GAY GROUPS GROWING CONCERN OVER 'BRUNO'
Thu Jun 11 2009 09:05:55 ET
After an exhaustive and controversial production proccess, Sacha Baron Cohen and UNIVERSAL are finally set to unleash BRUNO onto the multiplex -- and gay groups are reacting with "deeply mixed" emotions!
"Some people in our community may like this movie, but many are not going to be OK with it," Rashad Robinson, senior director for the GAY AND LESBIAN ALLIANCE AGAINST DEFAMATION, tells the NEW YORK TIMES in a planned Sunday expose. "Sacha Baron Cohen's well-meaning attempt at satire is problematic in many places and outright offensive in others."
Brad Luna, a spokesman for HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN, warns the movie should come with disclaimer:
"We strongly feel that Sacha Baron Cohen and UNIVERSAL PICTURES have a responsibility to remind the viewing public right there in the theater that this is intended to expose homophobia."
Billed as an encore to the blockbuster BRUNO, with a twist, the film is set for July 10. It's delivered R-rated and ready to shock.
In one scene Bruno appears on a talk show holding a baby who is wearing a T-shirt reading "Gayby." The sequence flashes to Bruno having sex in a hot tub while the baby sits nearby. He then boasts to the outraged studio audience that the baby is a man magnet.
"You're going to burn in hell for that one!" shouts an unknowing audience member.
Elton John blushed and balked when Cohen asked if he could play "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" for a scene in which Bruno, participating in a cage-fighting match in Arkansas, pulls down his opponent's pants and kisses him on the mouth, prompting a horrified crowd to throw garbage at him. [Elton does make a cameo later in the movie.]
Cohen's favorite BRUNO scene is said involve the comic strutting around ultra-orthodox streets of Jerusalem in short-shorts and Hasidic black hat.
The TIMES's Brooks Barnes is planning to go thousands of words on the societal implications of it all, newsroom sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
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