Alert: Avoiding embarrassing exposure…
As Sacha Baron Cohen roams the U.S. searching for folks to inveigle into appearing in his next film, he is operating behind a series of dummy companies and web sites intended to mask his involvement in the follow-up to his smash Borat.
In his new movie, Cohen appears as “Bruno,” a gay Austrian journalist who, like Borat, asks embarrassing (and often salacious) questions. Prospective interviewees– e.g., ballroom dancers, Alabama National Guard officials, and a white supremacist– are told that Bruno is working with Amesbury Chase, a Los Angeles-based production company, and are directed to the Amesbury Chase web site, on which the firm is described as having “world class facilities, and state-of-the art equipment to help you create dynamic and compelling content.”
The firm’s address is actually a box at Sunset Blvd. Mailboxes. And the company and its web site were both created within the last 18 months. Three other Cohen front companies– Cold Stream Productions, Coral Blue Productions, and Chromium Films–all use, as the reader will see, the same mailbox drop, phone number, and web site template as Amesbury Chase.
So, if an uber-stylish man with a microphone and a teutonic accent approaches you, claiming to have a Sunset Boulevard address…
(Thanks, Smoking Gun)
As we prepare to mince words, we might wish an alias-free happy birthday to Clyde Barrow, who teamed with Bonnie Parker to terrorize bankers and lawmen across the Mid-West through the 30s; the masculine half of “Bonnie and Clyde” was born on this date in 1909.
