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Borat's Driving Teacher Fuels Lawsuit
Borat may have come to the U.S. and A. to seek cultural learnings, and then Pamela Anderson, but a lot of the people he crossed have been busy seeking cash.
A year after the fact, the driving instructor featured in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan—the one who tells Borat that women have the right to choose whom they sleep with ("Whaaat?")—has sued 20th Century Fox and Sacha Baron Cohen, claiming they lied to him about the nature of the film before he agreed to appear on camera.
According to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on behalf of Baltimore math teacher Michael Psenicska, who has also owned a driving school for 32 years, the Borat crew trotted out its usual ruse about how it was shooting a documentary about foreigners' experiences adjusting to American life that would only air overseas.
Intrigued by the project because part of his business is teaching people who hail from other countries how to drive, Psenicska signed the requisite legal forms, as did many of the mystified civilian who prominently appeared in Borat.
Now he is saying, however, that the producers got him to sign the release by fraudulent means.
But 20th Century Fox says that a waiver is a waver, and that Psenicska (who actually came off all right in the film) gave his consent.
"He signed a release, and we have an agreement," studio spokesman Gregg Brilliant, who has had to speak up on behalf of Borat multiple times this year, said. "Now, two and a half years after giving his consent and more than one year after the movie was released, Mr. Psenicska has decided to file a lawsuit, citing the financial success of the film, in spite of our agreement."
Psenicska is seeking $100,000 in compensatory damages and unspecified punitive damages, noting that he was featured in multiple ads promoting the film, which ended up earning more than $261 million worldwide and scored an Oscar nod for its screenplay adapted by Cohen's character from Da Ali G Show.
The British funnyman and 20th Century Fox have also been sued by the crude frat boys featured in the film (a judge refused to grant an order to cut their scene), the New York businessman who won't let the wacky Kazakh hug him on the street, the Romanian village that stood in for Borat's hometown, and the etiquette teacher who was standing by when the bogus foreign reporter inquired as to where he should dispose of his bag of feces, which he had toted back to the dinner table.
Cohen, who has since picked up a Golden Globe for acting in a comedy and welcomed his first child with fiancée Isla Fisher, will be back on the big screen Dec. 21 in Tim Burton's adaptation of Sweeney Todd, starring Johnny Depp as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
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