Miscellaneous Movie Musings

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

As I said before, I laughed a lot at Borat and simultaneously felt bad about it (and even worse when I found out that some of the sections I assumed were staged weren't).

This bit in the New Yorker well captures many of the things about Borat responsible for my ambiguousness on it.

I would love to know exactly what was and wasn't staged and in what ways.

For example, seeing as they weren't arrested, I have to believe that the naked wrestling scene in the convention hall was staged. At the very least, they had things arranged with the hotel, and the attendees were aware that there would be something filming, but were kept in the dark/told something else about the nature.

I get the feeling that's the case for a lot of what we saw. People were told they were going to be filming and doing X, so they were prepared for some sort of filming process, but then Borat comes in and does something completely different than they were told.