Offended residents and local officials of a Romanian village named Glod used as the extras in "Borat" have threatened to take a legal action toward the movie's producers.
- Nov 16, 2006
AceShowbiz - Not yet done with the lawsuit placed by the two college students, "Borat" is about to face a legal action again, this time from the local people of a Romanian village named Glod who were featured as stand-ins in it.
Outraged that the movie has ridiculed their simple ways of life, the Gypsy citizens of the village are threatening to sue producers of the flick for paying them a pittance to put farm animals in their homes and perform other crude antics.
"We thought they came here to help us - not mock us," so said Dana Luca, 40, one of the residents of the scruffy hamlet 85 miles northwest of Bucharest. "We are poor people, but we are still people."
Representing the people, local leader Nicolae Staicu has been quoted to say that he and other officials planned to meet a public ombudsman yesterday, November 15, to formulate a legal strategy against the film's leadstar Sacha Baron Cohen and distributor 20th Century Fox.
"These people are poor and they were tricked by people more intelligent than us," the man remarked as he accused the producers of paying locals just $3.30 to $5.50 a day and misleading them into an assumption that the shooting was for a documentary while enticing exploited peasants into performing crass acts.
Taking an instant response to the allegation, Fox's spokesman Gregg Brilliant has given statement to The Associated Press that the villagers were actually paid around $6 a day and claimed that Cohen and the production team even each donated $5,000 to the town while also paying a location fee and buying it computers, school, plus office supplies.
As for the locals' angry reaction of being misled to think that the movie was a documentary, Brilliant calmly responded that in fact, it was clear from the start that the film was a comedy. "People would stand in the street, watch the filming and laugh at the jokes," so he said. "They were cheering and laughing and hugging the crew."
UPDATE 11/21: The villagers finally fixed their mind to file a $30 million lawsuit on Monday, November 20, alleging that 20th Century Fox Film Corp. and others involved in "Borat" exploited them by informing that the comedy was a documentary feature instead of a commercial film. The suit was filed in Manhattan federal court on behalf of two residents of Glod namely Nicolae Todorache and Spiridom Ciorebea.
