I know there was a thread about this but I can’t search because every words is 3 letters. Anyway my question is: How does he get these big names to do these “interviews?” I almost pissed my pants last week with the drug education officer. But he get’s Newt Gingrich, James Lipton, Buzz Aldrin - how do they get booked?
One of these threads may help:
Da Ali G show
Did anyone see the Ali G show on HBO?
UK Dopers - Ali G - Black/white/both
The interviews are old old old. They appeared in Britain a couple of years ago, and apparently are only now hitting America. At the time, no one knew Ali G, so UK television sent him to various public figures saying he was the host of a journalism for young people show. The older people he interviewed would do anything to better the opinion of them among the youth, so they accepted to be interviewed. Once the first Ali G show became popular, it was no longer plausible to keep up this charade, so the second wave of interviews is with celebrities, all of whom know that Ali G is actually an Israeli actor doing a put on.
The first wave of interviews were classic, though. I like the drug officer one myself, but you can tell that by the end he knows someone is messing with him. Incidentally, most of these interviews were quite long, and made up of mostly innocuous questions. Then, the interview was edited to make it seem like it was short and nothing but odd questions.
UnuMondo
You should realise that there’s a difference between Israeli and Jewish. Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G) is a British Jew.
I believe either his family is from Israel or he has part-time residence in Israel. I recall reading something that he is indeed somehow Israeli.
UnuMondo
The IMDb site says he was born in North London. This site claims that his mother is from Israel, his father from Wales and that he spent a year living on a kibbutz between school and university. I can’t find any reference to Israeli citizenship as such, but you may be able to if you recall where you read it. I’m no expert on automatic Israeli residence entitlements for Jewish people born elsewhere.
As far as the OP is concerned, it has become obvious that at least some of the interviewees on the US version of his show were aware it was supposed to be comedy (Boutros Boutros-Ghali for instance). UnuMondo has already explained that because they showed heavily-edited versions of longer interviews, it was not necessarily clear to them that they were being set up. Most of the questions were straightforward and got “normal” answers, and every so often he would throw in a ridiculous question which would get a funny answer.
everton how did you search for those?
I searched for “sacha AND cohen”. As it happens, the first thread I found included a post from me giving the same three links as above so I just cut and pasted from that ;).