(There is another general thread about this movie but I have a specific question.)
Many scenes appear to be pranks. But the filming is not through some hidden pen camera in some guy’s pocket–it is generally high quality.
The CPAC scene with Pence: This was in the news so I guess it was real. Didn’t you need credentials to get in? Who was filming this whole thing? How did Cohen not get arrested for trespassing or something?
The scenes with the babysitter: Who was filming? It seems that these scenes were scripted with an actor.
And for the following scenes, who was filming and under what pretense? I think people who are not actors are conscious of the camera and would tend to look at it. Skillful editing could cut that out, but in general these scenes are all produced as though we were voyeurs looking at a scene unnoticed. This would require multiple cameras and a willing cast. These were not “gotcha” scenes with hidden cameras, like you see on some investigative news shows.
Republican Women’s Club
Debutante ball
Antiabortion pregnancy clinic
Right-wingers in the cabin
It’s a mixed bag. I can see filming some of those things, like the Debutante Ball or the Republican Women’s club, but they obviously had to have conversations with:
nanny lady(told her to respond as she normally would even though it’s on camera)
quarantine Qanon dudes(come on. It’s way too perfect to be fully real)
I prefer the moments like:
interrupting Mike Pence. I am amazed they got the cameras in and he actually made it to the floor with the girl over his shoulder
the anti-mask march song. Very much Cohen’s best kind of stuff.
I think that everyone was real, but there is a lot of setup we don’t see. The first time Borat meets the guy coming out of the party store, I bet they had pre-arranged it with him a few minutes before so they could film it properly. I bet they know who Borat is and basically played fodder for him.
In some cases, it appears that people knew they were going to be in a film (no idea of the veracity of that source), but did not know what type of film or the context in which they would appear. Apparently the Jewish lady in the synagogue died after the shooting and now her family is suing because they were not told it would be a satire. The social media influencer was acting a part and she knew it was a setup but apparently it went off script and she just went with it.
In this interview, Sacha Baron Cohen gives a behind the scenes explanation of what happened at the Pence speech. This link should take you to 4:36 in the video where the interviewer asks the question:
Really? Of all the people in the movie, she was one of the ones who came across as the most genuine and gentle. I’d be rather proud of any of my relatives if they reacted so well to SBC’s provocative behavior like she did.
Apparently she was in on it all along, and was told who Cohen was–a rare step for Cohen–but did not realize the overall context of the movie. The synagogue scene itself was very sincere but they didn’t like that this scene was part of a prank film.
In the case of the rally in Olympia, Baron Cohen (it’s a double-barreled surname like “Conan Doyle” or “Lloyd Webber”) had a shell company posing as a Republican PAC reach out to the organizers and pay for the stage and PA, which is why he was able to stay onstage so long after the crowd started to realize they were being pranked - the security he hired wouldn’t let the organizers kick him out.
There’s crowd footage on Youtube where you can see that his song went on for over ten minutes before he wrapped it up.