I developed a script there for me to star in. Got paid to develop it. The script came in, and it wasn’t what I had envisioned and it didn’t seem fixable to me. I said, “I don’t want to do it, I can’t do it.” I had a window. Legally there was a window, in which I could pull out of this thing. Then about three days later, these four Seinfeld Chronicles scripts come to me from Larry David. I read them, and think, “Oh my God, this sounds really good. I got this.”
I went in. I hung out with Jerry. Then Warner Brothers threatened to sue me. They thought I had done something illegal or unethical. They were suspicious of the fact that I pulled out of my deal with them, and then so quickly on the heels of that, became involved with this gig.
I was terrified. I was nothing. I was this little person and this was a huge studio and they were threatening. They said they wanted their money back. It was a lot of money. Seventy-five grand. That’s a lot of money, particularly back then, it was huge. I thought, “But I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t break our contract.” One of my attorneys said, “You’ve got to just give it back.” But if I do that, doesn’t it imply that I’ve done something wrong? I didn’t do anything wrong. Right?
I called Gary David Goldberg, who was the creator of Family Ties and Spin City. He’s subsequently passed away, but he was a mentor of mine, and a very good friend. I told him that Warner Brothers was threatening to sue, and what should I do, and I was so scared, and I’m being told by lawyers to give the money back.
He said, “You know what? I don’t respond well to bullying. Keep the money.”
I took his advice and I never heard from Warner Brothers. Nothing. Is that wild?
They had no legal grounds. They were just being dicks and I called their bluff. It was a great thing, actually. It was a good lesson. “I don’t respond well to bullying.”
Marc
Okay, the prank you did on the phone, that was funny.
JON BENJAMIN—COMEDIAN, WRITER, DIRECTOR, ACTOR
Wait, it was funny?
Marc
It was irritating. Here’s my reaction to that prank: I’m an idiot. Why’d I even fall for that?
Jon
No, see, I take it differently. I take it like I included you. The kid who no one liked, I included.
Marc
Okay, yes. Why, thank you.
So you call Jon’s cell phone and you get a message like, “Hey, this is Jon. If you need to reach me, my new cell phone number is…” and he gives a cell phone number. Then you’re in your car, you’re risking your life calling anyway. Then you call the number that he leaves after you remember it while you’re driving, and it’s the same number.
Jon
That one is working like a charm.
I get a lot of that. “Why? Why did you waste my fucking time?”
SACHA BARON COHEN—COMEDIAN, WRITER, PRODUCER, ACTOR
When we were making Brüno, we wanted to finish the movie in this arena. A normal romantic comedy has the guy propose to the girl in a stadium full of sports fans, and they kiss, it’s on the video screen. We thought, all right, let’s do that. Let’s have all the sports fans, but let’s do it in an Ultimate Fighting arena and let me make out with a guy. We wrote in the script, we’re going to do this and it’s going to turn into a riot. We knew it would be a security issue.
I thought, how do I get out of here? We’re going to have two thousand rednecks, we want to have a riot, but how do we get out of here?
Basically, I’m told by my lawyer beforehand—I’ve got this great lawyer who is this gay southern man. He’s a genius in the First Amendment. He lives in India. He’s got fifteen lawyers working for him and whenever we’re in trouble we call up and they’re like, “Okay, in the case of Smith versus the State of Arkansas, it is very clear that the indemnity.…” We call them up and it’s really good for us. He has these fifteen guys. All Constitutional, First Amendment law. They say, “All right. There are twelve things you need to know. None of these laws can you break.”
The big one was, he said, “Whatever you do, don’t incite a riot, because that’s a federal offense.” If you’re crossing a state line to incite a riot, then that’s punishable by a minimum of, I think, three years, and it’s a federal offense. That’s what the Chicago Seven were up for actually.
I said, “There’s a problem, because I am crossing a state line in order to incite a riot at the end,” because I thought it would be a great thing for the movie.
We went through all the nudity laws and the decency laws. We had to let people know that there would be nudity. As a result I had this poster printed which had girls in bikinis, really hot girls in bikinis, going, “There will be nudity at Ultimate Fighting.” Obviously, when they got there it was male nudity. Then there were about fifteen stipulations of, I can kiss him on the mouth, I can kiss him on the nipple, but I can’t put a finger in his rectum. He can place an open palm on my ass cheek, but the moment it gets within two centimeters of the rectum you’re done. Basically, Arkansas ended up being one of the only places in America we could get away with it, because the indecency laws were framed wrongly. They put the punctuation in the wrong place. Essentially we thought we could win in a court case. Making out with a guy and being almost naked was okay.
We had two thousand people the next night. We couldn’t put barbed wire on the top, but because we had to have some way of stopping people from jumping in, so I put faked barbed wire on the top of the ring, so that people psychologically wouldn’t want to jump it. We had all the chairs stuck down with metal, basically. Unsuspecting audience.
We had the police there. There were about fifteen cops there. Basically, the cops said, “Listen. If you break any of these laws we’re arresting you.” It was a bit like the end of The Blues Brothers. I had the cops there. They were going to get me if I broke the law.
In the end it really worked. We changed the scene a tiny bit. I realized that there was a problem with the scene. Because I attacked him, the crowd booed me. This time I said, “You know what? I’m going to turn my back to face the crowd and you’re going to punch me in the head.” He did it, and it was great. Because he was playing unfairly, the crowd was on my side. I then hit him. He hit me. He was tougher. I had some blood, and then the crowd was on my side. They were fully behind me. They were ready for me to really hurt him, and that’s when I kissed him. That’s when they freaked out, but they couldn’t jump over.
I’m kissing and making out, and all the time I’m thinking of all the legal laws. Okay, I can stroke his ass. He goes to put a finger in my ass, I’m like, “Whoa, whoa. Pull it away.” Then at one point I see a chair flying in. It’s a metal chair flying in and I’m thinking, “What the fuck? How did this happen?” What happened is somebody had got a knife in and was sawing through the chains. They were so committed to hurting me. Eventually, I’m lying on my back and I’m thinking, “If I hold my costar tightly I can move from left to right and dodge the chairs.” Eventually, after two chairs, I hear, “Go, go, go.” The rule was, once you hear, “Go, go, go,” you have to go. So we went. But we got it. We finished the movie.