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| ALI G INDAHOUSE | Search all of phase9.tv | |||
Movie Interview by Kris Griffiths PHASE9 meets up with director Mark Mylod, writer Dan Mazer, actor Martin Freeman and actress Kellie Bright. At this moment in time there isn’t really anyone in the UK who has not heard of the nation’s ‘Voice of Yoof’, but a lot of them don’t know much of Ali’s background and how he suddenly rose to fame. Here’s the story. Born in Staines Hospital, Alistair Graham grew up in and around Staines in the southern county of Berkshire. Now residing in West Staines with his Nan and long-term girlfriend, Julie, or Me Julie as she is better known, he is the leader of the West Staines Massive (not to be confused with the East Staines Massive). His right hand man and best friend is Ricky C with whom he co-founded his pirate radio station Drive By FM. Ali is also a resident DJ at The Crooked Billet pub, Iver Heath, where he DJs every Sunday, supplementing his income by signing on the dole and dealing. It was at the Crooked Billet that Ali was spotted by TV executives and offered his first big break as youth correspondent on THE 11 O’CLOCK SHOW - a crap topical ‘comedy’ programme that instantly turned him into a national phenomenon. Only a year later Channel 4 gave him his own award-winning series DA ALI G SHOW, and the new millennium saw him break into the music industry following an invitation from Madonna to star in her video. Soon afterwards Ali presented an MTV Europe Award in Stockholm and was invited back to host the whole awards ceremony in Frankfurt, having proved such a success hosting the Staines and Egham News ‘Search For A Star’. ALI G INDAHOUSE, for which he has recorded a duet with Shaggy, marks Ali’s big screen debut. The film was written by the man in Ali G’s shoes, Cambridge graduate Sacha Baron Cohen, and the character’s co-creator Dan Mazer. Discussing the script’s initial concept Mazer says, “the fact is we were very lucky insofar as we had a character that we’d built up a whole identity for, a history for, who is funny in his own right. You can place him in any number of situations and know that funny stuff will happen.” However, adds Mazer, “everything we’d done before had been completely real and in real situations and that’s how it worked best. We had this template of a character who had his own idiosyncrasies and his own identity in this world of Staines, and had to transfer this onto the big screen creating a film that would be funny in its own right.” With that in mind, when working on the script Cohen and Mazer had to place Ali into a fictitious world that would maximise comic effect. “It’s classic fish out of water,” says Mazer on the idea behind the political setting and narrative of the film, “we knew that Ali existed best when interviewing pompous, self-righteous individuals and worked best against a framework of seriousness. Therefore we thought ‘well what is the most serious and austere surrounding in which we can place him?’ and that’s the world of politics, so the two naturally fit.” Continued on page 2 |
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