British actor-producer Sacha Baron Cohen admitted in a recent interview with NPR that his “Borat” movie sequel was intended to perform as a multimillion-dollar contribution to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
“I felt I had to get this movie out before the election,” Cohen told the media outlet.
Cohen also said he stood by the movie’s mistreatment of Rudy Giuliani.
“What we did with Rudy was crucial. I mean, we made the movie to have an impact on the election. … So ethically, I can stand by that all day long,” he said.
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“We did the film because there was a deeply unethical government in power. And there was no question. … We had to do what we could to inspire people to vote and remind people of the immorality of the government prior to the election,” he later added.
On NPR, @SachaBaronCohen defends entrapping @RudyGiuliani: “We did it because there was a deeply unethical government in power … We made the movie to have an impact on the election … I have no doubt about the morality of this film. I’m very proud of it.” pic.twitter.com/NJcD7ohyE0
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 23, 2021
Emily Jashinsky writing in The Federalist noted: “I’m all for holding the powerful to account, but what happened with Giuliani and others in the film was really questionable. The press ran with nonsense framing of a clip that finds the former mayor tucking in his pants as a sexual gesture in front of a young woman.”
Back in October when Cohen’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm was released by Amazon, USA Today‘s Maria Puente wrote, “Giuliani has been well and truly pranked by the master scamp of the ‘Borat’ gotcha movies” and there was little he could do legally or PR wise, according to the lawyers and crisis experts who spoke to the newspaper.
The reason Giuliani legally couldn’t do anything? He had signed a well-worded legal release form crafted by Cohen’s attorneys.
In an interview published last week by The Guardian, Cohen revealed Biden’s campaign team was “very happy” with Giuliani’s scene in the movie because “It was such a close election that everything in those final weeks was crucial.”
The newspaper also reported that Cohen even told prospective crew members: “We are concerned about what will happen if Trump wins and want to make this movie as a protest. Would you join us?”
The Federalist‘s Jashinsky noted in her article that the Borat sequel along with Jeff Daniels’ “The Comey Rule” was a statement on how comfortable the entertainment industry is with its own left-wing politics.
“We know Hollywood uses art for political purposes, and we know Hollywood leans so far left it can barely stand anymore. That’s all fine, art and politics can and should be a powerful combination. Partisan art, however, tends to fall flat, hampered by its necessary blindness to one side’s problems,” she wrote.
“The bigger takeaway,” Jashinsky points out, “is that major corporations such as Amazon and Viacom poured millions of dollars into projects billed by their stars as partisan projects to sway the election in favor of the Democratic candidate.”
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