Sacha Baron Cohen and Ben Stiller’s Oscar Skit Pulled

(HMG) – You know when you ask Sacha Baron Cohen alter ego to characters like ‘Borat’ and ‘Bruno’ to perform you had better be prepared for anything.  As proof of that you may recall at the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, a bare-buttocked Baron Cohen decked out in full ‘Bruno’ garb, plummeted from the ceiling on a wire, landing crotch-first in the face of rapper Eminem.

So after Cohen was announced as an Oscar presenter by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and teamed with Ben Stiller to do a skit, the Academy has gotten very cold feet.  Why? Because it apparently contained jokes directed at ‘Avatar’ director James Cameron, and the show’s producers didn’t want to risk having the man behind the biggest movie ever, getting insulted and walking out of the live show.  An insider familiar with the Oscar telecast tells New York Magazine’s Vulture blog, the skit was nixed yesterday by show producer Bill Mechanic, because Baron Cohen planned to appear onstage as a blue-skinned, female Na’vi, with Stiller translating “her” interplanetary speech. As the skit went on, though, it would become clear that Stiller wasn’t translating properly, because Cohen would grow ever more upset. At its climax, an infuriated Baron Cohen would pull open “her” evening gown to reveal that s/he was pregnant, knocked up with Cameron’s love child, and would go on to confront her baby daddy as if s/he were on Jerry Springer.

“Let’s just say that Cameron isn’t known to be, shall we say, ‘self-deprecating,’” a Vulture insider explained.