Borat film trickery

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Borat film 'tricked' poor village actors
By BOJAN PANCEVSKI and CARMIOLA IONESCU, Mail on Sunday

When Sacha Baron Cohen wanted a village to represent the impoverished Kazakh home of his character Borat, he found the perfect place in Glod: a remote mountain outpost with no sewerage or running water and where locals eke out meagre livings peddling scrap iron or working patches of land.

But now the villagers of this tiny, close-knit community have angrily accused the comedian of exploiting them, after discovering his new blockbuster film portrays them as a backward group of rapists, abortionists and prostitutes, who happily engage in casual incest.

They claim film-makers lied to them about the true nature of the project, which they believed would be a documentary about their hardship, rather than a comedy mocking their poverty and isolation.

Villagers say they were paid just £3 each for this humiliation, for a film that took around £27million at the worldwide box office in its first week of release.

Now they are planning to scrape together whatever modest sums they can muster to sue Baron Cohen and fellow film-makers, claiming they never gave their consent to be so cruelly misrepresented.

Disabled Nicu Tudorache said: This is disgusting. They conned us into doing all these things and never told us anything about what was going on. They made us look like primitives, like uncivilised savages. Now they,re making millions but have only paid us 15 lei [around £3].

Cambridge-educated Baron Cohen filmed the opening scenes of the Borat movie in Glod - a village that is actually in Romania, rather than Kazakhstan, and whose name literally translates as 'mud', last summer.

Its 1,000 residents live in dilapidated huts in the shadow of the Carpathian mountains. Toilets are little more than sheltered holes in the ground and horses and donkeys are the only source of transport.

Just four villagers have permanent employment in the nearby towns of Pucioasa or Fieni, while the rest live off what little welfare benefits they get.

So when a Hollywood film crew descended on a nearby run-down motel last September, with their flashy cars and expensive equipment, locals thought their lowly community might finally be getting some of the investment it so desperately needs.

The crew was led by a man villagers describe as 'nice and friendly, if a bit weird and ugly', who they later learned was Baron Cohen. It is thought the producers chose the region because locals more closely resembled his comic creation than genuine Kazakhs.

The comedian insisted on travelling everywhere with bulky bodyguards, because, as one local said: 'He seemed to think there were crooks among us.'

…

Mr Tudorache, a deeply religious grandfather who lost his arm in an accident, was one of those who feels most humiliated. For one scene, a rubber sex toy in the shape of a fist was attached to the stump of his missing arm - but he had no idea what it was.

Only when The Mail on Sunday visited him did he find out. He said he was ashamed, confessing that he only agreed to be filmed because he hoped to top up his £70-a-month salary - although in the end he was paid just £3.

…

Many other unwitting victims of Baron Cohen's pranks have also spoken out against the way they were conned and - unsurprisingly - the rulers of Kazakhstan have long taken issue with the image Borat paints of their vast, oil-rich nation.

The residents of Glod only found out about the true nature of the film after seeing a Romanian TV report. Some thought it was an art project, others a documentary.

The Mail on Sunday showed them the cinema trailer - the first footage they had seen from the film. Many were on the brink of tears as they saw how they were portrayed.

Claudia Luca, who lives with her extended family in the house next to the one that served as Borat's home, said: 'We now realise they only came here because we are poorer than anyone else in this village. They never told us what they were doing but took advantage of our misfortune and poverty. They made us look like savages, why would anyone do that?'

…

Local councillor Nicolae Staicu helped the crew with their shooting, but he claims he was never told what sort of movie they were making, and that they failed to get a proper permit for filming.

…

Bogdan Moncea of Castel Film, the Bucharest-based production company that helped the filming in Romania, said the crew donated computers and TV sets to the local school and the villagers. But the locals have denied this.

Mr Staicu said: 'The school got some notebooks, but that was it. People are angry now, they feel cheated.'

It's a feeling Glod is used to. The village, like others in the Dambovita region of Romania, is populated mainly by gipsies who say they are discriminated against by the rest of the country.

…

It is small comfort that few, if any, of them will get to see the Borat film. Not a single villager we spoke to had ever been able to afford a trip to the nearest cinema, 20 miles away.

Perhaps that's the real reason why film-makers chose Glod in the first place.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... ge_id=1770

That's no way for the cousin of Simon Baron-Cohen to act.

But I would like to see that movie.

Tim

I assumed that they just made up a village.


But I also know another thing about Borat. It was not intended to be an honest depiction of a poor village. It was lampooning how Americans view foreigners.

It's even more of a farce that people are taking things seriously.


But it does bother me that it seems like they that they've been tricking a lot of people.

they will probably get promotion out of it for their country/place so shouldnt be so quick to sue.
Who cares if he made them look silly,it's a film-not real,people will automatically know that as its out in the cinema.
Sacha might be the non sensible cousin of simon but he does have a great way at annoying people by doing very little,liked his national anthem of kazakstan,don't think the americans he was singing it to liked being told their country was run by little girls.

I agree the film makes fun of Americans. Specifically normal, white Americans. The blacks, Jews and gays in the film are never humiliated, and are all portrayed sympathetically. This is part of the Borat agenda, in my opinion. I don’t think the fact that Sacha Baron-Cohen is Jewish is irrelevant in all this.
Watching the film, it’s not always easy to work out who’s in on the joke. But I am in little doubt that the viewer is supposed to come away from the film thinking that traditional, white America is dumb and a little deranged.

There’s a scene from Baron-Cohen’s TV programme that is quite illustrative. The viewer sees Borat in a “redneck” bar singing a song called “Throw the Jew down the well” while the clientele happily sing along. The viewer is supposed to sneer at these “racist” rednecks while laughing at Baron-Cohen’s satiricial genius. What the viewer doesn’t see is that Baron-Cohen’s been in there for 2 hours singing all sorts of nonsense, and that the audience can tell from his wig and false moustache he’s a comedian.
Oh, and the cowgirl in the film who falls off her horse at the Rodeo after Borat has murdered the Star Spangled Banner? She was a professional stuntwoman.

Of course, many people will come away from the film feeling sophisticated for recognising the anti-American “satire” and laughing at the Americans in the film rather than at the stereotypes of Slav peasants. The truth is he’s used both for laughs.
It’s interesting to note that Baron-Cohen’s three main comedy creations are all enemies of the Jews: a Slavic peasant (Borat), an Austrian (Bruno), and a British Pakistani (Ali G). Of course, he should be able to make jokes about whomever he likes. But let’s not pretend it’s clever.

Oh, and it was neat how Baron-Cohen tried to use the Iraq war to make a load of white Southerners look bad. Maybe he could try the same thing with his co-ethnics in the pro-war pro-Israel lobby like Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. That’d be a real barrel of laughs.

Last edited by codarac on 17 Nov 2006, 4:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I've seen it. I didn't expect to like it. What can I say? I don't get invited out very often.

Maybe I should have ignored the propaganda element, and just enjoyed the comedy moments:

Borat takes a dump in public
Borat washes his face in a toilet
Borat drinks from a river while his friend urinates in it
A fat guy rubs his arse in Borat's face

Etc.

That movie looks really stupid.