Borat turns 'Abbie' normal

By Stone Martindale Dec 30, 2007, 17:41 GMT

Sacha Baron Cohen - London, England © Solarpix / Photorazzi

Borat, Bruno, Ali G and other farcical incantations of over-the-top fictitious media darlings will be laid to rest as new father, Sacha Baron Cohen, tries on a dramatic role that may alter his career trajectory.

Steven Spielberg has asked Cohen to portray the famous hippie opponent of the Vietnam war, Abbie Hoffman.

The Times Online reports that "The Trial of the Chicago Seven," Sacha Baron Cohen will be cast as Hoffman, a figure from the 1960s counterculture who used a series of joke campaigns against the war.

Baron Cohen, 36, hit paydirt worldwide as the Kaakhstani reporter, Borat in "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan."

This was after he had reached a modicum of success in the U.S. on HBO with his Ali G show, after he was already an established star in his native Britain.

Borat has been put out to pasture.  Bruno won't be far behind.

The Times Online categorized the new Spielberg project being akin to Munich, the director’s somber exploration of the morality of political assassination, based on the 1972 terrorist attack on the Olympic Games.

"The Trial of the Chicago Seven" premise follows protesters who disrupted the 1968 Democrat party convention with an anti-Vietnam-war “carnival” that turned nasty. That convention became a violent staging for massive protests and police response that was widely criticized by observers during the most disruptive year in American history, it was the bloodiest year for American loss of life in Vietnam as well.

After the clashes, Hoffman was blamed.

Hoffman went on to become an unpredictable celebrity who, later diagnosed with a bipolar disorder, and killed himself in 1989.

Baron Cohen has much in common with Hoffman, both were denizens of prestigious college campuses and both skilled in the art of pranks and subversive humor.