Those frat boys who are suing the Borat blockbuster, claiming they were duped into getting super drunk and expressing a return to the days of slavery, are now not alone. Seems an entire village is gathering its torches torts and storming the film’s production company with lawsuits. Residents of the Romanian town of Glod (translation: Mud) claim the film portrayed them as rapists, prostitutes, abortionists, perverts, and idiots. Borat‘s producers chose poverty-stricken Glod, which has no sewer system or running water, to represent Borat’s home because the Glod people look more like Sacha Baron Cohen’s Kazakh character than do actual Kazakhs. Disabled Nicu Tudorache (pictured), who appears in the movie, says, “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 uncivilized savages. Now they’re making millions but have only paid us 15 lei [around $5].”
While the rest of the crew based themselves in the [local] motel, Baron Cohen stayed in a hotel in Sinaia, a nearby ski resort a world away from Glod’s grinding poverty. He would come to the village every morning to do “weird things,” such as bringing animals inside the run-down homes, or have the village children filmed holding weapons. 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.
Says he. (Full story)