Borat

Borat is a 2006 mockumentary comedy film directed by Larry Charles and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The movie was written and produced by English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. He also plays the title character, Borat Sagdiyev, a fictitious Kazakh journalist traveling through the United States recording real-life interactions with Americans. Much of the movie features unscripted vignettes of Borat interviewing and interacting with Americans, who believe he is a foreigner with little or no understanding of American customs. It is the second of three films built around Baron Cohen's characters from Da Ali G Show (2002–2004). Ali G Indahouse (2002) featured a cameo by Borat, and the third film, Brüno, was released in 2009.

Plot
Borat Sagdiyev is a TV reporter of a popular show in Kazakhstan as Kazakhstan's sixth most famous man and a leading journalist. He is sent from his home to America by his government to make a documentary about American society and culture. Borat takes a course in New York City to understand American humor. While watching Baywatch on TV, Borat discovers how beautiful their women are in the form of C. J. Parker, who was played by actress Pamela Anderson who hails from Malibu, California. He decides to go on a cross-country road trip to California in a quest to make her his wife and take her back to his country. On his journey Borat and his producer encounter a country full of strange and wonderful Americans, real people in real chaotic situations with hysterical consequences.

Trivia
When Sacha Baron Cohen speaks Kazakh it is mostly Hebrew disguised by a heavy fake Eastern European accent. The Hebrew is quite understandable and contains many in-jokes. Baron Cohen admitted this in a rare "out of character" radio interview on National Public Radio in the USA. This film broke Fahrenheit 9/11's record for the biggest box office opening weekend ever for any film that opened in fewer than a thousand theaters. The police were called on Sacha Baron Cohen 92 times during the production of this film. The suit Sacha Baron Cohen wears when playing Borat has deliberately never been cleaned. Original director Todd Phillips left the production after shooting the rodeo/"Star Spangled Banner" scene, citing "creative differences". The A in "BORAT" on the DVD cover is actually the letter D in the Cyrillic alphabet. Also on the inside DVD cover, the R in "BORAT" is backwards, which is actually the character "Ya" in Cyrillic. The character of "Borat" was heavily criticized by the Kazakh Government, "being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is incompatible with the ethics and civilized behavior of Kazakhstan's people". Sacha Baron Cohen aka "Borat" gave a faked press conference at the White House gates on September 29, 2006, just one day before an official visit of Kazakhstan's president. The Kazakh government hired two Western public relations firms to counter Borat's claims, running a four-page advertisement in The New York Times implicitly rebutting many of the claims made by Borat. Kazahkstan has since changed their strategy by playing along, going so far as inviting Borat to visit Kazahkstan. The European Center for Antiziganism Research, which works against negative attitudes against Roma and Sinti people, accused the producers of defamation and inciting violence against the ethnic group. Thus, it filed a complaint with prosecutors in Germany (October 2006). Borat is based on a Russian doctor Sacha Baron Cohen once met. He said the doctor was completely hilarious, but it was unintentional. Most of the footage from the Kazakh national anthem segment at the end of the film is made up of 1980's era Estonian TV commercials. It also features a number of political figures, the current president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev among them. Johnny Depp, George Clooney and Steve Martin, all of whom are huge fans of Sacha Baron Cohen, contacted him about having a cameo in the movie. But Baron Cohen refused because it would have ruined some of the gags if they knew what was going on. The Region 1 and 2 DVDs are made to look like pirated versions of the film. They come on "Demorez" brand discs with the slogan: "Is life? No. Demorez.". The "Demorez" fake brand and slogan are meant to be spoofs of the real-life "Memorex" blank recordable DVDs, whose slogan was "Is it live? No, it's Memorex." Rupert Murdoch announced in early February 2007 that Sacha Baron Cohen had signed on to do another Borat film with FOX. This was contradicted, however, by an interview with Cohen himself stating that Borat was to be discontinued, as he was now too well known to avoid detection as he did in the film and on Da Ali G Show. A spokesman for FOX later stated that it was too early to begin planning such a film, although they still remain open to the idea. Cohen subsequently announced that he was "killing off" the characters of Borat and Ali G because they were now so famous he could no longer trick people.

Box office
Borat debuted at number one on its opening weekend with a total gross of $26.4 million, beating its competitors Flushed Away and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. The film's opening weekend's theater average was an estimated $31,511, topping Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest yet behind Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Spider-Man. It retained the top spot in its second weekend after expanding to 2,566 theaters, extending the box office total to $67.8 million.