Scribbler After Dark

As I’ve mentioned here before, I have this habit of not going to the movies for very long periods of time. Well, in the case of Borat, that streak ended without hesitation this weekend.

I’m not going to get into my favorite parts about it (the frat boy RV into religious revival sequence, if you must know), but there were two things that really stood out for me. Bear with me because this will seem kind of random. I’ll try pulling it all together.

1. Saturday night at the showhouse is friggin’ nuts, especially now that my work schedule has me living the isolated, overnight hours. We’re waiting in line to use the automated ticket machine, and I’m sort of overwhelmed by the number of people crammed into the Mayfair movie theater here in Milwaukee. While I’m waiting for the line to move, the mayor of Waukesha comes into another line (seriously!), a couple has a nasty argument about their relationship and everything that happens when they go to see movies and I scan the list of other films playing there. Don’t ask me why, but in my line-waiting boredom, I get this thought that the theater will somehow say we can’t see Borat, there was some kind of ticketing glitch, they’re sorry and we can see any other movie instead at no cost. Then, I realize after looking at the list that I’d decline the offer and just go home. Saw III? The Santa Clause 3? Who sees this stuff? Somebody does because it makes money. I don’t get it, but it leads me into my second point.

2. Borat is great to me because it’s 100 percent and then some against everything that is supposedly the good, encouraged norm in America. A few times during the movie, I thought about how ridiculous it is that this movie not only was made, but was playing for audiences in Milwaukee, Wisconsin U.S.A. I think that is Borat’s greatest prank. Somehow, a fat, hairy, middle-aged, naked man is playing a featured scene getting gigantic laughs in a world where people could choose to look at that or Tim Allen in a fat suit pretending to be Santa Claus. The conventional wisdom is that Americans are inundated with entertainment choices and have become more specific and sheltered in their preferences than ever before or, perhaps, than ever could have been imagined. So, this past weekend, the most popular entertainment choice, dollar for dollar, was this fat, naked, hairy, middle-aged man’s balls getting shoved into the mouth of a British Jew portraying a fictional character who mocks the idiocy and insanity of countless American ideals. What a country!

The movie has no precedent in terms of appealing to a wide audience. Nothing that out and out bizarre has been done in my brief lifetime, at least. That recently retired Southern construction magnate who Borat thought was a “retard” is an actual dude somewhere. Those three drunk dopes from the University of South Carolina – whose lives are basically ruined for a minimum of two years now – are real dudes out there.

Anyway, I think the movie’s existence alone is part of the joke and it couldn’t have been pulled off any better. The pre-release marketing turned out to be brilliantly successful, but at its core, just getting that material onto a screen – any screen – in suburban America is something that still seems impossible to me. And I saw the movie! To think, all along I just figured people were waiting for the next Remember The Titans or something.