Much of Borat’s interestingness stemmed from Borat talking with regular people, who often ended up showing their true colors in the process. Most of the interactions played out like a good qualitative interview: Borat was the researcher getting people to spill their guts, in their own words, with well-timed priming. Borat was the true outsider, wanting to learn about the American way of life, and people obliged. All Borat had to do was to nudge them into the right direction, and people would reveal their deep racist, homophobic or antisemite feelings. Often, it didn’t even require much.

Brüno, on the other hand, is almost a case example of bad anthropology. The spotlight is almost always on him, never on the people he’s interviewing or interacting with. Brüno is flamboyant. He’s irritating. He doesn’t get people to open up, he pushes them and pushes them until they lose their temper and reveal something about themselves. And most of the time, the results were predictable and uninteresting. People were genuinely uneasy with him, just waiting to get out of the situation. Most of the time, I ended up feeling sorry for Brüno’s “victims”, unlike in Borat. Only a few episodes felt free-flowing and enlightening (the talk show and the baby pictures), the rest was just shock humor.

I definitely think Cohen can make another film like this (more makeup and a new character and people won’t know who it is), but he has to tone it down and give the spotlight back to the people he’s interviewing.

In the old days — like, until yesterday — movie studios judged the success of their big pictures by how much they grossed on the opening weekend. But in the age of Twitter, electronic word-of-mouth is immediate, as early moviegoers tweet their opinions on a film to millions of “followers.” Instant-messaging can make or break a film within 24 hours. Friday is the new weekend.

That appears to be the lesson from the studio estimates issued on July 13 for the weekend box office. Brüno, the Sacha Baron Cohen docu-comedy in which an Austrian fashion journalist shoves his flamboyant gayness in the faces and other body parts of unsuspecting Americans, won the weekend with $30.4 million, a bit above most industry expectations for an R-rated provocation whose star was unknown to the mass audience until his Borat became a surprise hit in 2006, earning more than $260 million at theaters worldwide on an $18 million budget. Yet Brüno’s box-office decline from Friday to Saturday indicates that the film’s brand of outrage was not the sort to please most moviegoers — and that their tut-tutting got around fast. Brüno could be the first movie defeated by the Twitter effect.

The Twitter effect might be a tad overstated. To me it’s more the “Facebook status effect” than anything, but since tweets are public it’s easier to measure buzz this way. I already speculated in the earlier post that Hollywood is going to battle this “Twitter effect” by banking on more sure things, like sequels and (comic) book adaptations. But I’m sure there’s another way, one that’s more dynamic and not too much on the nose. Perhaps film studios will scale down on mid-level film budgets (especially advertising) a bit and look for the new “Juno” time and time again? Maybe this new age will bring a new polarity of 200 million dollar superfilms and a huge selection of indies, that some make it big and most don’t?

Thanks to Jani for the tip.