By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Lettting the scat out of the bag: Borat's boys speak
In the January issue of the WGAW’s monthly, Written By, John Koch and Borat co-writers Peter Baynham, Dan Mazer, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Anthony “Ant” Hines exchange over 5,000 words about how to write for the kamikaze Kazakh and a “new and exciting art form.” “Mazer, Baynham, and Hines constitute a small inner circle of writers with comedy carte blanche when it comes to writing with Cohen, a versatile performer and writer his team compares to Peter Sellers, Buster Keaton, and John Cleese… The Borat team obliged our request to publicly expose the fact that their work is written. It is ironic that a film so often referred to by the media as unscripted has writers writing on preproduction, during production, on location, postproduction, and even scripting original Borat bits for each of Cohen’s many television appearances. This… the first time they’ve spoken in-depth about their writing process.” Dan Mazer: “The film is quite pioneering and different, and I think we’re going to start to see lots of imitators now. What’s interesting is it’s taken us eight years to refine the art of doing it and knowing how to do it. It’s an incredibly difficult and unique skill, the actual writing of it…. We’ve helped craft what I think is this new and exciting art form.” Koch: “Sacha, what is it about these co-writers that you need for your process to work? What are their skills, what are their attributes?” Sacha Baron Cohen: I mean, what’s clearly obvious is they’re incredibly attractive. You’ve got Dan, who’s darker and swarthier. You’ve got Peter, who’s got everything that a middle-age woman can provide… And Ant-40, virile, and aerodynamic [i.e., shaved head].” … Dan Mazer: “The weird thing is, we have incredibly serious discussions about incredibly stupid things. Like, can we bring a shit down to a dinner table? We debated that for an hour.” … Ant Hines: “I’d say the unsung hero in this production is Jason Alper, the costume guy who provided that shit. He has a credit on the movie: FECES PROVIDED BY JASON ALPER.” [Much, much more at the link.]