Sacha Baron Cohen can be rude, outrageous, vulgar and controversial ... but he also can be sensitive. Just two weeks before Cohen's film 'Bruno' was to open around the country, Michael Jackson died on June 25 and Cohen wisely excised a scene with LaToya Jackson. The scene, which could have been deemed distasteful at the time, will return to the film as part of the Nov. 17 DVD release.
In the scene, Cohen as Bruno, the flamboyant gay Austrian fashionista, tries to punk Paula Abdul by asking her to eat food off a naked man's body; Abdul runs out of the room. Cohen then lures LaToya Jackson to his Hollywood "home," where he proceeds to try to punk her in the same way. LaToya goes along with the scenario until Cohen grabs her cell phone, finds Michael's phone number and reads it out loud to his assistant. LaToya finally gets upset and leaves the interview. As she drives away, Cohen yells out, "LaToya, come back. Can you at least get me Jermaine?"
Cutting the scene was a good call on Cohen's part; at the time, so close to Michael's death, it would have been incredibly disrespectful. Hollywood, often painted as a demoralizing agent in American culture, does know how to be sensitive. After 9/11, for example, images of the World Trade Center were excised from such films as 'Spider-Man,' 'Zoolander' and 'Men in Black II,' and the visible explosion of a 747 in the pilot of '24' was eliminated.
But is it too soon to add this Jackson scene back in? We don't think so, certainly not after the worldwide success of Jackson's 'This Is It.' The only reason to have kept it out was because ... well, it's just not that funny.
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