Essay 1328

From national news sources…

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‘Borat’ villagers: Movie makes fun of our poverty

BY WILLIAM J. KOLE

GLOD, Romania -- The name of this remote Romanian village means “mud,” and that’s exactly what angry locals are throwing back at comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

Cohen used Glod’s Gypsies as stand-ins for Kazakhs in his hit movie, “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” Now villagers are threatening to sue the film’s producers for paying them a pittance to put farm animals in their homes and perform other crude antics.

Residents and local officials in the scruffy hamlet said Tuesday they were horrified and humiliated to learn their abject poverty and simple ways are ridiculed in a movie.

“We thought they came here to help us -- not mock us,” said Dana Luca, 40, sweeping a manure-stained street lined with shabby homes of crumbling brick and corrugated iron sheeting. “We are poor people, but we are still people.”

Not everyone in Glod is upset. Sorina Luca, 25, excitedly described how she was given $3.30 for, among other things, bringing a pig into her home.

“I really liked it,” she said. “We are poor and miserable. Nothing ever happens here.”