Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno Disrupts Proposition 8 Rally
The genius of Sacha Baron Cohen's characters is the same as the genius of other brilliant satirists like Stephen Colbert: By exaggerating your opponent's position to the point of absurdity and playing like you believe in it with a fanatical enthusiasm, you render them completely humiliated. Such was most likely the goal when Sacha Baron Cohen (as his gay character Bruno) crashed a rally in support of Proposition 8, a California law that would overturn the legalization of gay marriage. According to the AP, Cohen marched enthusiastically with demonstrators opposing gay marriage, but had to be taken away by handlers when photographers and jouranlists realized who he was.
It appears as though Cohen's upcoming Bruno film will continue the trend of leveraging real-life events germane to the film to create political spectacle. Between this incident and the cage match that turned into a hot male-on-male make out session, it looks like we'll be in for a treat when the new film is released in May 2009. For more details about the crazy process that Cohen films go through to get made, check out this profile of Larry Charles in Esquire magazine.