Fumarama

Hypothetically, say I had a friend who did not really like Borat, would you consider that person a total sourpuss? Everyone I know saw it in the theater, and everyone just raved and raved about it. These are people whose tastes I respect. Even my parents liked it. I was just very surprised when the dvd ended and I was kind of like "oh."

I had this conversation with a classmate. (former classmate? I am no longer a student. So strange.) Anyway, he was arguing that when telling funny stories you always tell the story in the first person regardless of whether or not it happened to you, and you always claim the story is completely true regardless of how much you are exagerating. And I understand that this is what people do, but I kind of feel like it is cheating humor. There are two levels of funny. There are things that are funny because they are just funny, and then there are things that are funny because the person laughing believes it really happened. I mean this is true for interesting too. Apparently, James Frey first tried to sell his books to publishers as a work of fiction and it was universally rejected. He then decided to call it a memoir and suddenly he was published and on Oprah. Or the fact that Christopher Hitchens was rude to me at a party isn't funny in itself, it is only funny if you believe that a drunken Hitchens told me to move away from the alcohol so he could have more. He actually didn't said move, he said, well, are you going to get up for me? (god, I was pissed. But I was shy and I just moved).

I mean I imagine there are lots of people who might just find the characters inherently funny. But so much of the pleasure i got out of Ali G was the "oh my god, he just asked Boutros Boutros Ghali if Disneyland will ever become part of the UN. That is really funny." But I know this is true. I know he actually asked Ghali these questions. Anyway, when I was watching Borat I felt like it was all pretty set up. I mean I think that Pamela Anderson running away from him and he chasing after her is incredibly funny if Pamela Anderson had no idea what was going on and honestly thought a crazy man was going to force her to marry him. But if this was Pamela Anderson acting, just the concept in itself of some wierd man's obsession with Anderson and her running away fictionalized is kind of lame. Or like the sexist drunken fratboys: funny if he just happened to come across said frat boys and this is what happened. But not funny if he interviewed dozens of different groups of guys and this was just the best interview. I mean some portion of American males get drunk and don't respect women, I know that already, finding a random representative group just was not that funny. Or all the random American people he got to say kind of racist or homophobic things, how many people do you think he interviewed who did no such thing? Who thought his statements about Jews were appalling?

That being said there were some brilliant moments for all the reasons I loved Ali G. The whole singing the national anthem in front of a crowd of people was great. I found the interview with Alan Keyes pretty funny. Actually everything surrounding the gay pride parade. The parade even saved the part at the beginning in which he tried to kiss random New Yorks and they yelled at him. I initially thought that part was really lame, mostly because if a random man followed by a camera crew tried to kiss me on the street, I would not be pleased. But he made up for it with the juxtaposition.

Also, there was Romanian! I have never heard Romanian in the movies before.