Borat Movie Business Too Slick for Villagers

So imagine you lived in a small eastern European village and a film crew from Hollywood came and said they wanted to make a movie and feature your home in it. Now imagine that your village is kind of backwards in comparison to the industrial world. There is cable TV to be found but there is no running water. These people who are shooting the movie offer you three dollars to appear in the film. All sounds pretty fantastic doesn't it? Not really.

Apparently there is a dispute going on between the makers of Sacha Baron Cohen's hit comedy Borat and the residents of a small village that was used to represent the main character's home of Kazakhstan.

According to the production company, they showed up in the town of Glod which lies about 85 miles north west of Bucharest to shoot the film. It is a small town where the women are still encouraged to abandon education, get married, have babies and maybe work in the family business, if there is one. It is a poor village where the quality of life, as you can imagine isn't the greatest. The producers of the film loved the location and though it would do well to depict the backwards fictional village.

For those of you who have seen the film, Borat split opinions of many who watched it. Many people thought it was hysterical, others either didn't like it or thought it was offensive. It definitely upset the people who actually lived in Glod because of how they were depicted. The movie's producers insist that they were always clear with everyone as to what the film was going to be about and that they all signed waivers and agreements regarding their three dollar payments. Regardless of what you thought about the film, it ended up grossing nearly one hundred and fifty million dollars.

The people in the village claim that they were told Borat was going to be a documentary and that some of them were even interviewed and filmed showing what they do and discussing aspects of the village. Instead, they claim they were depicted as primitive and criminals. The production company disputes this of course and claim it was always made clear to them what Borat was about and everybody who participated was clear that it was a fictional movie, signed releases and received their three dollars.

The people of the town have since been convinced by two lawyers, one from Germany and one from the U.S., to sue Hollywood for the making of Borat and how things unfolded. They have been made to believe that they could earn as much as thirty million dollars from the suit.

I don't know what people think one way or the other on this issue. What seems obvious is that there was definitely some kind of misunderstanding. Or, what seems obvious, is that somebody has once again found a way to make some money at the expense of somebody else. It is obvious in a case like this, that somebody on one side of the equation is taking advantage of somebody else. I'm not going to say who it is. Eventually, with most cases like this, the story will disappear, an undisclosed settlement will be reached and the movie will remain for all time to be enjoyed by generations to come. It's unfortunate that for the making of a little comedy, there has to be so much greed.

Anyway, in my humble opinion the film had it's funny moments but overall it was just OK. I would understand the villagers being upset if they had spent their hard earned money to go see the film and were disappointed. In such a case, the lawsuit would actually make sense.