New Legal Strategies Raise the Stakes in Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno

A special sneak preview of 3 scenes from Sacha Baron Cohen's latest film Bruno was held at the SXSW Film Festival and Conference in Austin, Texas last week. Fantastic Fest sponsored the screening. The film will not be released until July so this was a highly anticipated screening. Two of the scenes were better than anything in Borat; the remaining scene was quite good but not as powerful as the others.

One thing that is apparent from the footage is that Sacha Baron Cohen has "upped" his game by developing more elaborate setups than those featured in Borat. As reported by The Smoking Gun, these new pranks required a more evolved legal strategy. Some, but not all, of the pranks were setup by approaching interviewees to appear in a German television documentary. In order to bolster the legtimacy of the "documentary," the Bruno film production set up four "shell companies" called Amesbury Chase, Chromium Films, Cold Stream Productions, and Coral Blue Productions. Each company uses the same Los Angeles mailbox drop, phone number and similar web sites hosted by the same company.

The article from The Smoking Gun suggests that each company was not only setup as a website but as an actual legal entity. A search of filings with the California Secretary of State shows a filing for Cold Stream Productions, LLC on November 13, 2006. The business address is listed as 1800 Century Park East, 10th Floor in Los Angeles, California. This is an office park. The registered agent is Eisner, Frank and Kahan, which IMDB lists as the production legal team.

There are no Secretary of State filings for the other companies. However, a search of Los Angeles County records show the following fictious name filings:

Amesbury Chase Productions, filed on 10/29/2007
Chromium Films, filed on 6/12/2007
Coral Blue Productions, filed on 10/29/2007
Cold Stream Productions LLC, filed on 5/14/2007
Cold Stream Productions LLC, filed on 9/28/2007

It would be very useful to acquire the fictious name statements to see examine other elements of this puzzle. The Smoking Gun presumably has them but perhaps they do not. Look for a follow up post in the near future.