morning and then i'd wake up for school at seven yeah
Guest:But yeah, so he ended up, you know, sort of versed in that kind of music.
Guest:And then he started producing a lot of kind of soul and early kind of R&B and that kind of stuff.
Guest:So we had a, there was always a kind of, you know, a lot of the artists were round in the living room eating my mom's food.
Guest:Oh yeah?
Marc:So your parents were pretty progressive, open, creative people in a way?
Guest:Yeah, they were.
Marc:Or at least indulged you guys.
Guest:Yes, they were happy for us to make some music and muck around.
Marc:Be fun.
Marc:To be interested in something.
Guest:Yeah, well, my dad loved comedy and my mom loves music.
Marc:So what was your first exposure to comedy that made you sort of like have that moment where you're like, holy shit?
Guest:I think I was eight years old.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Life of Brian came out in the cinemas.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So it was an X in England.
Guest:It's kind of their best movie.
Guest:Yeah, it's incredible.
Guest:And my brothers managed to sneak me into a cinema.
Guest:An X, it was an X. X, which is an 18, I think.
Guest:So it got banned.
Guest:Actually, Life of Brian got banned in a lot of England.
Marc:Because of the religious implications.
Guest:Yes, the religious stuff.
Guest:And my brothers took me in.
Guest:I think it was the first time I'd seen a fully naked woman.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And is there a guy's coconut?
Marc:I feel like there is.
Guest:In my memory, there's a guy's coconut.
Marc:I think there is maybe.
Marc:I'd like to think so.
Marc:Sure, why not?
Marc:Well, I mean, let's blame that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:so uh and that obviously i mean there's probably a lesson there which is don't show eight-year-olds x-rated movies comedies with cock yeah exactly uh but i just remember laughing it and i was obsessed by python after that yeah and now and so you like watched all the flying circus and yeah other movies yeah and you know meaning of life and oh yeah there was something about going into cinema and there being that outrageous laughter
Marc:yeah i think maybe subconsciously i'm trying to achieve i don't know no no no i'm not very good at the self-analysis stuff are you not no the english people are not very good at that you americans are brilliant at that yeah it's a that is sort of true isn't it it's yeah but you you grew up with you know sort of open-minded people who taught exercise classes i mean there is some self-awareness to there must have been a little of that
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't think in England there's much self-awareness.
Guest:I think, you know, if people are what they describe as mentally ill here, in England you just call them eccentric.
Guest:You know, so everyone finds them like fun eccentric.
Marc:You kind of indulge them until they're annoying and you're like, yeah, that's that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, there'd be some guy flashing his privates in the nearby park.
Guest:Oh, it's just some eccentric guy, you know.
Guest:So when did you first start performing comedy of any kind?
Guest:So I think I was about nine years old when I wrote my first sketch.
Marc:Based on a Python sketch, kind of, probably.
Guest:Yeah, that kind of... I mean, it's terrible, but I was in this kind of Jewish youth club and they would do kind of final performances and, you know, final parties and I would write a little sketch and I'd get sort of excited about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then...
Guest:Yeah, I don't know.
Guest:I started doing a little routine with my brother on the circuit.
Guest:He was a musician.
Marc:On what circuit?
Marc:The Jewish Youth Club circuit?
Guest:It was kind of the Jewish old age home circuit.
Guest:How old were you then?
Guest:I was about 16 and we would dress as Hasidic Jews and sing Jewish songs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And one of the songs was this song called Schwitzing, which was about how these Hasidic Jews get so hot that they end up shaving their beards and taking their clothes off and actually converting to Christianity at the end.
Guest:And it would go down terribly.
Guest:I mean, these old age homes would hate it.
Marc:Who was booking you?
Guest:I don't know, but people were like, please take the money, never come back here again.
Guest:What do you call yourselves?
Guest:The Coen brothers?
Guest:I can't remember the Schwitzing brothers.
Guest:But eventually I got seen doing that.
Guest:And I got hired to by the Paramount Comedy Channel to do Bruno, actually, to do like some kind of undercover stuff.
Guest:the ad version of bruno you come up with bruno at that point well i did i did this um i started doing this cable show when i was about 23 yeah and it had about 40 viewers but i was doing these characters yeah and one of the characters was this early form of ali g yeah um
Marc:But Ali G, this is what's interesting.
Marc:Also interesting about the Brothers Grimsby is that these characters, that guy, what's his name?
Marc:Yeah, Nobby.
Marc:Nobby is a very specific British type.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What you were lampooning is very specific British type, as was Ali G. And both of them are, we can get it enough.
Marc:We know what the American version is.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But Ali G, I still don't know exactly what his background would be or who that guy... What was his life like?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, it was intentionally ambiguous.
Guest:So Ali G, the idea was...
Guest:how could i go into a room with a very intelligent person somebody who is an expert usually a member of the upper class and ask the most idiotic questions possible and not get thrown out the movie right so i decided that if he had this you know whiff off
Guest:ethnicity about him and possibly even islam or pakistan or whatever that they their prejudice would lead them to assume that i could be incredibly badly educated their white guilt would in would would they would indulge you yeah because it would look that like sort of like look i'm talking to one yes exactly right right
Guest:And also their stereotype of the uneducated ethnic masses meant that they believed that somebody as idiotic as Ali G could exist, when actually Ali G couldn't exist.
Guest:If somebody was that stupid, they probably would die.
Guest:One iota more, and they'd actually be dead.
Guest:Right.
Guest:yeah the idea was he was ethnically ambiguous as a result of that when i within like a couple of weeks of you know putting him out on air every there are a few ethnic communities that claim me as their own so the greeks greek community said he's greek yeah pakistani community said he's pakistani and actually part of the black community said he's black yeah
Guest:even though i wore no makeup and as you can see i'm pretty damn white yeah um and then um at some point it came out that i wasn't any of those and i was actually jewish and then at that point i was accused um a a black paper in england wrote an article saying is ali g racist which is a bizarre question because ali g is a fictional character so i don't know maybe he is racist we hadn't worked it out we hadn't
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I think they were asking the question of, was the creative Ali G racist?
Guest:And they asked a bunch of black comedians.
Guest:Eight of them said no.
Guest:And two of them said, one said, I don't know.
Guest:And one of them said, yeah, he's a racist.
Guest:That led to headlines in all the newspapers in England.
Marc:One comedian.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Tabloid driven culture.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:All the tabloids wrote, Ali G is a racist.
Guest:And they didn't even know, I think a lot of them didn't know my name.
Guest:And it became, at that point, I had this dilemma, which was, do I come out and say, come on, man, I'm an anti-racist.
Guest:And, you know, racism and anti-racism is an issue that I feel strongly about.
Guest:When I was, you know, in my 20s, I used to march against racists and fascists and neo-Nazis.
Guest:And at university, my undergraduate thesis was all about racism and how to combat that.
Marc:So what were the questions you were asking yourself?
Marc:I mean, did you have to do some soul searching around how that character was being misunderstood?
Guest:No, I didn't have to do any soul searching.
Guest:My thing was I knew where I stood on race.
Guest:I knew that I was vehemently against any form of racism.
Guest:And I wanted to shout out and say to the press,
Guest:I'm not a racist and here's my evidence.
Guest:But I decided to do nothing.
Guest:We were making the Ali G show at the time and me and the producer sat down.
Guest:We just said, you know what?
Guest:Let's just work.
Guest:Don't engage.
Guest:Don't engage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And for a week, the press debated it as to whether it was a racist.
Marc:And you're just watching them talk about this clown you invented.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And basically, at the end of the week, they concluded that it's not racist at all.
Guest:And some of the kind of greatest intellectuals in England came out and said, you know, he's not a racist.
Guest:But by the end of the week, by doing nothing, I become from this niche comedian, I became a household name.
Marc:um because of that because i said nothing because of the public argument about whether or not the character was racist or whether that it represented racism yes but like didn't le g have some uh caribbean affect a bit yes yeah he was he was a he wanted to be black yeah he wanted to say he spoke in jamaican
Guest:patois yeah and the idea was he was this probably middle and it was ambiguous you know sort of low middle class guy yeah from some kind of ethnic background it was unclear and irrelevant actually who was unhappy with the how mundane his own ethnic life was and actually wanted to adopt this exciting foreign uh african-american gangster culture right
Marc:So, you know, it's a complete that was what I think what blew everyone's mind here was like, this is a completely unique and ambiguous ethnic character.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That the fact that it didn't land on the radar in any sort of set way made it even more interesting and more empathetic in a way.
Guest:And I had some kind of affinity with Ali G. I mean, my first first way I made money from the age of sort of 11 to 14 was as a sort of break dancer, a breaker on the, you know, I used to go on the streets, had one friend and, you know, we used to go and make some
Guest:You can do it.
Marc:You put the cardboard down.
Guest:We just put the car.
Guest:We had a linoleum.
Marc:Oh, you did.
Marc:You guys were pros.
Marc:You had linoleum.
Marc:You had a floor.
Guest:Yeah, we were terrible, but we were so young that we made some money.
Marc:People were like, look at them trying.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And they gave us, you know, we'd make 15 pounds.
Guest:But if you're 11 years old, you made 15 quid.
Guest:That was a lot.
Guest:So there was part of me that identified as this kind of nebbishy kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:who saw this rising movement of hip-hop i mean prior to that it was kind of electro across the pond i was like oh my god that seems amazing yeah and we we you know fully embraced it we got into the graffiti and the language and so allergy as a result
Guest:I had a lot of knowledge about early hip hop.
Guest:And I mean, this is quite strange actually talking about this to an American audience.
Guest:Oh no, it's great.
Guest:You know, some geeky white kid.
Guest:This is the influence that the African American community had in the early 80s.
Marc:So now, how, like, because even in this new movie, like, there was points in the new movie, like, I sat in the screening room at your editor's office last night.
Guest:That's not a fun way to watch a movie.
Guest:You want to have 300 people around you.
Marc:No, no, I, you know, but I'm glad I got to see that.
Marc:It seemed to be the only way.
Marc:But what's interesting, you know, in talking about Ali G and then talking about Borat or any of the stuff that's relatively, that's very provocative, you know, in that very Tay prank way.
Marc:But the underlying story of this thing, after all is said and done, after really, I don't want to spoil anything, but you do have the biggest dick joke, I think, in recorded film history.
Marc:Thank you very much.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Do the Oscars have a category for that?
Marc:Well, I think they'll make one.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:They're under a lot of fire.
Marc:Maybe you should just get involved with that.
Marc:The story is about a sort of, it's in defense of the lower class at some level.
Marc:You are fighting for the little guy.
Guest:You know, I think class in England is still an issue.
Guest:We don't call it that here.
Marc:There is no class here.
Marc:Well, there is, but we don't call it that.
Marc:We just call the people that would be categorically lower class.
Marc:We've convinced them that, you know, just keep working and you can be higher class.
Marc:And then they'll think according to that.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's interesting here, actually, because the American dream, the brilliant thing about it is that if you're lower class or working class or however you want to describe it, you actually want to aspire to be what would be termed in England as upper class because that's the dream.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So in England, you don't really have that aspiration of escaping your class.
Marc:No, you just you're it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there's a pride in being working class.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Therefore, you have some people who are fake working class, people who speak in a Cockney accent, even though they actually went to Eton or, you know, went to some real fancy school.
Guest:Because they get more cred by being working class.
Guest:um but yeah i mean part valley g if i think about it was there was an attempt subtly to slightly undermine the establishment the establishment at that point was partly upper class and the idea was if i sit down with this incredibly powerful person and that person indulges me for an hour with the most idiotic questions then maybe that person should not be given complete respect
Guest:Right.
Guest:For somebody to actually sit in a room for an hour and believe that guy existed means that maybe, you know, the populace shouldn't necessarily give that person complete authority.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, so it's a way of slightly pricking the authority.
Marc:No, it seemed like that was the whole agenda of LAG was to show that this class difference was real and that there was no negotiating it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're just going to condescend and they're going to behave politely and they're going to hope you go away back to your little neighborhood or whatever.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:And they're going to feel good about themselves.
Marc:Sure, because they talk to you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I remember I did an interview here with James Lipton from the actor's studio.
Guest:And he started telling me, he was very excited to tell me that he'd had African-American men over to the house and...
Guest:You know, told me off camera and, you know, barbershop choirs.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's like that Lenny Bruce bit about how to entertain your black friends at parties.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:But the irony was I was completely white.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But he was trying to get down with Ali G. Sure.
Marc:How much does your Jewishness or your faith inform your way of thinking?
Marc:I mean, how Jewish were you brought up?
Marc:I mean, you got a hell of a Jewish name.
Guest:Yeah, Baron Cohen.
Guest:Well, I don't think that much, really.
Guest:I mean... But did you practice?
Marc:Was there some education?
Marc:Did you have relatives or grandparents that taught you what it meant to be the sort of premium put on education and progressiveness?
Marc:I mean, was that part of your upbringing?
Guest:Well, that's an interesting question because the thesis that I did at university was all about Jews in the black civil rights movement here.
Guest:And I call it the black civil rights movement because that was the term they used at the time.
Guest:So in the 60s.
Guest:And the question was, you know, why did Jews get involved in the black civil rights movement more than any other ethnicity?
Guest:Sometimes they were represented probably 10, 20 times more than...
Guest:They should have been proportionally.
Guest:And the question was, was it because they were Jews or was it for some other reason?
Guest:And, you know, my research and my conclusion was basically Jews in America at the time were the most liberal ethnic group.
Guest:And they were probably the most activist group in any liberal political movement.
Marc:Because of the roots in early socialism and getting out of the sweatshops and that first generation immigrants that they had united to integrate themselves into America.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So, you know, you basically see that the same percentage of Jewish students who are involved in the black civil rights movement are then moving on straight from that into the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, you know, people like Abbie Hoffman and, you know, people like that.
Guest:So, and the interesting thing is those people who were Jews didn't get involved as Jews in the civil rights movement.
Guest:They got involved because they were liberals and they were like, you know, there's this racist stuff going on.
Guest:We want to fight it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But for the kind of rest of the Jewish community, they were like, these Jews are getting involved and, you know, isn't this great?
Guest:We're helping black people and,
Marc:We are.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:The ones who are middle class Jews that had no real political affiliation necessarily.
Marc:You're out on Long Island.
Marc:We're like, that's very nice that those kids are doing.
Guest:But really, the kids who were getting involved weren't getting involved as Jews.
Guest:And what I found out was that the African-Americans thought that they were just white people.
Guest:They didn't see these people as Jews.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They were like, all right, a bunch of white guys are getting involved and we don't know what their ethnicity is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so the question is why people do stuff.
Guest:Is it, you know, because of their racial or ethnic identity or is it something deeper?
Guest:So I think, you know, I didn't get involved in comedy or any of this stuff because I'm a Jew.
Guest:I think there's probably some reason that Jews are over involved in the, you know, comic community.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, why are you involved?
Guest:Do you think it's because you're Jewish?
Marc:No, but I feel like there was part of my upbringing, probably because I lived here, that most of the comics that when I was a kid, outside of SNL and stuff, most of the stand-up comics that I gravitated towards were old Jews.
Marc:Like, I liked a lot of the old Jewish guys.
Marc:There was a cultural identification that I found, you know, compelling in my grandparents' generation, that there was a type, you know, the deli type, or, you know, there was a neurotic type, and that a lot of them seemed to have a quick timing, that it was all very specifically Jewish, and it helped me sort of identify.
Marc:I think when I was younger, I did a Woody Allen play, the Don't Drink the Water, and I played Walter, and I played, and I'm like, what are you kidding me?
Marc:And it was very easy for me to slip into that because I wanted it to be tangible to me.
Marc:I wanted that to be part of my cultural heritage.
Marc:And it just was by virtue of the fact that I grew up in it somewhat.
Marc:I identify with it.
Marc:But I don't know if that's why, you know, I did, you know, there was a period where I separated myself from my Jewish identity.
Marc:I refused to talk about being a Jew on stage because I didn't, you wouldn't necessarily know I was a Jew immediately.
Marc:And I got very annoyed with the stereotype of the Jew.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Marc:And I didn't want to fall into that.
Marc:Now I'm a little less worried about it.
Marc:yeah yeah like if i'm gonna become an old jew of some sort i'll take it yeah exactly exactly i know that your your grandparents so part of your family's israeli right yes yeah my mother is actually yeah like from israel yes yeah so you have that part yeah because that's a whole different thing than i imagine middle class uh british judaism and certainly from you know middle class american judaism the israeli thing is like this whole other
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's totally the kind of opposite to the rest of the day.
Marc:They're tough.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So your mother was a tough Israeli?
Guest:I don't know if she's tough.
Guest:She's a formidable, hilarious woman.
Guest:But did you do the pilgrimage?
Guest:Did you go to Israel?
Marc:Do you have relatives in Israel?
Marc:Did you...
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I've got relatives in Israel.
Guest:I mean, it's interesting because we grew up that side of the family.
Guest:We're not into humor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my dad, we'd go and visit her parents.
Guest:And, you know, my dad would be making jokes at the time.
Guest:And my late grandfather would get very angry and say, stop making these diaspora jokes.
Guest:diaspora yeah he was a german they they were german oh yeah and very very german you know they were extremely into culture very precise german jews are a little it's heavy yeah they're tough they're aristocratic well my late grandmother who only died last year actually she was uh apparently she was the oldest uh keep fit teacher in the world
Guest:so this keep fit is a tradition yeah exactly so i actually did a video online if you look up 99 year old keep fit teacher that was my late grandma who died last year and somebody once asked her you know you know they took her to bruno yeah see the movie bruno which i don't know why the hell my cousins did that and she saw her and she said well i didn't like it and they go well what kind of humor do you like and she said ballet
Marc:and that really is the german jewish answer you know but uh yeah they they are not into humor and i think it's the the jews that were in england and america our way of of coping with everything is making jokes but not only coping but integrating yeah i mean that you know i think that's a lot of what like you know what happened was that you know jews were not really welcome but eventually people realized like well you know they're pretty smart and you know they seem to have a handle on some shit and
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So we're going to have to tolerate them somehow.
Marc:So I think that like I didn't realize that in the 20s there was a bunch of Jewish boxers.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Like in that, you know, any way that they could integrate, you know, so, you know, they could either pass or at least have a community within what America was at that time.
Marc:They would do it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And entertainment seemed to be like it was very insulated.
Marc:And then it sort of branched out and everybody thought that you was funny.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you never really moved here.
Guest:i mean you you're here to la i mean you you sort of mostly live in london so we're here i mean we're here we're here probably half the year yeah and then the way it works is we're off filming somewhere for three months a year and then three months a year we're in london you know did you ever end up studying acting or any part of performance
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:When I was in university, I came up with this character called Solly.
Guest:He was an idiot.
Guest:He was like my first kind of real character.
Guest:And I came up with it one night and I had my roommate came back and I go, I want to play you this tape.
Guest:And he started really laughing hard.
Guest:and um a friend of mine in the sort of acting group in university said he'd just gone to this to this clown course run by this guy called philip goliere he's famous right and he's like the clown teacher in the world people people sort of travel from around the world to see him he was uh part of this school called uh lecoq uh-huh yeah exactly that's where the word comes from
Guest:And so I decided, all right, let me try and find out whether this idiotic character I was doing is actually a clown character.
Guest:I want to kind of learn about it.
Guest:And so I ended up, I left university and studied with this guy for how long?
Guest:Over about six months.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And was it amazing?
Yeah.
Guest:oh incredible this is this guy is the legendary guru for any person who wants to be a professional idiot around the world so he teaches pure clown and he teaches this other style of comedy called uh buffon or buffoon yeah have you heard of that yeah style yeah it's like it's a really it's this medieval style of kind of satire so like your your sidekick in in borat is sort of buffoon
Guest:yeah yeah yeah and his theory because i went to my clown teacher afterwards you know philip goly and i said yeah i'm doing clown he goes no you're a buffon i go really i'm buffoon and he goes and so those that style was so there was this kind of in the uh you know i think sort of 11th to 15th century yeah you'd have a bunch of outcasts from society who would you know gays heretic priests um
Guest:Jews, people with deformities would be told to live outside of villages, you know, in their, you know, sort of in the forests or, you know, in little get ostracized because they're deformed or stupid.
Guest:Or yeah, or freaks of some nature.
Guest:Then once a year, they were let back into the villages or towns and they would be allowed to put on bouffant plates.
Guest:and um so you'd have like some guy who was you know three and a half foot tall yeah would pretend to be the king of france and do a bouffant play i'm the king of france and the idea the aim of the bouffant was that the king of france would watch the bouffant play yeah
Guest:And go, that's not me.
Guest:That's not me.
Guest:That's not me.
Guest:That guy is tiny.
Guest:He's three foot tall.
Guest:And, you know, the three foot tall guy go, what are you talking about?
Guest:I am the king.
Guest:I am the king.
Guest:Don't be telling me.
Guest:I'm not the king.
Guest:I am the king.
Guest:And the king would go, it's me.
Guest:It's me.
Guest:I'm not the king.
Guest:And eventually the king would have a heart attack and die.
Guest:And then the bouffant would go, that's one for me.
Guest:And so it's a really nasty form of satire.
Guest:It's really kind of horror.
Guest:It's the kind of humor of the dispossessed.
Guest:And I ended up using the technique a little bit in the publicity campaign for Borat.
Guest:When it came to... I ended up hosting the MTV Awards in Europe as Borat.
Guest:And there was one little sketch I did where the president of Kazakhstan comes onto the stage and to show my respect...
Guest:I got down on my knees and I kissed his crotch.
Guest:Anyway, the government of Kazakhstan then complained to MTV and they complained to the British government.
Guest:And there was kind of, they complained to Fox as well.
Guest:You could say, you're going to stop making this movie.
Guest:And then at that point I realized, okay, there's an opportunity.
Guest:You know, they wrote this letter going, how can this man be a real Kazakhstan?
Guest:His mustache was too big.
Guest:In Kazakhstan, our moustaches are smaller.
Guest:They did that?
Guest:Yeah, so they kind of wrote this letter to the British.
Guest:Did your work for you?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:So I realized, all right, this reminds me actually of the kind of theory of Buffon.
Guest:So when it came to the promotion of Borat, I heard that the president of Kazakhstan was coming to America.
Guest:So I said, all right.
Guest:I'm going to Washington.
Guest:And the studio freaked out.
Guest:They're like, you're not going to Washington.
Guest:You're not making this movie political.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, well, you know what?
Guest:I own the character.
Guest:I'm going to Washington.
Guest:So I went to Washington and we found out.
Guest:I decided I wanted to do a press conference.
Guest:outside the Kazakhstan embassy claiming to be the representative of Kazakhstan.
Guest:And so obviously they found out we were coming.
Guest:So we did some recon and found out that we had like a 15 minute window when the president of Kazakhstan would be heading to the White House.
Guest:So in that 15 minutes,
Guest:We jumped there, we called to the press there, and I delivered this press conference.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Saying, you know, I want to say on behalf of Kazakhstan that the Jew called him, have made a mockery.
Guest:He have said some terrible rumors about our country, like that we have democracy and we treat women respectfully.
Guest:Of course, it's a scurrilous lies.
Guest:And then as a result of that, the government of Kazakhstan did a publicity campaign.
Guest:They hired a PR company.
Guest:They said, all right, we're going to do a PR campaign to show that Kazakhstan is a great place.
Guest:And they put about 30 million bucks into promoting the real Kazakhstan.
Guest:However, for the audience, the audience were watching these TV ads and they thought I'd put the TV ads on.
Guest:You know, they were so ridiculous.
Guest:Come to Kazakhstan.
Guest:We have fantastic potassium deposits.
Guest:You know, they were so ridiculous.
Guest:And so they ended up really promoting the movie.
Guest:But it was really using that bouffant theory.
Marc:That's hilarious.
Marc:And why did you pick Kazakhstan?
Marc:I mean...
Guest:There was nothing about Kazakhstan.
Guest:I mean, originally Borat had a kind of different name and he was from a different country.
Guest:He was from Moldova and then he went to Albania and it kind of, his name in the country he came from changed according to whichever company I was working for.
Marc:So what we've learned here
Marc:you know, essentially is that despite whatever distance you may take from your creativity, you know, initially, right, which is sort of like, I don't know what's going to, is that, you know, both with Ali G and with Borat, you were very sort of decisive and intelligent about utilizing particular modes of satire to achieve these ends.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes, to a degree.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Marc:So now please tell me about the difference between between clowning and Buffon.
Marc:So beautifully pronounced.
Marc:Because it seems to me that this six months at the clown college, what's it called?
Marc:The cock.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Was was really what opened you up creatively.
Guest:yeah yeah i loved it because people were coming from around the world and this guy philip golier would sit there with a little drum yeah and if you weren't funny he'd hit the drum and you'd go off really yeah and was this only with physicality or could you talk or no you could talk as well you could talk it was kind of talking clown and
Guest:you know you wore a red nose you did you wore a red nose and um so somebody would start bursting into tears you know they'd flown all the way from australia yeah they'd walk on stage and within three seconds he hits the drum and they have to sit down and he would let me go on stage sometimes for 15 minutes and so the rest of the class started hating me
Guest:And me and this guy from Sweden would have this kind of double act where we never would do the exercises.
Guest:We'd stay on.
Guest:We wouldn't understand.
Guest:If he hit the drum, he'd say, get off.
Guest:You get off the stage right now.
Guest:You're a bad student.
Guest:Go and sit on the chair for the bad student.
Guest:And, you know, I just sort of stand it.
Guest:No, good student.
Guest:You know, and we did this kind of carry.
Guest:I didn't know what was going on as this kind of surreal experience.
Guest:I never really explained what was going on.
Guest:But over those six months, I kind of found got confidence in doing this kind of style of comedy.
Guest:So I suppose the difference is Bouvain is this nasty, knowing form of satire.
Guest:The aim is to undermine the establishment.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Clown is a more simple and loving character.
Guest:So the Clown is...
Guest:the simpleton who has the naivety of a child and is as stupid as a child it's the reason why if a three-year-old kid walks into a room everyone laughs yeah it's because the kid is saying really stupid things
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But in a very nice, sweet way.
Guest:And that really is what the clown is doing.
Guest:You know, so the rule with clown is if this character was one degree more stupid, he'd probably be dead.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because he wouldn't be able to survive.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He couldn't cross a road or... So Ali G. Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Ali G was that guy who... But, you know, you can sort of believe this guy exists.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it seems to me that you've created hybrids of these two characters.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You seem like Borat could sort of go either way.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And I thought I knew what I was talking about.
Guest:And I went to the clown teacher and he said, no, you got it completely wrong.
Marc:Yeah, it's interesting, right?
Marc:And like Bruno is also a hybrid.
Marc:But this guy in the Grimsby movie is sort of almost straight clown in a way.
Guest:Yes, yeah.
Guest:He's more of a simpleton.
Marc:Well, I mean, I know I'm being narrow by using these...
Marc:yes these titles or these labels but i mean coming from what you come from you know in in that's how you sort of learn how to uh learn your comedic craft yes you know along these lines but are also somehow able to integrate a a full uh seemingly a full emotional and psychological life which would be the actor in you into these clowns and buffons yes interesting so what
Marc:Listen to me using the word interesting.
Marc:It's horrendous.
Marc:Well, you've just used the word bouffons.
Marc:Well, I'm excited about that.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Now, I guess my question then is that after obviously you played out the ability to efficiently or at least stealthily prank because of your notoriety,
Marc:And it feels like it's been a bit since you've done something like that with those three characters.
Marc:Was there ever a thought of using prosthetics or continuing that tradition, or is that something you exhausted?
Guest:You know, I miss it.
Guest:I miss the adrenaline and I miss the, you know, those sketches were kind of pure comedy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You go out with a pure comic idea and you see, can I make it happen?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I think it will be impossible to really get away with those characters anymore.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Mind you, on Friday, I did a little piece.
Guest:I went out as myself, as a kind of BBC reporter, asking people what they thought of Sacha Baron Cohen movies.
Marc:And they had no idea it was you.
Guest:Well, you know, one in every sort of four didn't really know it was me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, some people got really riled up.
Guest:One person called me a cunt.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, like, as I talked to you, and the more I realized that how much of the drive of these characters, you know, the prank characters, was to push the First Amendment, to ride a line with that, and to push this idea.
Marc:Because in the new movie...
Marc:The level of, I don't even like the word crass, but extraordinarily graphic, graphically executed filthy jokes.
Guest:Yes, that's my special idea.
Marc:But it is, you love it.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know why.
Guest:I blame Python.
Guest:I blame Python.
Guest:You do.
Guest:Life of Brian.
Guest:I remember a meaning of life.
Marc:Oh, with the fat guy?
Guest:Yeah, the fat guy.
Guest:It was shocking but funny.
Guest:And I, for some reason, I'm drawn to that.
Guest:And I know it alienates a lot of the audience.
Guest:And I'm always stuck with that question of, do I broaden the audience and make this a kind of family movie, which all the other comedians do, or do I narrow the audience?
Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think what you get when you do it your way is you get the possibility of... Here's the one downside of it, even with some of the prank movies, is that you're going to get people who are smart and are willing to be open-minded enough to indulge even the most dramatically crass satire.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Marc:And that type of over-the-topness has always been part of satire.
Marc:To push it, it's almost Swifty or Baudelaire or any of them where everything is just, things are ripping at the seams.
Marc:There's blood and guts and goo.
Marc:But I think that the liability of it, you're going to get a lot of morons like, oh, shit.
Guest:Oh, look at that.
Marc:You're fucking on his face.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So on that level, it is appealing to a broad audience.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just not kids, but again, maybe morons.
Guest:Yes, yeah.
Marc:Not to hurt anybody.
Guest:I don't like to discriminate against morons.
Marc:Well, no, the whole movie's about that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's about not discriminating against morons.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:And what's that guy's name who plays your brother?
Guest:He's Mark Strong.
Guest:He's like an action movie guy.
Guest:Yeah, he's a complete... Well, the idea with this movie was let's make it a completely authentic action movie and my character accidentally falls into it.
Guest:So let's keep the genre... Rather than doing a parody or an action comedy, let's make it an action movie that has some really funny stuff in it.
Guest:so you went all the way you went all out with that sequence that opening sequence that introduces the action movie it was like holy shit yes so we thought like because that was some of the action comedies that i didn't really like that they go all right let's do a little bit of action and then let's get a second unit director in and it's good enough yeah and you know when are we doing any of these movies like bull rat we wanted it to be an authentic documentary that unfortunately has this idiot kazakhstani reporter in the middle of it
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the idea was there's this authentic action movie that could rival, you know, feel like a cool action movie.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:But Sacha Baron Cohen's in it.
Guest:Did you direct it?
Guest:No, we had Louis Leterio, who's this action director.
Guest:And he's like a full on hardcore action director to get that kind of authenticity.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it's there.
Marc:And the funny thing is playing the comedy against that or integrating the two.
Marc:There's some sort of like goofy turns.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But, but it's still, once you buy the conceit, you kind of go with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you wait for the next, like, you know, what the fuck?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, you know, the, the, with the, with the, what's her name?
Marc:Sibide?
Marc:Uh, Gabrielle Sibide, yes.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:The girl from Precious.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like, like, you know, there's a moment there where you're like, is this right or wrong?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, but what, what, what's unique to you is,
Marc:is that somehow or another, you know, this moron, this fool, you know, is endearing, you know, in the midst of all this stuff that, you know, he has this weird kind of earnestness to him.
Marc:And all those guys who play his friends in the town and everything, it's all, it's definitely very Python-y in a way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what do you want to do, man?
Marc:I mean, do you want to stay doing comedy?
Marc:Do you have a desire to do straight acting?
Marc:I mean, I know people make a comparison to you and Sellers.
Marc:You haven't mentioned Sellers.
Marc:How do you take that comparison?
Marc:Like, either it's going to be Andy Kaufman or Peter Sellers, I think, generally.
Guest:Well, Sellers would be the greatest comparison I could ever get.
Guest:I mean, he...
Guest:I'd say it was, you know, Python for the laugh out loud extremity.
Guest:But Sellers was the inspiration in that I think he's the greatest comedic actor who's... The commitment.
Guest:Yeah, the commitment and the believability of the characters and the subtlety.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But yet they were still hilarious.
Guest:You never doubted that Clouseau could exist.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There was no wink to the camera.
Guest:And...
Guest:I mean, apparently a horrible man, but what a performer and what a... Possessed by something.
Guest:Possessed.
Guest:I mean, yeah, I thought he was kind of inspirational.
Guest:So if I could get any comparison with him, I'd be amazingly pleased.
Marc:And what was the movie of his that, you know, really sort of... Was it Clouseau that made you sort of like... As a kid, it was Clouseau.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:I think then Strange Love and then being there was amazing.
Guest:You know, this kind of subtle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That kind of is a clown performance.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:He's out of it and he's misinterpreted.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And he's a child.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a man child.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a man charm.
Guest:And what about the comparisons to Andy?
Guest:Do you... Well, I didn't grow up watching Kaufman.
Guest:And in England, he wasn't really popular.
Guest:So when I came here, then I got sent some of his DVDs and there's brilliant stuff.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I feel, in a way, he's probably more of an artist than I am in that I don't think he cared what the audience thought.
Guest:And I really, deep down, I want to make people laugh.
Guest:And that's why...
Guest:I fight to get stuff to be funny and to get big, big laughs in the audience.
Guest:And I'll go to war with whichever studio has been stupid enough to pay me money to make a movie.
Guest:So, you know, they probably hate me at Sony because they go, why are you still fighting for these gags?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But once I love a gag and once I think I've got to get this on screen, I will fight tooth and nail to get the gag on screen.
Marc:Right.
Marc:There's a lot of gags.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And at the end, there was a disclaimer.
Marc:Daniel Radcliffe had nothing to do with the movie?
Marc:Nothing to do with the movie.
Marc:You put him in there.
Guest:We stuck him in there, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Trump as well.
Guest:Donald Trump makes an appearance in the movie.
Guest:We won't say what happens to him.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:But that was- Either of them.
Guest:We don't have to say what happens to either of them.
Guest:I actually, I interviewed him once as Ali G and I remember being in his office and he kept me waiting, I think about an hour and a half, which is fine.
Guest:But during that time he was screaming so loudly.
Guest:It was like, get me, get me the mayor of New York on the phone.
Guest:Get me the mayor.
Guest:You know, it was like this kind of bad villain in a cheap, in a bad Batman movie.
Guest:Screaming at Giuliani on the phone.
Guest:I just thought it was an incredible character.
Guest:I couldn't believe he existed.
Marc:Yeah, he does in a big way right now.
Guest:He exists.
Guest:I mean, could he be president?
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:No, I don't think so.
Guest:I mean, it'd be great for comedians and great for satirists, but terrible for the world.
Marc:But I think it's sort of a testament to sort of what we were talking about before about sort of mining the anger of the disenfranchised to make them complicit in a momentum that will ultimately betray them.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And he's able to do that.
Guest:That's the there was a line in the dictator at the end of the dictator.
Guest:The guy plays the dictator.
Guest:I mean, I play the dictator, but Admiral General Al-Adeen does this speech about dictatorships.
Guest:And one of the lines is, I think, as I remember, it's, you know, we can get poor people to vote against their interests.
Guest:you know that you know one of the great things you can do in dictatorships and it's what clever politicians end up doing you know which is vote for me and i'm going to look after your interests which is yeah which are policies which prevent you from getting money right you know exactly yeah so that was in the dictator
Guest:Yeah, there was some speech at the end.
Guest:I should remember it, but I can't really.
Guest:Did you write it?
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:I mean, I wrote it.
Guest:It was actually Adam McKay had the idea for that speech.
Guest:And then I was kind of reading a lot of stuff at that time.
Guest:There were a lot of riots going on in England off the kind of disenfranchised.
Guest:And there was the Occupy Wall Street movement at the time.
Guest:So it kind of influenced that speech.
Marc:Do you want to do more serious stuff or what?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:There's not really a plan.
Guest:No.
Guest:You know, the plan, I live joke to joke, really.
Guest:You know, I really do kind of, you know, think of an idea for a movie and then how do I make it as funny as I can?
Guest:And then how do I make the movie happen?
Guest:And it's unfortunately continually a battle trying to get that stuff on screen now.
Guest:I feel like studios, particularly post the North Korean hack, are a lot more conservative in what they'll put on screen.
Guest:I think, listen, I think the sad thing about the North Korean hack with Sony was, you know, it's a way for totalitarian states that have no freedom of speech to extend the sphere of their influence.
Guest:So, you know, one of the great reasons why America is a great country is your freedom of speech.
Guest:How do you prevent freedom of speech?
Guest:You have totalitarian states threaten the people who control and create entertainment with acts of terrorism and say, all right, you do anything that's going to upset us.
Guest:we're going to shut your movie we're going to shut your studio down we're going to threaten to bomb your cinemas yeah so now in the back of studios minds they don't want to do anything to upset any incredibly powerful force whether it's north korea you know i wonder whether given this political climate whether if i was you know a comedian from the ali g show and some you know niche hbo show and said listen
Guest:I walked into Fox today and said, listen, I want to make a movie about Kazakhstan.
Guest:I wonder whether the heads of Fox would say, yeah, we'll do the movie, but we're not using a real country.
Guest:That country is going to go and attack us.
Marc:I wonder.
Guest:Yeah, I think there is, you know, studios now, and I don't want to sound like the kind of liberal Jew, but studios now are generally owned by multinationals and they want to risk as little as they can and minimize liability.
Guest:So the problem with that is...
Guest:something like borat it's a crazy experiment i mean it was a it's a mad experiment and it could only exist with a student that said here listen here's 14 million bucks go and do it this guy will make 14 million bucks in europe and if you die we're still going to make 40 million bucks yeah we're fine you know but you need to to do something that's new yeah you need to have
Guest:You know, you need to have heads of students who feel confident.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, I think the heads of the students are, you know, good people who are talented and they and I think a lot of them love movies and love art.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But their hands are slightly tied now by these, you know, legal departments in the, you know, in the multinationals that control them.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:This movie feels like, right out of the gate, like the new movie, Brothers Grimsby, is that, like, right out of the gate, I thought, like, well, this is sort of a British movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I think, like, do you feel like that you made it, like, a little bit for the British audience?
Guest:Yeah, it's for England, you know.
Guest:But at the end, at the beginning, Borat was a kind of Kazakhstani movie as well, so...
Guest:We thought, listen, when we thought we're going to, we thought no one was going to ever see Borat.
Guest:I mean, it was a movie about a Kazakhstani documentary.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So who's going to, how do you sell that?
Marc:Oh, come on.
Marc:You know that guy.
Marc:That was a great character.
Guest:I knew it was a good character, but I didn't think anyone would watch it.
Guest:And it had anti-Semitic content in there.
Guest:We thought no one would ever go and see it.
Guest:It was huge.
Marc:Yeah, it ended up being good.
Marc:And how do your parents feel about your work?
Marc:I think they like it.
Guest:I think they, you know, sometimes it's embarrassing for them, but generally they're fully supportive and I couldn't really have done any of it without their blessing.
Marc:What's embarrassed them?
Guest:I think they found Bruno quite extreme, which it was.
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Guest:I can't believe actually in retrospect that a major studio released that movie.
Guest:I mean, it had a 35 second close up of a man's penis.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it should have really been an art house movie that got released in.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Didn't you get into some trouble with a group of guys to where you almost got your ass kicked?
Marc:Was that in Bruno?
Guest:Yes, I got, there are a few different, you know, I almost got killed in Jerusalem, actually, ironically, by a bunch of Hasids.
Guest:And then there are a few different incidents.
Guest:I went hunting with a bunch of...
Guest:guys who once they realized i was gay there was some line where we're around this campfire we're on this in this kind of private hunting estate where they have canned hunts yeah and i look into this guy and i go look at all the stars upset really just reminds you of all the hot guys in the world doesn't it
Guest:And there was a silence then from these three guys who realized they're with a gay guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm going camping with them and I'm going to, you know, be in a tent next to this.
Guest:They then get up, they take their rifles and they load their rifles.
Guest:They put ammo in their rifles.
Guest:and my i had a researcher there and i go what's going on he goes they've you know loaded their rifles i go why and he goes well they've said that they're boars here you know and they don't want any animals to kind of attack them at night but then i knew the rest of the scene was i was going to have to go naked into one of their tents and try and get into their tent and sleep with the guy and so um so they could have shot you thinking it was an animal
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there's a law in Arkansas and a few other places.
Guest:I think it's called King of the Castle Law, which is when you're on your own private property, if you shoot someone, it's very, very hard to sue them.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Or to get legal action.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Self-defense.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Marc:So you didn't go into the tent.
Guest:No, I did, actually.
Guest:But, you know, I think I had at that point this dilemma.
Guest:I was talking to Larry Charles, the director, you know, and I'm still, you know, I have to stay in characters the whole time.
Guest:And he's going, do you want to do this?
Guest:You know, Bruno, do you want to do this?
Guest:And there's a part of me which is, all right, this is maybe a little bit risky.
Guest:Then there's the other part, which is...
Guest:I need it for the movie.
Guest:I've come all this way.
Guest:I'm in a field in the middle of Arkansas at two in the morning.
Guest:Let's finish the scene.
Guest:You know, it doesn't seem like a crazy risk.
Guest:It seems like a small risk.
Guest:There's cameras there.
Marc:There are still people.
Guest:There are people and there are cameras there.
Guest:Are they really going to, if they shoot me, they're going to have to shoot the whole crew.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Are they really going to do that?
Guest:So what's the likelihood of that?
Guest:Probably one in a hundred.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, am I ready to take a one in a hundred risk?
Guest:99% risk is going to be fine.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that happened a lot that your life really felt threatened.
Guest:Well, I think particularly in Bruno, because it's a different form of prejudice.
Guest:So you have like anti-Semitism, you have racism, but homophobia means fear off the homosexual.
Guest:And where there's fear, that can turn into violence.
Guest:So people who don't like gay people are scared of them and that can transition into violence pretty quickly.
Marc:It seems to be threatening on a more core primitive level.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:So there was a recent study, actually, where they showed people pictures of naked men.
Guest:And they found out that the homophobes who are most likely to use violence or use violent language against gay people...
Guest:were those who had some increase in tumescence and blood flow to their groin while seeing naked men.
Guest:So it's guys who are struggling with their sexuality who are going to go out and meet up gay guys.
Guest:So we would, you know, how does that affect us in a kind of real way?
Marc:So we'd go, you know, let's have- Maybe not struggling, but not willing to allow it in them.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Like it doesn't necessarily mean that they're probably gay.
Marc:It just means like they're attracted for whatever reason, but that can't even live inside them.
Guest:Well, there's this, you know, the thing about being straight or gay, they're kind of silly terms because, you know, it's a scale.
Guest:So everyone is somewhere on the scale.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'm 23% gay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, you figured that out?
Guest:Yeah, I've worked it out.
Guest:We did the calculation.
Guest:I'm 23% gay.
Guest:You know, I have been.
Guest:It's a good number.
Guest:It's a good number.
Guest:I got down to 17.
Guest:I got up to 31.
Guest:When I was doing bull rat and I had the, you know, testicles on my chin, I was up to 31.
Guest:You've done that in a couple movies.
Guest:Yeah, but everyone, exactly.
Guest:It's a theme.
Guest:It's a motif.
Guest:And the...
Guest:you know so everyone's on that scale somewhere sexuality it's like being black or white no one's quite black there are some people who are albino and there's some people are yeah but generally people are on that scale and that's why you know it's difficult for people but so that how that affects us in a real way was let's say i'm in texas
Guest:You know, I know I want to go into a bar.
Guest:It's a biker bar.
Guest:And I've just finished with my boyfriend.
Guest:I want to get laid that night.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I want to make out with one of the guys.
Guest:I want to take them back home and have sex with them in the movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and so we'll have like a guy who's a cop with us who we've paid it's a great thing about america you can pay cops to help you so uh we'll go to a bar you obviously want to go to a rough bar and then you say okay give us some of the figures off you know have there ever there been any homicides in this bar
Guest:how many when was the last homicide who committed the homicide are they behind bars you know are there any guys in there with kind of serious you know criminal histories who could be a problem so you try and limit the amount of risk you don't want to go and die you want to go and survive and do a funny joke right so there's always what i'm always trying to do is get the funniest joke with a bit of
Guest:It can be edgy, but you're trying to limit the possibility that something bad can happen for you or the crew.
Marc:So that's really the... Or the volatility of the subject.
Marc:It's weird when I had a conversation with my producer about it.
Marc:That in most cases, the people that were the pawns in this thing that were being duped somehow, usually on one side or another, we're trying to behave properly.
Guest:yeah that was what's really interesting is that within whatever scope they could they they wanted to to be accommodating and polite yes and yes apart from in bruno in bruno that was more because the character uh was more unlikable we intentionally made him unlike we thought okay we've got to put him in increase well yeah because you hate that guy immediately whether he's gay or not he's just annoying yeah and
Marc:And he's, like, you don't know, like, for an American, you don't really know where he's from.
Marc:And the fact that, like, there were actually people that you could find that didn't know he was gay immediately is baffling to me.
Marc:Like, their experience with that flamboyant of character
Marc:who is clearly out and there's no way you can not, you know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, well, I was just thinking about that.
Guest:We did one interview that never made the air with this neo-Nazi guy who actually I think is on death row now.
Guest:He ended up a couple of years ago going and trying to shoot some people.
Guest:He murdered three people in some Jewish community center.
Guest:Oh my gosh.
Guest:And we went and interviewed him.
Guest:And the idea was I was going there and I was going to give him publicity for his little neo-Nazi organization.
Guest:And, you know, you've got to get celebrities involved.
Guest:Why don't you get Woody Allen to be the head of your organization?
Guest:Because Woody Allen is a Jew.
Guest:And, um, the idea was I'd go into his, uh, place and at some point my assistant would give me a wheatgrass shot and accidentally he dropped the wheatgrass shot on my white trousers and I'd have to take my white trousers off.
Guest:This is a Dodger and Gabbana.
Guest:This is the worst 5,000 euros.
Guest:Go and find a fucking dry cleaner now and get them dry cleaned.
Guest:And so I would have to do the rest of the interview in my G string.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With this neo-Nazi guy and, you know, have him take him around.
Guest:And eventually I go, you know, show me.
Guest:I want to know how Monday Nazi lives.
Guest:Show me around the house.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Let's do the cribs, you know.
Guest:And eventually he took me into his bedroom and I'm there in my G-string.
Guest:And my boyfriend in the movie runs in and goes, oh, okay.
Guest:Oh, so you guys are stooping, yeah?
Guest:You just sucked his dick.
Guest:And I go, what are you talking about?
Guest:I haven't been doing that at all.
Guest:I go, so why are you in your G-string with this guy in his bedroom?
Guest:Explain yourself.
Guest:And this guy obviously got a little bit angry and threatened and tried to punch the other guy.
Guest:Not funny.
Guest:In the end, it was too extreme because the problem is if you get somebody who's that full of hate, you actually don't, you feel uncomfortable in the room and you feel uncomfortable actually watching them on screen.
Marc:right um so uncomfortable because it's threatening or because it's fucking tragic well they're tragic they're you're giving them ultimately a platform for their vicious disgusting right views right
Guest:and sometimes the air of underlying violence and i could sense with this guy he'd already just come out of jail for some plot to overthrow government and trying to blow up some building right and his whole place was full of machine guns and ammunition in the kitchen yeah you know you know that somebody's pretty extreme if they've got ammunition in the kitchen yeah there was just an unpleasant air about the whole movie right yeah but in that so that that that that's adrenaline tipping towards the negative
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:And I remember him showing me photos on the phone.
Guest:I was like, who's that guy?
Guest:He goes, that guy's my son.
Guest:I remember looking at the son.
Guest:I go, that son is going to come after me at some point.
Guest:And then a week afterwards, we heard that the son had been shot dead by police.
Guest:He shot a police officer.
Guest:So you were in real evil.
Guest:we were in really but this was a bad guy and right you you sense that sometimes i think so you know i've had the unfortunate experience of being around some people who who were kind of really bad people yeah and they never really make it to you know on screen yeah yeah i can't imagine it so how do you exit a situation like that like okay thank you
Guest:No, well, it turned violent and I ended up trying to protect my, the guy playing my boyfriend because he, he also had never been in one of these situations beforehand.
Guest:And so you're trying- A movie situation or- Either a movie, it's his first movie and his first undercover kind of movie situation.
Guest:And suddenly there's this guy trying to, he's saying, I'm going to kick you in the face, you know?
Guest:And for, for a situation like that, we hire a, you know, you hire a kind of bodyguard.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and you know there's a certain amount they can do so we hire a guy and his job is um he's a bit like knobby actually he's like this northern bloke and his job his job is to prevent me from being arrested because once i was arrested it would mean that i couldn't get back into the country and get a visa and
Guest:so we're in kansas and the police find out that i'm there and we do a few things and police go okay anything else you know we're going to arrest him and they let us know and so we we still have to do a few bits so we're in this hotel room and there's a bit in bruno where i wake up i get drunk after failing in this biker bar for to make love to anyone and
Guest:uh i end up drunk with my assistant we wake up and we're in this room in this hotel room and we're chained to each other in this kind of s&m kind of crazy gear yeah he's got a toilet brush in his mouth and there is you know there's feces smeared on the wall and it's a pretty extreme room there's a there's a pedal powered fucking machine in the corner yeah
Guest:and it's disgusting the room's disgusting we call down to and i'm freaked out i've made love to my to my assistant who i hate yeah he's the guy at the end who i end up making love to it's a rom-com yeah sure um and so we call down and i get the manager up i need to get you know has anyone got a key and they come into the room and they see all this disgusting stuff in the room and they call the cops
Guest:And so immediately when the cops are called, this guy's job is to get me out off the hotel without getting arrested.
Guest:Because we know Kansas police have made it clear.
Guest:So we always have an escape van and the escape van is waiting in the alleyway at the back.
Guest:And we have an escape route.
Guest:And his plan is he like unlocks us and we start running to the service elevator, get in the service elevator, which doors are closing.
Guest:Suddenly the hotel security open the doors and they say, get out.
Guest:And we've got the police downstairs.
Guest:They're arriving.
Guest:We run away from them, start running down the fire, you know, the staircase, run down.
Guest:We're on the 17th floor and the security guard is like, follow me, follow me.
Guest:Come on, follow me.
Guest:And we're running down this corridor.
Guest:And I'm in, you know, G-string.
Guest:And my friend's got, you know, my co-star's got this toilet brush from his mouth.
Guest:And, you know, still got chains and this Extreme S&M outfit.
Guest:And there are kind of guys painting this, you know, the 17th floor of this Kansas hotel.
Guest:And he's going, come on, run, run, run.
Guest:And he's, we run.
Guest:We run to the end of the corridor.
Guest:And I go, where are we going?
Guest:He goes, there's the cops downstairs.
Guest:Out the window.
Guest:Get out.
Guest:I go, out?
Guest:Out.
Guest:So he lifts open the window and there's a rickety old fire escape.
Guest:And he goes, get out, out.
Guest:So we stopped running down this rickety old fire escape dressed in this crazy S&M stuff.
Guest:We get down and fire escapes in Kansas, they only get down.
Guest:Right.
Marc:They have to drop the steps.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we couldn't drop the steps.
Guest:We're down to the, you know, like 15, drop the ladder.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think we're 10 feet or 12 feet.
Guest:I'm like, how do we get, I can see the getaway car.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he goes, jump.
Guest:I go, what?
Guest:He goes, jump.
Guest:So there are these two African-American ladies who are like having a little cigarette break.
Guest:And from the heavens appears me.
Guest:I jump in front of them wearing kind of heels and this crazy S&M stuff.
Guest:And then my friend with the toilet brush in his mouth, I crack.
Guest:I break my heel.
Guest:And we jump into the car.
Guest:The van disappears.
Guest:We get out of the state.
Guest:You know, we always have to get out of the state.
Guest:and um you know unfortunately i had to shut down the movie because this idiot had made me jump out of a bloody 10 foot fire escape so i broke my i broke my heel oh you did so we shut down for three months so now it's one of the reasons why you don't do this anymore because maybe your wife said you know i don't want you to die for a fucking joke yes yeah yeah that's part of it i mean one day
Guest:again a lot of these stories are in once you end up in jail because of a fucking joke well one time in new york we ended up doing a bunch of stuff on borat in the same i think it was uh it was a precinct it was all to do around the park you know madison and park yeah i don't really know but sort of central west side
Guest:Yeah, it's kind of the fancy area of New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, Central Park kind of area.
Guest:Unfortunately, that was all within one precinct.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so they kept on getting police reports that we're there.
Guest:And at one point, we did one scene where Borat, you know, goes into a hotel.
Guest:He has to leave.
Guest:And I take my bag and I take all the furniture out of the room as well.
Guest:They call the cops and the police, I don't know, whatever you'd call him, captain in charge of that precinct knew it was me and was getting increasingly frustrated.
Guest:And that's a really bad thing to do.
Guest:You don't want to piss off some police guy.
Guest:So he decided he's getting me arrested.
Guest:And what they did was...
Guest:The police are on their way.
Guest:I disappear, as always.
Guest:What they did was they arrested the producer of the movie and the assistant director.
Guest:They took them into the cells.
Guest:And she, you know, she was like a 31-year-old woman, Monica Levinson.
Guest:And the assistant director actually, you know, he was a real gentleman.
Guest:He said, I'm going to go with you to jail.
Guest:And they gave her a really rough night.
Guest:And then we get a call, which was, if Sasha comes down, we release everyone.
Guest:And we call up my lawyer, the guy with the starving Indian.
Guest:He's like, it's a trap.
Guest:They want to arrest you and they're going to get publicity if they're the guys who arrested Ali G. And you have to get out of the state now.
Guest:So, you know, I get back to the hotel and I go, baby, we've got to get out of the state now.
Guest:We've got to get out, you know, pack, pack, pack and let's go.
Guest:To your wife.
Guest:yeah so there were a couple of times over the years where she had to you know you know she came down once and said we had a baby at the time and she's like i'm gonna visit my husband on set and i think we were in alabama and there was a cop chase they were chasing me in a van and
Guest:I developed this technique of being able to direct the driver while being on the floor like okay tell me what's in front of you go right go left and so there's a cop chase and she's listening in on the walkie-talkie and we had a baby he's like okay I'm not visiting set anymore you know we had one time when I was doing ball rat where I'm interviewing this woman in I think I was in Tennessee
Guest:and i go excuse me can i please use your laboratories and she goes of course you know and i go to the bathroom and i come back out after 10 minutes and i'm wearing her towel yeah and using her toothbrush i'd had a shower my hair's wet yeah and she calls the police and she throws me out of the good fair enough yeah i don't blame her yeah she throws me out of the room locks the front door
Guest:And I'm outside the door, but she's got my costume, Borat's only costume inside.
Guest:And I've got her property, which is her town.
Guest:And I hear the cop cars coming and they're getting closer and closer.
Guest:And I go, what do I do?
Guest:What do I do?
Guest:Because if I take, if I run in the car, it's theft.
Guest:So anyway, I ended up sort of jumping in the car and we had to negotiate.
Guest:The police took the costume.
Guest:Oh, they got the costume and you made an exchange?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah we made an exchange and i'm on the floor going what do i do do i return the town because the guy in india yeah to the guy in india yeah where's that movie so we're in kansas one time again this is after the just before the day of breaking the heel yeah and uh we decide there's this um there's this group called god hates fags yeah yeah yeah phelps yeah the phelps family not a nice family and
Guest:And so, again, the cops say they knew we're there.
Guest:They know we're in Kansas.
Guest:And they go, all right, we're arresting Sasha.
Guest:We know he's there.
Guest:And God Hates Facts heard that I was going to do something against them.
Guest:We knew they were doing a demonstration.
Guest:And the cops say, all right, they they let our cop know we see him.
Guest:He's arrested.
Guest:And that's it.
Guest:And they shut down the movie.
Guest:So I really need the scene.
Guest:And I'm thinking, what do I do here?
Guest:You know, and, you know, our cop says they've given you a warning, a fair warning.
Guest:You should leave the state now.
Guest:And I go, all right, what I wanted to do is they found out that the cops were circling the God Hate Fags demonstration.
Guest:So I said, all right, time how long we've got between every circle.
Guest:They time and it's like three minutes, 30 seconds.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I go, all right, what we're going to do is...
Guest:When they pass the God Hates Facts, you're going to drop me off at that moment when they cross past the corner so we're out of our eyesight.
Guest:Doing a recon.
Guest:So we've got like three minutes or two minutes 50.
Guest:To do what?
Guest:And I'm going to do a quick little sketch, you know, and then I want another car that's waiting and I'll go from one car to the other car.
Guest:And somebody needs to kind of give me, you know, hold up things in like 30 seconds, you know.
Guest:And so we did it.
Guest:We managed to do the sketch and jump in and we had like a bond lawyer hiding in the bushes in case I was arrested to get me out on bail immediately.
Marc:Just trying to think what this feels like.
Marc:It's just sort of like, you know, that you definitely...
Marc:The balance you had to strike and this weird relationship you have with the law and then them knowing you on top of that and not willing to indulge you.
Marc:Even knowing that if you're going to walk out with furniture from the hotel, you're going to bring it back.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But the hotel's like, we don't want to indulge as fuck.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We're running a business here.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:It's not our job to be his fucking...
Marc:You know, so you had to negotiate all this and yet do these little recons that, you know, how are you going to beat the fucking excitement of that?
Guest:Yeah, you can't.
Guest:It's hard for me.
Guest:That's why I do a lot of improv on set now and a lot of... And are there states you can't go back to?
Guest:um i think only sedona or it's only technically i'm a felon in sedona um i think other states are kind of fine i mean we're going to russia in a couple of weeks which will be interesting that's my first time back since doing pool rat and
Guest:after borat the prime minister of kazakhstan nashabayev he contacted the british prime minister who was tony blair at the time he then later on admitted to me nashabayev said all right i want you to stop this guy from releasing his film i want you to end borat and he said well listen it's not a dictatorship here i can't like do that and then there's some other talk to tony blair about it
Guest:Yeah, Tony Blair contacted me about a year after he had to leave office.
Guest:And he said, you know, you put me in a difficult position because we were doing trade with Kazakhstan.
Guest:And you made me, you know, you kind of embarrassed me.
Guest:He thought it was quite funny.
Marc:So that's the buffon.
Guest:That's the buffon, yeah, exactly.
Marc:There you are.
Marc:And you're going back to Russia?
Yeah.
Guest:So we're going back to Russia to promote the movie, but it's the first time I've gone there since, which will be interesting if I don't come back.
Guest:It'd be horrible if he got arrested now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's after it's all said and done.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Well, I got invited to Kazakhstan during the promotional stuff for Bora because they realized at one point, let's embrace him.
Guest:fox got worried that i was because they were kind of death threats and yeah so they hired like specialist security who are basically usually complete morons yeah you know some guy was swimming in sydney during the publicity tour and this guy didn't know i was going to go swimming and he starts walking in his full clothes into the into the water you know so these guys who were trained in the army to look after
Guest:Oh, I'm not letting him go.
Guest:Uh, so they did like a security assessment of me going to Kazakhstan.
Guest:They said it's impossible to secure you because even if one in 10 people wants to hurt you, you just can't, you can't do it.
Guest:No.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, take care of yourself, will you?
Guest:Thank you very much.
Guest:Well, listen, now I'm doing kind of straight ahead movie, uh, you know, yeah, it's a movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With Scorsese, you don't get in trouble.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:What'd you do with Scorsese?
Guest:i did this movie called hugo oh that's right that's a big movie it's a kids movie yeah yeah but but you're i have a feeling like like i think the the only thing that's going to really stop you from doing this shit again eventually will be your family yes yeah and it's good to talk to you well thank you very much for having me on indulging me and letting me spout out all these long stories that are great probably a slightly repetitive actually no one's heard them
Guest:No one's heard them, you're right, but they're on a theme, aren't they?
Marc:No, we covered a lot of stuff, and this was a really nice long interview, and it was a pleasure talking to you.
Guest:Yeah, pleasure being here.
Guest:Good coffee, actually.
Marc:Good.
Marc:Thank you, mate.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Sacha Baron Cohen.
Marc:Couldn't get him to stop talking.
Marc:I didn't want to, but he was ready.
Marc:Maybe it was that coffee.
Marc:I should remember what that coffee was.
Marc:You can also go to wtfpod.com for all your WTF pod needs.
Marc:You know, posters, stuff, things.
Marc:I'll play a little guitar.
guitar solo
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Guest:Boomer lives!