Borat: the Romanian angle
Financial Times - November 11, 2006
Borat not so funny for folk mocked in spoof movie By Christopher Condon
The residents of Glod, a remote village in south-east Romania that
supplies the opening sequence of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat: Cultural
Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,
still don’t know what hit them. They are just beginning to understand
that cinema audiences around the world are laughing at them.
To add insult to injury, the residents of a village whose name
literally means “mud” say they were paid a pittance for their
appearance in the spoof documentary that grossed $26m (€20m, £13m) in
its first weekend.
Although hundreds of miles away from Kazakhstan, Glod appears in the
first four minutes of the film as the fictional home town of Borat
Sagdiyev, a Kazakh journalist, who sets off for America to discover
what it can teach his country.
Paraschiva Stoian, the toothless 73-year-old who played Borat’s
mother, got €30 (£20, $38) and 200kg of cement - which she is using
to make improvements on her tiny house. But the diminutive Mrs Stoian
says she feels “insulted”, especially because the film crew insisted
she put balloons under her shirt to simulate large breasts.
When Mr Baron Cohen, the film’s British star, spent 10 days filming
in Glod last summer, he donated two computers, a television and a
photocopier to the local school. Several residents were paid for
their bit parts in the film, usually about €4-€5. Those whose
property was filmed received up to €30 for each day of shooting.
Paulina Solomon, whose aging Dacia car - drawn by a horse - was used
in Borat’s send-off, remains bitter about the experience, which
earned her €100. Asked which was worse, being poorly paid or having
been mocked on film, she says, “The mocking is far worse.” Asked if
she would do it again if she were paid more money, her answer is just
as swift: “Yes. We are hungry for money.”
Petre Buzea, the vice- mayor of Moroieni, the municipality that
encompasses Glod, cares less about whether the residents of Glod feel
offended. “They got paid, so I am sure they are happy. These gypsies
will even kill their own father for money.” He complains that Mr
Baron Cohen showed only the very worst parts of the village, even
though the city hall recently built a church and modernised the
school in Glod. “Of course none of that was shown in the film,” he says.
Gheorghe Fugaciu, whose home appears in the film with a cow in the
living room, marches out on to the street to chase away a pair of
visiting journalists. “Go away,” he thunders. “No one else will come
into this house. Go away. Goodbye.”
Even at the best of times, Glod’s 1,400 residents, about half of whom
appear to be of Roma origin, have few reasons to be cheerful. There
is little steady work. People survive by growing vegetables, keeping
cows and chickens and gathering wood from the forested hillsides to
heat their homes. Horses and donkeys provide much of the local
transport.
A few of the houses are freshly painted and well kept but most are in
various stages of decay. There is no municipal water. Washed clothes
hang to dry in the wintry air on lines strung over rocky, muddy gardens.
Glod’s poverty is typical of rural Romania. The country is about to
join the European Union but the influx of foreign investment into its
cities has yet to trickle down to the countryside.
Paul Luca, a community leader, says only a small handful of young
people have emigrated from the village because it is too expensive to
complete all the paperwork and travel abroad looking for work.
On top of this, Glod’s residents now feel they have been cheated.
They knew Mr Baron Cohen was a western comedian but they had no idea
he was a celebrity with a blockbuster in the making.
They caught their first glimpse of their part in the film when a
Romanian television station aired the opening village segment
alongside the assertion that its residents had made fools of
themselves just for the sake of a few euros.