from Newsweek magazine
Behind the Schemes
In 'Borat,' Sacha Baron Cohen plays unsuspecting folks for big laughs. Meet the real people who became punch lines.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15175836/site/newsweek/Oct. 16, 2006 issue - He arrives at the very last second for his interviews, and he doesn't stick around afterward for small talk. As soon as the camera's off, he vanishes. "His crew wouldn't let anybody near the guy," says Jim Sell,
a car salesman at the Criswell Dealership in Gaithersburg, Md. About 18 months ago, Borat Sagdiyev, a "TV journalist from Kazakhstan" who's actually an English guerrilla comedian named Sacha Baron Cohen, visited Sell to buy a vehicle for a "documentary" he was making about his experiences driving across America. "We had to move to a remote area on the lot," says Sell, "and now I understand why." After a few hours, during which Borat, cameras rolling, requested a car with a "p---y magnet" and tried to buy a $70,000 Hummer for $600, the strange visitor was gone. Later, while Sell shared the story with his co-workers, one woman rushed off to print out a photo from HBO's Web site. "It was Borat," he says. "I got set up pretty good, and I'm not real happy about it. For $150, I wasted three hours and he never even bought a vehicle."