Even when the studio flies you up and puts you in a nice hotel, movie press conferences are usually incredibly dull. They largely consist of general questions and meaningless answers. If you’re lucky/unlucky, the foreign press will be there punctuating the conversation about story structure with inquiries into what color underwear stars are wearing or who they’re currently bedding. So, it’s all pretty boring.

Unless it’s performance art.

Enter Sacha Baron Cohen. Instead of appearing to answer bland questions about The Dictator, he arrived in character with a host of female body guards and proceeded to make brashly anti-semetic statements, call for fairer treatment of dictators, and to take at least one planted question about how glorious and wise he is. The fine folks at IndieWire got his introduction on video.

It’s not monumental, but history has been made. Minutes into the press conference, almost no one in the crowd looks asleep.