Now Romanians Say ‘Borat’ Misled Them
Nov 14, 9:08 AM (ET)
By WILLIAM J. KOLE
GLOD, Romania (AP) – The name of this remote Romanian village means “mud,” and that’s exactly what angry locals are throwing at comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.
Cohen used Glod’s Gypsies as stand-ins for Kazakhs in his runaway hit movie, “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” Now offended villagers are threatening to sue the film’s producers for paying them a pittance to put farm animals in their homes and perform other crude antics.
Residents and local officials in the hardscrabble hamlet 85 miles northwest of Bucharest said Tuesday they were horrified and humiliated to learn their abject poverty and simple ways were ridiculed for a movie now raking in millions at box offices worldwide.
“We thought they came here to help us – not mock us,” said Dana Luca, 40, sweeping a manure-stained street lined with shabby homes of crumbling brick and corrugated iron sheeting.
You have got to be kidding me? They have them put a cow in their house, give five year-old children guns to play with, strap a rubber fist to a guy’s stump, put huge silicone breasts on a 75 year-old and say that she’s 47, but you had no idea this wasn’t a true documentary?
“We haven’t got anything here. We haven’t got running water. We can’t even bathe,” she said. “We are poor people, but we are still people.”
Yes, yes you are. You are people willing to put a cow in your house for $3 to $5 bucks.
Nicolae Staicu, leader of the 1,670 Gypsies, or Roma, who eke out a living in one of the most impoverished corners of Romania, said he and other officials would meet with a public ombudsman on Wednesday to map out a legal strategy against Cohen and “Borat” distributor 20th Century Fox.
Staicu accused the producers of paying locals just $3.30-$5.50, misleading the village into thinking the movie would be a documentary, refusing to sign proper filming contracts and enticing easily exploited peasants into performing crass acts.
Only five villagers have jobs at a nearby sanatorium and a stone quarry, Staicu said. The rest weave baskets, grow apples, pears and plums, gather mushrooms in the dense Carpathian Mountain forests rising above the town, or raise a few scrawny chickens.
With no gas heating or indoor plumbing, most keep warm with wood stoves and drink from wells. Horse-drawn carts far outnumber automobiles on unpaved, badly potholed roads, and mangy stray dogs growl and snap at strangers. Acrid fires smolder in trash piles on the outskirts of the village, and children – their clothing worn and torn – play in yards littered with stumps, scrap metal and other bric-a-brac.
“These people are poor and they were tricked by people more intelligent than us,” he said. “They took one of our 75-year-old ladies, put huge silicone breasts on her and said she was 47. Another man they filmed to look like the poorest person in the world, and one of our men who is missing an arm had a plastic sex toy taped to his stump.”
Poor = too stupid to know that when they’re asked to put a cow in their house maybe they’re being mocked for a little cash? If that’s the case then who is doing the suing? And the person/people that are doing the suing, how much money are they expecting for this “selfless act” of defending the poor?
“We are suing because they were not truthful,” added Staicu, who said he saw parts of “Borat” and was disgusted.
When they told you that it was a documentary and then asked to put a cow in your house, would that be truthful in that situation? I’m just asking because truth seems to be relative the way that it’s being used here.
“They did not film reality,” he said. “We’ve really had enough of this.”
So for the documentary, kindergartens with automatic weapons in their hands – that would be reality?
Neither Cohen’s agent in London nor 20th Century Fox’s offices in Los Angeles immediately returned phone messages Tuesday from The Associated Press.
The mood in Glod, meanwhile, was tense and volatile, with crowds of angry, shouting villagers repeatedly gathering around reporters.
One man was seen slapping his sister, who had appeared in the film, and slamming the gate to his ramshackle home shut to keep her from being interviewed. At another point, a resident threatened news photographers with a stick, and another pelted their car with rocks.
People in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, where the mustachioed Cohen’s character hails from as a TV journalist on an adventure across America, also have decried how they are depicted in the film, whose opening scenes were shot in Glod.
In my opinion, the movie was less about the depiction of people from Kazakhstan and more of a slam against people in the US with such little knowledge of the outside world and a low regard for other races, foreigners and their cultures. For example, the man at the rodeo that told Borat to shave his mustache because it made him look Muslim. The man said that if Borat did this he could maybe pass as an Italian. The way the man said this insinuates that Italians are also beneath this man but better than a Muslim, who by the way wear a full beard and mustache. This man doesn’t even know much about the group he hates.
Then there is the diner party, oh that was lovely. After a few oddities in the form of blunt speech Borat excuses himself and while he’s away the hostess utters something along the lines of, “There are some differences, but I don’t think it would take too long before he could become American”. As if being an American is an improvement to a person because all others are just uncivilized. She almost eats her words when Borat comes down the stairs and asks where to deposit the shit he was holding in a hanky, but she’s still tolerant until Borat introduces his black friend. I guess no matter where a person is born only Caucasians can become American in their eyes.
Two members of a fraternity at a South Carolina university who appear making drunken, insulting comments about women and minorities also are suing 20th Century Fox and three production companies, claiming the crew liquored them up in a bar before filming and told them the movie would not be shown in the United States.
And I suppose Borat must have forced the alcohol down their throat some how? He must have held them at gun point to get them that drunk. Odd, they didn’t seem drunk in the beginning scenes. And what is this about being told it wouldn’t be shown in the US? Does that make a difference? It’s only ok to show your true colors as long as your fellow countrymen don’t find out?
Not everyone in Glod is upset. Sorina Luca, 25, excitedly described how she was given $3.30 to bring a pig into her home and let the producers put a toy rifle into the hands of her 5-year-old daughter for one scene.
“I really liked it,” she said. “We are poor and miserable. Nothing ever happens here.”
But a 23-year-old woman who gave her name only as Irina said she felt bewildered and dismayed that Glod’s poverty was reduced to a parody.
The smash success of “Borat,” she said, just rubbed salt in Glod’s collective wounds.
The film remained the No. 1 weekend draw at U.S. movie theaters for a second week, grossing $28.3 million, according to the latest figures released Monday.
“They made us put a cow in our living room, and they made it defecate and urinate in the house. Everyone’s angry because they didn’t pay them the way they should have,” she said.
You had no choice in the matter? at all? It’s YOUR HOUSE! Not getting your fair cut I can understand, but don’t pretend you aren’t suing just because the movie brought in huge amounts of money – even though I’m guessing you agreed to an amount before the cow came in the house. If my assumptions aren’t the case then that is a different story.
“They’re making a lot of money – but they’ve made us a laughing stock.”
Not really. I obviously can’t speak for all of the people in movie audiences across the US, but I was laughing at what Borat was saying, not the conditions under which some people actually endure day to day.
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