Sacha Baron Cohen’s Avatar Spoof Might Offend James Cameron’s Ginormous Ego
The funniest moment out of the snooze-fest that is the Academy Awards show—which no one cares about once the red carpet is empty of celebrities—has been cut because of the very large, very fragile ego of a movie director. Truthfully, we all know that awards shows are an excuse for women and gay men to get together and drink on a Sunday night. Awards-related drinking games are played and there is ample discussion about how awful some actress’s gown is, but mostly everyone is in their own world, posting Facebook status updates, because they know that they can find out who won in five minutes on the internet Monday morning. In an attempt to make the interminable broadcast interesting, they called the one man who was guaranteed to bring in the viewers: Sacha Baron Cohen. I considered watching.
For some reason, producers think James Cameron might be offended.
Then—poof!—all of a sudden Cohen’s name disappears from the list of presenters. He’s not even leaving London. And it’s not because he suddenly became a diva and chose not to come. It’s because the producers of the Oscars were afraid that Big Jimmy Cameron would have a meltdown over a parody of his multi-million dollar baby, Avatar. Evidently, Cohen planned to appear onstage as a female Na’vi (that’s one of those tall blue folks from the movie) with Ben Stiller there to translate her speech. It was to become clear that Stiller wasn’t translating properly, as Cohen’s character would get very upset. Then Cohen would pull open his gown to reveal that his female Na’vi character was pregnant with James Cameron love child. Then, all blue and gangly and knocked-up, ‘she’ would confront Cameron, Jerry Springer-style.
But alas, this year’s Oscars are bound to be as endless and dull as all the others. Lacking even the patience to watch the parade of mostly-dull celebrities to see what the major ones are wearing, we can wait until Monday and tune into E! instead. Odds are that Cohen has no plans to watch, either. He’ll be at home with Isla Fisher and their baby, Olive, hatching a new plan to make people speculate about an upcoming wedding. Fisher has been wearing an engagement ring for almost 6 years, and every few months there are new rumors. Married or not, they’re having fun.
Not so for our megalomaniacal film director, who is up against his ex-wife once again in the Best Director category. While he took the award at the Golden Globes, most people-who-speculate-about-these-thing are speculating that Kathryn Bigelow is likely to take the Academy Award for The Hurt Locker. Tall blue aliens wrapped up in a predictable plot are a lot less likely to impress the members of the Academy. With Cameron’s ego already on the line, he could well pitch a hissy-fit if confronted by the 6’3” in-your-face comedian, painted blue and pretending to carry his baby. If there’s one thing Sacha Baron Cohen can do, it’s to throw himself into a character full-tilt.
So watch the Academy Awards, or don’t. But if you do, prepare to be bored, as usual.