Posted on 11/21/2006 3:14:09 PM PST by fight_truth_decay
Although Sacha Baron Cohen's new blockbuster comedy, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, has received laughs from its American audiences, not everyone found the movie so funny--especially many of the film's actors. From humiliated University of South Carolina fraternity brothers to destitute citizens of a remote Romanian village, Cohen has made enemies across the globe. In fact, a few of the disgruntled people who appear in his film are now lining up to take legal action against Twentieth Century Fox, the studio releasing Cohen's movie.
At issue is the damage caused to the lives of unwitting participants in the film and even to groups of people stereotyped in the movie. Most of those who appear in Borat are not professional actors reading scripted lines. Rather, many allege they were told they were participating in a documentary and were encouraged to interact with a foreign "journalist." In reality, the journalist was Cohen portraying Borat, a peculiar and antagonistic Central Asian man, unaccustomed to American courtesies and customs. The situations Borat created often led to comedic and sometimes embarrassing results.
Fraternity Brothers Taking a Sober Stance
At one point in the film, three fraternity brothers from the University of South Carolina pick up a hitchhiking Borat. During the sequence, two of the young men, while apparently inebriated, make misogynistic and anti-semitic remarks. Soon after the film's opening, the young men took legal action, seeking to enjoin Cohen and his distributor Twentieth Century Fox from showing the movie.
In their complaint, the two men allege that the movie has caused them emotional distress along with injuring their reputation and standing in the community. Since the release of the film, both individuals have lost their jobs – one at a large corporation and the other an internship. According to the men, immediately prior to filming Cohen's film crew took them to a bar and encouraged them to drink. Once heavily intoxicated, the boys were asked to sign a release form.
In other words, the two men allege they did not have the legal capacity to contract. Under contract law, to be legally bound to a contract you sign, you must have the mental capacity to enter into that agreement. Any level of intoxication obviates the signor's clarity of thought and judgment and invalidates the contract.
The two men also allege that the production staff misrepresented the nature of the film and where it would be distributed. Put simply, the young men claim that they were told the "documentary" they were participating in would never air in the U.S. To make a claim of misrepresentation, one would have to demonstrate that they were intentionally told a statement that was blatantly false, with the intent to deceive them. They would also have had to prove that they somehow relied on the false statement and that they had suffered measurable damage as a result.
Thus, their attorneys will have to demonstrate that this statement was actually made, that the young men believed it, that it was false when it was told to them, and that it was said so as to purposefully deceive them into believing it would never air in the U.S. The fraternity brothers and their legal team will have to show that they would not normally behave in this manner, and that their employment termination, caused by their appearance in the film, constitutes a loss of money and income.
Fake Kazakh Journalist Might Face Real Rumanian Lawsuit
Borat's detractors are not only in the U.S. The villagers of Glod, Romania may also sue the movie's producers. Glod was the small village used as a stand-in for Borat's tiny village in Kazakhstan. The leaders of the town allege that the uneducated villagers were induced to perform crass acts unaware of their meaning or that their images would be used for a film. According to a spokesperson, the villagers believed the filmmakers were merely shooting a documentary. In addition, the villagers are alleging that the filmmakers did not pay them adequately for the humiliation they suffered or for the use of their village.
Alternatives To Legal Action
Redress comes in many forms, and some of Baron Cohen's "victims" have sought alternatives to traditional legal action to resolve their concerns.
After unwittingly booking Borat for her live news show, TV News Producer Dharma Arthur left her job at a local Jackson, Mississippi news station. Borat wreaked havoc on air, urgently telling the host and the viewers about his need to urinate and then proceeding to mention other sex acts.
Arthur claims Borat's appearance caused the station to lose faith in her abilities as a producer and forced her out. However, following a bought with depression over her major career mishap, Arthur found vindication and an opportunity to ameliorate the damage to her news career by documenting her negative experience in Newsweek magazine.
Sovereign nations might find it difficult to sue for slander, so the fictitious Borat's factual homeland, Kazakhstan, has taken a public relations approach to combating the negative depiction of their country. Kazakhstan's leaders have spoken out against the character of Borat and his film.
Starting in 2004, the press secretary for the Kazakh embassy launched a campaign to dispel each and every untruth spoken by Borat. In addition, Kazakh press secretary Roman Vassilenko reached out to The New Yorker and the Washington insider's weekly, The Hill in an effort to combat the negative stereotypes potentially created by Cohen's character. In addition, Kazakhstan's deputy foreign minister, Rakhat Aliyev has even gone so far as to extend a public invitation to Cohen to visit the large Central Asian country.
Even if legal action and publicity campaigns do not succeed in stopping Baron Cohen, at least one of his detractors has sent a strong message. After having appeared on Saturday Night Live as Borat, Baron Cohen, still in costume, went to a local bar and play a prank on an unsuspecting New Yorker. According to the report, Baron Cohen asked the man for his clothes so that he could perform a sexual act upon them. The man, un-amused, took great umbrage and attacked Baron Cohen.
There is no word yet if Cohen is seeking a legal remedy.
The article above represents the thoughts and opinions of the author and does not represent in any way the official position of LegalZoom.com Inc.
Probably, but they believe they were duped into exposing it to the world by someone making false claims and entering into possibly non-binding contracts due to impairment by alcohol.
Ahh, that's right. I figured as much given the end scene in Romania. Niiccee.
The interview with Alan Keyes was Niiccee!
Not as good as Da Ali G interview with Pat Buchanan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bfsaoWLjxY
You don't know that. They were set up and lied to.
(See: 'Girls Gone Wild' shirtlifter lawsuits)
I didn't imply any such relationship. You'll have to ask Mel Gibson about that sort of thing.
The Frat Boys were only set-up by their own stupidity.
The Ali G interview with James Baker is a riot too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXbNLkNhy1M
Cohen says doesn't like to discuss how he got people to appear on camera or take seriously Borat's preposterous questions. Revealing his tactics, he says, would be "a disaster, terrible for me."-- Forbes.com
35-year-old British comedian
Have you noticed if draped in "comedian status" there are "free passes" going around? Billy Crystal in black-face on Hurrican Katrina, for example; black comedians' use of the N word, X-rated sexual innuendoes rants of Bush by Whoopie at Kerry fundraiser, Micheal Richards' racist banter with a heckler.. if only Mel Gibson had been a comedian............ the Media and David Letterman would have been more forgiving.
Under contract law, to be legally bound to a contract you sign, you must have the mental capacity to enter into that agreement. Any level of intoxication obviates the signor's clarity of thought and judgment and invalidates the contract.-Legal.zoom story above.
Certainly there can be no rational ground for asserting that a man can have a moral obligation to obey a legal rule that does not exist, or is kept secret from him, or that came into existence only after he had acted, or was unintelligible, or was contradicted by another rule of the same system, or commanded the impossible, or changed every minute-- Legal Realism and the Social Contract
Fuller's Public Jurisprudence of Form, Private Jurisprudence of Substance
Yet another slander of alcohol when will it end?
I laughed my ass off in the movie.
Alcohol reveals too much of the heart at times. It almost never creates what is there.
What you say is true some of the time not all of the time.
I choose to give the immature college students the benefit of the doubt rather than the guy who brought down the bag of feces to give to the hostess of the dinner party.
Please provide me with evidence that alcohol makes people say things that they do not believe.
Take a look at any standard model/actor release form.....it is very explicit. There is always a 'hold harmless' clause.
The production company et al may just pay everyone off rather than go to court anyway....
And you are sure that was feces because....?
Loved how he sang it to the tune of the Star Spangled Banner. Hilarious.
That's funny. Did you see the movie?
So you choose to believe the guy who dropped his pants and attempted to take a dump in front of a New York business while the side walks were crowded.
I think you are saying that because the excrement in the bag may have been fake he is more trustworthy than the college students because they are from the South.
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