There was a report that Amazon/MGM Studios chose to limit the number of theaters screening the movie because of all the controversy, with most locations showing the film only once a day. The movie will begin streaming on Amazon on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Fielder’s film is on track to be the highest-grossing documentary in 15 years.
“This is my first movie in six years, so it’s financially disastrous. It’s a terrible business model. There’s a huge risk, but I feel I have to do it. I feel I really want my fans to laugh really hard,” Baron Cohen tells me. “And I want them to think, and I want to create a society that is a little more tolerant, as Ali G says, to increase the peace, and one where there’s a bit more respect,” he says, using his Ali G accent to punctuate “respect.”
Much of the film is about an invented conspiracy involving a Mexican cartel leader named Alejandro Gonzalez, who supposedly has fathered over 140,000 children. The premise is preposterous on its face (Baron Cohen tells VF it was “a laughable, absurd idea”). Nevertheless, Baron Cohen persuades real politicians, including Gingrich and Congressman Andy Harris, to condemn the fake cartel leader. Harris could not be reached for comment.
But the movie’s most disturbing sequence takes the deception a lot further.
Disguised as an Israeli intelligence operative, Baron Cohen recruits a group of MAGA supporters, including a local Republican Party leader in El Paso, into what they believe is a mission to prevent the birth of the fictitious cartel leader’s child on American soil. We find out that the participants, unaware that they are inside a meticulously produced fiction, are willing to kill an innocent baby in order to prevent the birth of an “anchor baby.”
