arely a year after Sacha Baron Cohen’s infamous reality-comedy Borat turned into a cultural phenomenon, the British export is back at work attacking middle-American values. As soon as the unexpected sacks of Borat cash started piling into the 20th Century Fox offices, Cohen signed a huge deal with the Universal Studios for his next venture into film. The comedian elected to create a feature dedicated to another one of his stock guerrilla comedy characters: Bruno. Cohen has been performing as Bruno for years on Da Ali G Show. In fact, it is the last character from that television series to star in a film (Ali G made a jump to the big screen with Ali G Indahouse in 2002). After this project, Sacha will finally be forced to create a new character.

For anyone who missed Cohen’s brilliant HBO series Da Ali G Show, Bruno is a flamboyant and fictional reporter for Austrian Gay TV who interacts with real people. If Borat is a character designed to expose the underlying racial prejudices of his interview subjects, then Bruno is designed to expose their homophobia. While people are generally willing to be patient with Borat, Cohen’s interview victims with Bruno are generally angry and aggressive. If there was ever any doubt that a great deal of America is still uncomfortable with homosexuality, then simply viewing a few episodes of Da Ali G Show will quickly expose the truth.

Since the initial announcement that Bruno would be coming to the big screen, Universal has been extremely careful about revealing production details to the public. Given that Cohen’s style of comedy only works if his interview subjects are convinced that his characters are real people, revealing too much information about the movie would ruin the production. It wasn’t even clear when shooting would begin, but recent reports in local newspapers and public news broadcasts have indicated that the movie is currently being shot in Kansas.