The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has pulled actor Sacha Baron Cohen‘s tickets from the 84th Academy Awards.
This means he is banned from attending the Oscars even though he is an Academy member and one of the stars from Hugo, Paramount’s 11-nominated movie and Best Picture contender. “Unless they’re assured that nothing entertaining is going to happen on the Red Carpet, the Academy is not admitting Sacha Baron Cohen to the show,” Paramount just told me.
The reason is that a proposal reached the Academy for Baron Cohen to strut the Red Carpet in full costume as his title character in the upcoming Paramount comedy The Dictator.
UPDATE AT 5:30 PM: Later today, faced with all the bad publicity resulting from its action, the Academy tried to parse what it did when questioned by some media outlets. But the fact is that, this morning, the Academy’s Managing Director Of Membership Kimberly Rouch phoned Paramont’s awards staff to say Baron Cohen’s tickets had been pulled unless he gives the Academy assurances ahead of time promising not to show up on the Red Carpet in costume and not to promote the movie on the Red Carpet. The Academy made it clear that, without those assurances, it would not issue him the tickets. So he’s banned.*
Of course, the next best thing to that publicity stunt is all the media coverage which this ban is going to generate for Baron Cohen’s film. So the Academy has decided to act like dictators about the actor playing The Dictator. Ugh.
Dictator banned from Oscars
Dictator banned from Oscars
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: Dictator banned from Oscars
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: Dictator banned from Oscars
I think he should put his butt in Marshall Mathers face again.
Now that was REAL comedy...
Now that was REAL comedy...
Sometimes it seems as though one has to cross the line just to figger out where it is
Re: Dictator banned from Oscars
Flamboyant British comic Sacha Baron Cohen pulled a stunt on the Oscars red carpet, pretending to pour the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's ashes onto an interviewer.
The Ali G, Borat and Bruno star, who had been warned against staging a stunt at the Academy Awards, turned up in full military regalia from his latest movie The Dictator, and clutching a funeral urn bearing Kim's photo.
Flanked by two female guards in uniforms and red berets, he told celebrity presenter Ryan Seacrest that he was wearing Galliano.
"The socks are from Kmart," he added and, when Seacrest reached down to pull up his trouser leg, said: "As Saddam Hussein once said to me, 'Socks are socks, don't waste money'."
Holding the urn with a picture of North Korea's late leader on the front, he was asked why he was excited to come to the Oscars.
"It gave me an opportunity to bring my dear friend and doubles tennis partner Kim Jong Il," Baron Cohen said in character.
"It was his dream to come to the Oscars, and to be sprinkled over the red carpet and over Halle Berry's chest again," he joked.
At that point, he pretended to lose his grip on the urn, pouring the ashes down the black suit of a visibly annoyed Seacrest, and spilling them on the red carpet in front of banks of cameras.
Security guards appeared to pull him away, and as Seacrest continued to broadcast live, Baron Cohen could be seen in the background, berating the guards and demanding to pick up his urn.
At one point, he managed to tell Seacrest, who had ashes all down his front: "If somebody asks you what you're wearing, you say Kim Jong-Il."
Seacrest, regaining his composure, joked about the incident shortly afterwards, saying: "I'm a little dusty. I'm a victim of comedy."
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“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
