Does ‘Borat’ make Cohen the new Kaufman?

Colbert’s surreal journey
It’s widely known that Colbert’s overinflated, conservative TV host was modeled in part after Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly. Since Colbert’s character shares his own name (as Benny’s persona did), the comedian has joked that he has considered pronouncing the “T” in his name to differentiate himself from his creation.

Colbert (the character) reached his apotheosis earlier this year when he hosted the White House Correspondents Association dinner with President Bush in attendance.

“It was surreal to be there,” Colbert says. “It was odd because my character pretends to belong there [among politicians and pundits] and to actually be there and to be treated like you belong was really strange.

“From the moment I got there, I was in character because he was so completely comfortable there. It was like being in Oz.”

The balance of self and role was murkier with Kaufman. The convention-breaking comedian took his Foreign Man to “Taxi” in the late ’70s, and later frequently performed as abusive lounge singer Tony Clifton. The character was even secretly passed on to others, though Kaufman maintained he was a real person.

“With Andy Kaufman, it was debatably schizophrenic,” says Rosenfield. “It was so thoroughly worked-out that one almost had the feeling that it was a different personality within a personality. You don’t know to what degree he was in control of what he was doing.”

Baron Cohen has thus far appeared in total command of both his character and his private life — which he’s successfully kept a mostly blank slate. It’s known, though, that the British comedian is an observant Jew who attended the University of Cambridge, where he wrote his thesis on Jewish involvement in the American civil rights movement, and he and his fiancee, actress Isla Fisher from “Wedding Crashers,” are planning a traditional Jewish wedding.

20th Century Fox, which is distributing “Borat,” has accommodated Baron Cohen’s subsuming himself into his character, while others involved (director Larry Charles, producer Jay Roach, actress Pamela Anderson) largely have remained mum on the film, most likely to play along.

Though “Borat” has received a great deal of publicity, Fox confessed last week that market research indicated the film wasn’t catching on. The studio decided to scale down this week’s opening to about 800 theaters, planning to expand to 2,200 theaters next weekend.

Still, Borat appears to be relishing his moment in the sun, angering people in Kazakhstan while he searches for — as his MySpace profile advertises — “Western girlies for chitchat and sexytime.”

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