Ali G<\/a>, his faux-streetwise cultural appropriator from Staines-upon-Thames, and Borat, his blundering Kazakh journalist, have helped drive cultural conversation, even as the work has provoked backlash in equal measure to laughter.<\/p>\n\n\tInclined until recently to let his characters speak for themselves, Cohen has generally taken the public\u2019s response in stride, committed to the goal of helping to \u201cmake a slightly more tolerant society\u201d through satire. A master of disguise, whose disruptive influence on comedy dates back to \u201990s London, his M.O. has been to send meticulously crafted, memorably buffoonish characters careening through the real world. The goal? To expose the assumptions, prejudices and absurdities of those interacting with them in the real world \u2014 whether on the right or left, in a position of tremendous power or someone off the street.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe work that goes into these films, and the stakes behind them are immense; repeatedly, across projects, Cohen has put his life on the line for the sake of a joke. Naturally, then, he\u2019s spoken on more than one occasion about retiring from his work in undercover comedy. He makes the claim, once again, while discussing his latest feature, Ali G: Who Iz I? \u2014 his first film centered on the character in more than 20 years, and his first as director.<\/p>\n
\n\tIf this is indeed Cohen\u2019s last outing with his experimental form of filmmaking, he\u2019s gone out with a bang. He calls Who Iz I? his \u201cmost extreme and ambitious\u201d movie to date \u2014 his version of The Avengers, as a film in which he inhabit multiple of his characters. Not just his breakout character, Ali G, but also two of his creations for Showtime series Who Is America?: the obnoxious ultra-liberal Dr. Nira Cain-N\u2019Degeocello, who becomes the Dr. Evil to Ali G\u2019s Austin Powers, as well as the Israeli anti-terrorism expert Erran Morad. (Notably, Cohen even consulted with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the screenwriters behind Avengers: Endgame and myriad other MCU projects, in constructing his narrative.)<\/p>\n
\n\tReleased last month, Who Iz I? finds Ali G resurfacing decades after the cancellation of Da Ali G Show when he learns that his girlfriend Julie (Morgana Robinson) is pregnant and he must find a way to support his family. When Nira Cain-N\u2019Degeocello learns of the return of the \u201cwhite culture appropriator,\u201d he makes it his mission to get him canceled.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe film culminates in a sequence shot continuously over eight hours and 12 locations, involving nearly 200 crew members and hundreds of carefully choreographed beats. To achieve it, Cohen brought in specialists in prosthetics, animatronics and explosives, alongside magicians and world-famous psychologists.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe end scene is, according to [VFX supervisor] Rob Legato, the most difficult scene ever shot,\u201d Cohen tells me on today\u2019s episode of Comedy Means Business, \u201cand he worked on Titanic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tOn this week\u2019s podcast, Cohen shares the backstory behind his decision to bring Ali G back, before getting into the extreme prep that\u2019s made his films possible. We also discuss his career beginnings, and how his early academic work and lifelong interest in identity have fueled his films from Ali G Indahouse on \u2014 works whose intentions can be easily misinterpreted, which have more on their mind than some give them credit for.<\/p>\n
\n\tExplaining how each of his character comedies has been approached with a different genre in mind \u2014 Who Iz I? is a fugitive thriller \u2014 Cohen talks pressing through fear on set, navigating the online discourse around his work, and the unsettling recent \u201cmove towards the acceptance of political violence\u201d that inspired his latest film. Also: his studies under iconic French clowning guru Philippe Gaulier, who passed away this year; his concerns surrounding AI; mastering sword fighting for his new play The Popinjay Cavalier, marking a long-in-the-works collaboration with Quentin Tarantino; and more.<\/p>\n
\n\tCheck out the full conversation by clicking above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s an apocryphal quote attributed to the late, great George Carlin: \u201cIt\u2019s the duty of the comedian to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":950286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[371081,473233,30862,64,63,517208,134,344,18297],"class_list":["post-950285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ali-g","tag-ali-g-who-iz-i","tag-amazon-mgm-studios","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-comedy-means-business-podcast","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-sacha-baron-cohen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=950285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/950286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=950285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=950285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=950285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}