It’s
a wonderfully symbiotic relationship that Sacha Baron Cohen has devised
with the targets of his outrageous stunts. After the smoke clears, the
victims sue for a big settlement, and in turn, Cohen’s movie gets more
attention and thus, more tickets sold. Borat
had at least seven lawsuits aimed at it at one point or another, one of
them from an entire town in Romania, and each lawsuit puts the film
into the minds of more people. Hell, considering these sorts of
settlements are more than likely built into the budget in the first
place, it’s probably cheap publicity. Add in Borat’s wild success, and of course Bruno couldn’t even make it into theaters before having at least a half dozen suits filed.
So naturally, the always classy TMZ
is reporting that one case in particular is a bit nastier than usual,
since the target isn’t just a humiliated racist, but instead a woman
who could be permanently injured. It appears that a stunt at a bingo
game turned nasty when a woman named Richelle Olson attempted to
wrestle the microphone from the foul-mouthed Bruno. She claims “Cohen
attacked her, as did several of his cameramen…”
She also
alleges that a brain injury she received from a fall onto concrete a
few minutes later, came as a direct result of the stress from the
struggle.
It’s unclear whether or not this stunt will actually
appear in the film and if it does, in what form. Cohen and company have
not been shy about showing controversial or questionable sequences
before, so who knows? One can only assume (or at least hope) there is a
fair amount of exaggeration in these allegations of brutality. The buzz
on Bruno
has been heavy since it was first announced, but perhaps Cohen is
feeling the need to one-up himself. A public beating resulting in brain
damage would certainly do the trick…