7 Movie Scenes That Could ONLY Be Done On The First Take

3. Crashing Pence's Party (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm)

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Amazon Studios

The two Borat movies contain some truly outrageous sequences, such as the naked hotel fight in the first film, or the moon blood dance in the second.

While these scenes would still be quite funny if they were filmed like a normal comedy movie, what takes the humour up a notch is the fact that they're shot like a documentary, with handheld camera movements, shakiness, and the bemused extras in the scene often looking straight down the lens.

But with certain moments in these movies, this documentary approach isn't just a stylistic choice: leading man Sacha Baron Cohen actually films some of his crazy comedy stunts for real, with real, unwitting people, in real environments.

For example, take the Mike Pence scene in 2020's Oscar-nominated Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, in which Borat - costumed to look like former President Donald Trump - crashes the Conservative Political Action Conference and interrupts Pence's speech, to the frustration of the attending crowd.

While this scene could probably have been pulled off in a less effective way using Hollywood trickery - green screen, CGI, body doubles, etc. - Baron Cohen actually did it for real, meaning that he had to get it right on the very first take.

After performing the stunt, Baron Cohen was escorted from the building by security, and they obviously wouldn't have let him back in for another go!

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Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!