Kazakhs weary of 'Borat' bit
Foreign ministry official threatens legal action
Cohen's recent MTV appearance as Borat Sagdiyev, a naive but nasty Kazakh TV reporter he's been playing for years, sparked howls of outrage in the central Asian republic over the comic's unacceptable "concoction of bad taste and ill manners." A Kazakhstan foreign ministry official threatened legal action and went so far as to suggest Cohen "is serving someone's political order designed to present Kazakhstan and its people in a derogatory way.
"We reserve the right to legal action to prevent new pranks of this kind," added Yerzhan Ashykbayev.
That's good or bad news for "Borat," depending on Fox's appetite for controversy. The studio has worldwide distrib rights for the faux docu based on the character, which Cohen introduced on his Channel 4 "Ali G" show five years ago.
"Old School" director Todd Phillips, no stranger to controversy, was to direct the Jimmy Miller produced pic. Then TV producer-director Larry Charles ("Curb Your Enthusiasm") took over the reins.
So what did Cohen do to incur the country's ire? He arrived at the Nov. 3 MTV Europe Music Award in an "Air Kazakh" prop plane flown by a drunken pilot, then cracked jokes about his 13-year-old son's multiple wives, saying he had promised his son a visit with "Colombian prostitute Shakira" if he survived his journey.
Later in the show, "the character" referred to Madonna as a "genuine transvestite."
