Villagers say ‘Borat’ star deceived them
Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, November 14, 2006
GLOD, Romania – The name of this remote Romanian village means “mud,” and that’s exactly what angry locals are throwing back 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 scruffy hamlet 85 miles northwest of Bucharest said Tuesday they were horrified and humiliated to learn their poverty and simple ways are ridiculed in the movie, which has raked in $67 million in just two weeks at box offices in the United States alone.
“We thought they came here to help us, not mock us,” said Dana Luca, 40, while sweeping a manure-stained street lined with shabby homes of crumbling brick and corrugated iron sheeting.
“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.”
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 today to map out a legal strategy against Cohen and “Borat” distributor 20th Century Fox. The film’s opening sequence showing Borat’s hometown in Kazakhstan was filmed in Glod.
Staicu accused the producers of paying locals just $3.30 to $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; they work 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.
