John Hockenberry for The Takeaway: Joining us now is Alfons Haider, an Austrian TV host of the show “Strictly Come Dancing,” it’s the number one television show in Austria. And, now, Alfons, you’ve been described as the person Sacha Baron Cohen’s character is actually based on?

Alfons Haider: Hi, John. Yes, I don’t know why. I mean, I denied that since the first time I heard that six weeks ago. It’s impossible that this is me. I’m Austrian, I’m male, I’m a TV host and I’m openly gay, but that’s all. There’s nothing else in comparison. It’s fictional. But in the media, when someone says that’s not true everyone thinks, ‘Yeah, that has to be true.’ But I think this movie is going to be important because he has a clever way, a brutal clever way, to show homophobia. He does it in a very brutal way and I think this film is not offending Austians of my country. A few Nazi jokes, yes, OK, but we’ve got humor enough to laugh at that.

John Hockenberry: Alright, Alfons Haider you’re on the line from Poerpaschasc, Austria?

Alfons Haider: Poerpaschasc. Yes, it’s Corinthia. It’s a little state of Austria, and I’m preparing a big television show there tomorrow for Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

John Hockenberry: Stay with us from Poerpaschasc in Austria. In the studio with me is Rashad Robinson, senior director of media programs for GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Good morning to you Rashad.

Rashad Robinson: Good morning.

John Hockenberry: Now, a movie like “Bruno” comes out and you can hear the reactions. Some people say, ‘Oh my god, he’s so over the line,’ but others saying, ‘Oh, relax it’s just humor, don’t be so politically correct.’ Where do you fall here and where do you find lines in Sacha Baron Cohen’s stuff?

Rashad Robinson: It was incredibly tough. We were invited by Universal to come see the movie back in April.

John Hockenberry: Really?

Rashad Robinson: Yes.

John Hockenberry: They invited you? They must’ve been worried.

Rashad Robinson: They were a little worried, but they also thought that they had some pieces that were good as well and exposed homophobia, which was their intent, and which is their intent. And I think judging this movie as a single movie is incredibly tough. It really is about 80-some-odd minutes of individual sketches. Some of which hit their mark and are satirically on point and some of which miss their mark in really big ways and hit the community instead, in ways that feel antithetical to the intentions of the filmmakers.

John Hockenberry: Do you think a movie like this says it’s OK to make fun of gays? Or a movie like this says maybe I should learn more about my neighbors who happen to be gay?

Rashad Robinson: That’s the tough thing. I think that you can make a movie in Hollywood and it can mean one thing in Hollywood and New York and a different thing in Little Rock and Birmingham.

John Hockenberry: Or in Austria.

Rashad Robinson: Or in Austria. And I think that the challenge for us here is…when I first saw the Bruno character on the Ali G show on HBO some years back, I felt like watching it at 10:00 on HBO that we were in on the joke as the community. Now I feel like we are the joke by looking at how they tried to translate this movie.

John Hockenberry: Finish your though, I want to hear Alfons’ thought.

Rashad Robinson: As someone who has seen the movie, Alfons, the full movie, I can say that how they’ve translated this movie into a feature length movie that’s going to open July 10 for an American audience all across the country in many places where gay people are still not visible, in 30 states you can still lose your job simply for being gay, do we really think a bunch of crude jokes are going to elevate the conversation around homophobia?

John Hockenberry: Go ahead, Alfons.

Alfons Haider: I completely disagree. I completely disagree. First of all, this movie is, I saw it too, I’m also gay, and I’m also openly gay, and I’m also in a country where it’s really difficult to be gay still because we’re Catholic, but this movie has shown here in Europe at least we can talk about the whole issue again. People go out on the streets and people discuss again. We have to have more humor. I’m really sorry I don’t agree with you. We have to have more humor and we have to laugh at it, at the way we live and the way we want to be. And he’s not against homosexuals. He’s showing homophobia. Excuse me, but if there’s stupid people enough in the U.S. who leave the theater and think gays are like that, then you can’t help them anyway.

John Hockenberry: Rashad?

Rashad Robinson: I appreciate Alfons’ comments and I think that does illustrate an important point that we had that there’s something lost in translation here across the country. People are going to feel differently in different parts of the country. Our concern is not about the homophobes who go into the theater and laugh at gay people before and laugh at them after. Ours are…I saw the movie in a focus group, big focus group setting where they took people off the street, and I sat behind a group of 17- to 18-year-old males, and I watched them as they were laughing not at the expose of homophobia, but laughing at the jokes that were not really about exposing homophobia.

John Hockenberry: We just got an e-mail from someone named Spence who says GLAAD should take care of important business instead of going after easy stupid targets like Bruno. What do you think of that?

Rashad Robinson: Well we are taking care of important topics. What I will say is our concern in this movie is not rooted in a lack of appreciation for satire or comedy. I’ve sent talented staff all over the country to help communities deal with hate violence or to work with communities as they’re fighting back anti-gay ballot measures and to work with the media. We understand that words and images matter and that’s why we’re here.

John Hockenberry: Alfons, it seems like part of what’s going on in this movie is that it may be controversial to make fun of gays in the United States, but it is totally fine to make fun of Germans.

Alfons Haider: I don’t care. I think we should see it as a different thing. It’s a fiction. It’s a comedy. It’s not a documentary. We have to see it like that. Again, as long as people talk about it, and with this movie the whole world talks about the gay issue again. I agree, there’s one point, I’m disappointed because I think Sacha Cohen is a clever man. I really thought at the end of the film he would turn around in one way and say, ‘Listen, I’m Sacha Cohen and I like you guys. This is just a fiction and we’re just showing you.’

Rashad Robinson: I think that’s an important point. The movie is not just to expose homophobia, right? You don’t release a movie, Universal doesn’t release a big budget hit on July 10 just to have a thought piece. They’re also trying to make a lot of money. We asked Sacha Baron Cohen, we asked the studio to put a piece at the end to speak directly to tolerance.

John Hockenberry: And they refused?

Rashad Robinson: Yes, they refused.

John Hockenberry: But they did take some scenes out that you asked to be taken out.

Rashad Robinson: They did not take scenes out. They took a couple of references out, but they did not take out scenes.

John Hockenberry: Bruno opens today. The conversation will certainly continue on our website, as we’ve had it in the last segment here on The Takeaway.