For Make Glorious Fun Of Eurovision Song Contest

I hadn’t bothered writing about Eurovision (this year’s winner was Serbia, watch here), a] because it’s been and gone and b] because Martin’s already done the political aspects But via Go Fug Yourself comes the news that the people behind Sasha Baron Cohen’s Borat film are to make Eurovision, The Movie:

“Borat” screenwriter Dan Mazer and History Boys producer Damian Jones have struck a deal with Working Title Films to make a comedy movie about the Eurovision Song Contest. Variety says the idea for Eurovision: The Movie was originated by Mazer and Jones, who will produce with Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner for Working Title.

OMFG, that I have to see.

Or do I? Do we really want to share Eurovision with the world, by which I mean America?

At the moment Eurovision has cult status in the US. GFY is American and Eurovision-crazy, and really, I sympathise; where else would you find such a glorious admixture of extreme camp, nationalistic fervour and political bloc voting? But I hope their campaign to bring Eurovision to US tv doesn’t gain any traction:

[…]

Just because we’re not invited to the party — just because we’re cursed with geographic undesirability — doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be allowed to press our flushed, thrilled faces against the window and gawk at the delicious theatrical, colorful, cross-dressing antics happening inside. Why, this year alone, the semi-finals featured sword-wielding backup dancers, male nudity, a rock opera called “Vampires are Alive,” and a man who started chucking his own underpants around the stage. And while many of us simply call that “Tuesday,” there are still loads of people for whom this is a glorious, intriguing novelty.

[…]

Clearly, we are missing out on this batshit marvel. CLEARLY, I need to be tireless with my campaign to bring Eurovision to our cable airwaves. It’s a giant, boozy orgy of camp — not to be confused with Orgy Camp, which is an entirely different kind of mischief — and I feel deprived that I can’t do more than view pictures or study grainy, stilted Internet video on my laptop.

So join me in my crusade, which so far consists entirely of wishing really, really hard that somebody in a position to make this dream come true would read either my blog or my mind.

While I understand the yearning of some USAnians to be allowed to view this annual sequined extravaganza, this war by other means, I hope US tv doesn’t pick it up, because that means they’ll want to join in. Please, please, please don’t let them ever join in. The bloc voting’s bad enough already.

Here’s a graphic from Waffle explaining how the Eurovision voting works:

If the USAnians joined in, we’d lose Terry Wogan and his increasingly pissed snark and gain, I dunno, Paula Abdul or someone equally vile. It would be dismal. Not only that, I think they’d misinterpret the spirit of the thing and enter a decent song, which would rather miss the point and worse still might even win.

So reluctantly, although I’d love to see what the Borat people make of Eurovision, I hope the movie doesn’t get made, or if it does it only gets an .eu release (using ‘Europe’ in its widest, most Eurovisual sense, as including Israel and Turkey).

Let USAnians boggle from afar at Europe’s greatest-ever cultural achievement and gnash their teeth in impotent envy. Eurovision is ours!