Baron Cohen MTV landing was staged, writer says

Actor Sacha Baron Cohen's outrageous bare buttock landing in Eminem's face at the MTV Movie Awards was a rehearsed stunt, according to one of the show's writers.

And another report on Tuesday suggested the Detroit rapper wasn't the first choice target of the British provocateur to promote his upcoming movie "Bruno."

The victim was to have been celebrity heiress Paris Hilton but she declined, Life & Style magazine said on its website.

The Eminem incident quickly became the most talked about highlight of a live two-hour television show that pushed the boundaries of taste and language.

Baron Cohen, clad in white feather wings and a jockstrap, swept from the air on a harness and landed face down in the lap of Eminem, who was wearing a microphone and sitting in the audience. On TV, the rapper was then shown leaving the building, in what MTV said was "a heated rage."

But writer Scott Aukerman, who worked with the show's presenter Andy Samberg, wrote in a blog posting on Monday that the "the Bruno/Eminem incident was staged."

"That's all anyone wants to talk about, so let's get it out of the way. They rehearsed it at dress (rehearsal) and yes, it went as far as it did on the live show then," Aukerman wrote. The posting has since been removed.

MTV has declined to comment and both Cohen, who plays a gay Austrian fashionista in his July movie "Bruno," and Eminem, who released an album last month, have remained silent.

The MTV Movie Awards show drew a bumper 5.3 million viewers -- the largest audience for the annual event since 2004. MTV said the Bruno/Eminem clip was streamed more than 800,000 times on the MTV.com website in the 24 hours after Sunday's show.