When my brothers and I got tickets to the 31st annual Toronto International Film Festival one film was at the top of all our lists. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. The problem was that the movie was at the top of a lot of peoples lists. Even though we had advance tickets and had our choice of films before the general public it was still sold out almost immediately.It seemed like there was no chance that we would see this movie until it came out in wide release (Which is Nov. 3rd so its not that bad)
Huge cash was being paid for any tickets people were willing to part with (one American fellow paid $400) .
(The following is information I have gathered from other festival goers)
The night of the screening (Thursday 11:59) Borat showed up to the red carpet on a wagon pulled by four peasant women with his horse beside him giving air "high fives" to the crowd (see pic above). He then proceeded to give interviews to the press. Also speaking to the press was Michael Moore who was there to see the movie. Eventually everyone proceeded into the theatre.
At the festival they have what's called a "rush line" this is a line that you can stand in to get the tickets of anyone that didn't show up, so after they let in all the ticket holders they go around and count how many extra seats are left and then let that many from the rush line in. Even though the 1,260 seater was completely sold out the rush line had hundreds of people in it and the one's at the front had been waiting for about 8 hours. At final count they let 4 people from the rush line in.
After all that anticipation the film started and the projector broke down after about 10 minutes. They scrambled around trying to fix it (even Michael Moore who used to be a projectionist took a crack at trying to get it going). Borat, director Larry Charles and even Moore stood on stage and answered questions from the audience. As time went on it became clear that they were not going to get the projector fixed . The screening was moved to Friday night at the Elgin Theatre. Bad news for some, but great news for us. The Elgin is a bigger theatre so more tickets were available and we got tickets to the show.
The basic story of the film is that the Kazakhi government has sent Borat to the US (specifically New York City) to learn from American culture to better Kazakhstan, but when Borat sees Pamela Anderson's character C.J. on a re-run of Baywatch he falls in love and decides he must travel to California so he can marry her. Really though the story isn't important, its just an excuse for Borat to travel the country and interview unsuspecting people in his trademark style. I think the brilliance of the character is that you never question the character of Borat. Sacha Baron Cohen has the character so well refined that it doesn't seem like you're watching him play Borat, its just Borat. The film is easily one of the funniest and most offensive I've seen in years, well only offensive if you take any of it seriously. Cohen also has a great ability of making people expose their most ridiculous prejudices candidly on film with no remorse. In fact he describes the film as a "dramatic demonstration of how racism feeds on dumb conformity, as much as rabid bigotry." Happy Time!
* During the Q an A on opening night some asked Moore if he had seen "Team America"? He said "not yet, but I hear I get blown up"
** Michael Moore was also at the re-screening on Friday night as well as Dustin Hoffman
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