KEN DAVITIAN MAKES LAUGHTER FOR BENEFIT GRATEFUL MOVIEGOERS OF AMERICA
By Robert Abele
East Bay Express (California)
February 21, 2007 Wednesday
Old World Charm;
As we’ve seen from British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s guerrilla-style
comedy hit Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit
Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan one actor’s deadpan dedication to heavily
accented cultural naïvete in the face of unsuspecting victims can do
wonders. Actor Ken Davitian who played Borat’s bearded and oversize
film producer, confidant and combatant Azamat Bagatov, knows this well.
"I didn’t break character," says Davitian, 53 of his audition for
Borat. The breakdown called for a "frumpy Eastern European" man who
didn’t understand English. But instead of showing up as his needy
American bit-player self and then performing the role for a casting
camera, Davitian arrived a bewildered foreigner sporting baggy
threads, a gruff demeanor, and a parlance inspired by his Armenian
relatives. Outside the audition, amongst fellow actors he recognized
from the ethnic-part circuit, all dressed as themselves, he kept up the
act. "One of the guys came up and said, ‘You really want this part.’"
Inside Davitian didn’t even hand over a real resume. "I had a white
eight-by-ten that was folded in my jacket pocket," he says "I took
it out straightened the creases, and gave it to them, and you could
see in their eyes, ‘How did this guy get in?’ From what I understand,
they thought, ‘This is so sad. Let’s just go through with it a little
bit and ask him to leave.’"
But Davitian made Cohen laugh and afterward the Los Angeles native
brought out his regular voice and actual resume – a fifteen-year
Hollywood grinder’s menu of one-line cab drivers and shop owners named
Igor and Ramon an ER here and a Boston Legal there, a Vin Diesel movie,
and something called Frogtown II. (He got his SAG card for Albert
Brooks’ Real Life, but was cut out of the film.) A Curb Your Enthusiasm
audition years ago didn’t pan out, but Borat director Larry Charles,
a Curb executive producer, had a cosmic take on it for Davitian:
"He told me, ‘If you had gotten it, when you walked into this room
we would have known you were an actor.’"
Of course in a comedy that upends our notions of role-playing,
Davitian comes across as more than a mere actor or sidekick. With his
determined waddle, non-English dialogue (he responded in Armenian to
Cohen’s Hebrew) and bearish, floppy-suited countenance, his Azamat
is arguably the movie’s true center of Old World verisimilitude. We
know Cohen is a fake as he spotlights bigoted America, but unless
you’re a regular at Los Angeles’ The Dip – the delicious sandwich
joint Davitian owns and has used to pay the bills – why wouldn’t you
think that roly-poly tagalong was the genuine article?
Davitian a good-natured, gregarious sort in person, is certainly one
kind of reality: the struggling performer who juggled his dream with
the demands of raising a family (he and wife of thirty years, Ellen,
have two grown sons) until the breakthrough role came. When asked
about his reaction to the Borat juggernaut – controversy promotional
appearances, awards-season parties – he offers a Borscht Belt-timed
response that’s also achingly personal. "I have been preparing
for this for 53 years," he says. "I’m really thrilled. I’ve gotten
offers. For the first time I actually passed on a project, and I’ve
never passed. I’ve been the guy who would be shooting a commercial
in Fresno, drive to LA to shoot something there, and then go back
to Fresno, and the amount of money made would be nothing. But that’s
your job. And I want to work."
Okay but most actors outside the world of porn aren’t asked to flout
public decency laws, wrestle nude, and park their nuts on a costar’s
chin. Already a cinema classic – the homo-unerotic extreme version
of a Laurel & Hardy bit – Cohen and Davitian’s grapplefest inspired
a memorable Golden Globes acceptance speech from Cohen who thanked
Davitian for providing him a "rancid bubble" of trapped air with
which to stay alive.
But how did Davitian feel having to stare down genitalia himself?
"Thank you, thank you, thank you," he says, grateful to have his side
heard. Of his costar, he notes, "One, he had a very good mohel. And
two, that big black [censor] bar was a bit of an exaggeration."
–Boundary_(ID_EjzwZhzQmWL0Cd eCaGn3og)–