UPDATE: Disappointing Variety.com subscription-only article (I registered for a free trial so you don't have to!):
Building a better 'Borat'BONUS FEATURES: The Borat line at the rodeo that Variety left out: "May George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq"
Faux doc spins talk
By CLAUDE BRODESSER
If Fox News Channel devotees had an allergic reaction to Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," wait until they get a taste of the movie "Borat," which sprang to life again last week ... at Twentieth Century Fox.
When shooting on the faux-docu began last January, the Borat character, created and played by Sacha Baron Cohen on "Da Ali G Show," did his typical naive foreigner shtick. Borat, a Khazakstani TV reporter known for being unwittingly but enthusiastically sexist, racist and anti-Semitic -- incited the crowd at a Virginia rodeo to a near-riot.
Brought in to sing the American national anthem, Borat instead attempted to curry favor with the Southerners by announcing, "I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards."
The character then launched into a mangled version of "The Star Spangled Banner," with the ending altered to "your home in the grave!" Cohen and the film crew had to be escorted out of the rodeo arena for their own safety.
Director Todd Phillips promptly decamped the "Borat" production, but now Fox is in talks with TV producer-director Larry Charles ("Curb Your Enthusiasm") to take over helming on the pic.
Will the Iraqi scene stay in Charles' new version? No one at Fox is sure.
Asked if the rest of the "Borat" movie is as stridently political, one insider says, "His show is political. Infer from that what you will."
HBO Borat "bio" here.
Unofficial page here.
Borat Soundboard here (recommended, and the unofficial page above has more).
Ali G's Harvard Commencement speech. No, we're not kidding.
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