Guest Blogger- Michelle Weilert

Dearest internet friends,

Hello! How are you on this lovely day? Good, I hope. So guess what? I saw the movie Bruno. I thought perhaps I'd share some of my thoughts about it with you. All of you, out there in the world wide web.

Seeing Bruno was an experience. One point I will give to Sacha- he can get an audience to react. Even if he does so just by swinging his dick around (which by the way sounds way funnier in re-telling than it is in seeing.) So before it came out there was an article in the Dallas Morning News (hometown, what what!) about how Bruno came to DFW to tape a show about 'family values' then of course just offended everyone. He paraded a baby around saying he'd disown the child if he turned out to not be gay, blah blah, his general bullshit act that he does. The paper quoted something that didn't appear in the movie. And when I read it, something occured to me. How often in Sacha Baron Cohen's comedies are you laughing at him? And how often are you laughing at other people? I'm not sure he's really a comedian at all. I'd grant him that he's a sociologist, sure, but comedian....ehhhh. So this is the conversation:

Bruno (to Texas man): "There are some friends of mine you should meet."
Texas man: "The only friends of mine you're going to meet are Smith and Wesson."

That guy is a normal dude, who was misled into thinking he was seeing a taping of a show about family morals, and still he makes me laugh harder than SBC! His friends Smith & Wesson? Sure, I prefer a Colt 45 (family preference) but the man's comment is still brilliant, effing brilliant.

Then in a weird twist of events, I was reading a play called "The Shape of Things" by Neil LaBute (who is wonderful) and he explores this to the extreme. Is manipulating and misleading people art of any kind? Is it comedy? Or is it just effing mean? And now, I quote Neil:

"If I totally miss the point here and somehow puking up your own little shitty neuroses all over people's laps is actually art, then you oughta at least realize there's a price to it all...you know? somebody pays for your two minutes on cnn. someone always pays for people like you. and if you don't get that, if you can't see at least that much...then you're about two inches away from using babies to make lamp shades and calling it 'furniture.' look, i know they call it the 'art scene,' but that's not all it should make. a scene. it should be more than that. anybody can be provocative and shocking. stand up in class, or at the mall, wherever, and take a piss, paint yourself blue and run naked through a church screaming out the names of people you've slept with. is that art or did you just forget to take your ritalin? there's gotta be a line. for art to exist, there has to be a line out there somewhere. a line between really saying something and just....needing attention."

SBC, I will give you that in Borat you did expose some bias we as Americans feel towards foreigners. But what did you expose in Bruno? What did I see there that surprised me? And how much of it was you fucking up people's lives and enjoying it, profiting off it and not thinking twice? I don't know if you will make another movie, but if you do, I hope you'll think twice this time. Are you saying something or are you seeking attention?

Well, this time on Laura's blog has been great, friends. Hope you enjoyed. Hope it made you think.

With love,
Michelle Weilert