Last night CBS really plugged their Sacha Baron Cohen “60 Minutes” interview during the NFL game.
I actually lost count of how many times they said it. It could have been a drinking game!
And yet, the segment, from new correspondent Arielle Levy, strangely omitted a few things.
Like, when is the “Ali G” movie being released, and which studio is it from? And why is it only playing for one weekend?
There were no interviews with any of the actors who’ve made the movies memorable, including Maria Bakalova, who actually received an Oscar nomination for the Borat sequel.
Levy certainly didn’t mention the Borat sequel, or its most famous scene: Bakalova, posing as Borat’s teenage daughter and journalist, lures Rudy Giuliani up to her hotel room, gets him on the bed, pulls his shirt out of his pants, and all hell breaks loose. (I broke that story, thanks.)
Levy did not call Rudy for a comment.
We won’t be seeing that level of reporting on Bari Weiss’s iteration of the famed newsmagazine.
As it is, I was surprised they included a nanosecond clip of Ali G trying to upstage Donald Trump long, long ago.
There was also no talk of anything actually in the new Ali G movie, including what seems like a send up of Amazon owner Jeff Bezos and his wife. The satire may be what’s gotten “Ali G: What Iz I?” into trouble at the platform. Beyond this weekend, with a light release, there are no other plans for the comedy to be shown anywhere.
As for Levy I thought she held on her own, even announcing her age — “52!” But she called Cohen a “public intellectual,” causing spit-takes all over America. Smart guy? Yeah, sure. But the Susan Sontag of comedy films?
