2006 Entertainer of the Year: Borat Sagdiyev
Sacha Baron Cohen stars in Borat |
In 2006, we needed to laugh—at ourselves.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the only person with the chutzpah—okay, the only person with the "khram" to dare brandish a mirror in America’s face was, in fact, not American, no matter how you look at it: Sacha Baron Cohen hails from England and his alter ego, Borat Sagdiyev, from Kazakhstan. But whereas Cohen remains an elusive quasi-mystery, Borat craves the U.S. and A. spotlight and would relish even a second more spent in it. That is why we’ve chosen Borat over Cohen as our Entertainer of the Year, and Borat’s ability to make us howl with laughter—and cringe—at ourselves is one of many reasons why we’ve chosen him over everybody else!
It was an eventful year for entertainers and entertainment—celebrities and celebrity, too. Brad and Angelina did good (unless there’s truth to stories of their "colonial overlord" lifestyle in Namibia or their bullying in India); Lindsay and Naomi did bad (according to the production company behind Lohan's upcoming movie Georgia Rule and Campbell's numerous plaintiffs, respectively); and Cosmo Kramer and Mad Mel did ugly. Guiltily or not, their sagas kept us entertained, as did more traditional media like TV (Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, American Idol) and movies (Pirates of the Caribbean 2, the plethora of horror and animated movies, the return of James Bond, the three movies apiece for Cate Blanchett and Jack Black).
But in one 84-minute fell swoop, by the ambitious title of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, one man encompassed the good, the bad and the ugly. Borat was a film unlike any we’d ever seen before. It was a film that, in a small way, has had a national impact, if not a worldwide one. It was a film that teemed with controversy, most of which didn’t materialize until after it became a veritable blockbuster. It was a film that defied everything and everyone: the MPAA, box-office prognosticators, the American and Kazakh governments, convention, odds-makers, categorization, and apathetic reaction, to name a few. It was a film...that was much more than just a film.
It was, and remains, more like a cultural phenomenon, unexpected and inexplicable—not because it caused some shock waves but because of the magnitude of its earthquake. Borat's eponymous movie was, of course, the primary platform he used to entertain us, but it's also fair to say that his movie was merely the seed that spawned countless sideshows. Indeed, the frenzy before, during and after Borat entranced us just as much as the movie itself, for we were scouring the headlines and glued to the tube to see his latest Andy Kaufman-caliber stunt(s), our collective jaw plastered to the floor all the while…
PRE-RELEASE
In the run up to Borat’s release, Cohen’s ingenuity begins (or merely continues, for those familiar with his unconventional but brilliant career and the tactics that have accompanied it). While most celebs settle for a disingenuous pop-in on Leno to plug their upcoming "labor of love," Borat makes a cameo at the White House and tries to show "Premier George Walter Bush" a sneak peek of his movie. Borat naturally doesn’t make it past the security gates, but the film is broached by Bush during a meeting to discuss oil supply with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who is frantic over the Borat furor. From that point forward, the movie’s publicity rides the coattails of almost daily denunciations by the Kazakh government, which claims the film is slanderous and unrepresentative of Kazakhstan and its people.
RELEASE
Approximately two weeks prior to its scheduled release, Borat screenings are slashed by more than 50 percent after Twentieth Century Fox is discouraged by how poorly the film scored with test audiences. Things look grim for Mr. Sagdiyev, who famously proclaims in the movie’s trailer that "If it not success, I will be execute"—not without that priceless ear-to-ear smile, of course. It seems the film is set to join so many similar critically-acclaimed-but-commercially-disdained movies of years past in the cinematic cellar. But the resolve of Borat Nation is immeasurable—actually, it is measurable, in dollars: On its opening weekend, beginning Nov. 3, Borat comes in at No. 1 at the North American box office with $26.3 million earned in a measly 837 theaters, damning all box office "experts" and setting a box-office record for its high gross at fewer than 1,000 theaters. It wins the next weekend too before merely biting huge chunks out of the weekly box office thereafter without taking first place. Which is fine, because by the time the once Little Movie That Couldn’t is pulled from theaters it will have out-earned The Break-Up and possibly Mission: Impossible III. Now there’s a sentence no one would’ve dared to predict with a straight face!
POST-RELEASE
Only since Borat’s release and subsequent huge success has the true pandemonium begun. "Co-stars" have come out of the woodwork demanding apologies and/or payment, not to mention the Turkish journalist who claims he’s the real Borat. Borat himself has been ubiquitous on the talk-show circuit; one minute he’s on the streets of New York City with Regis Philbin, the next he’s on Martha Stewart during an impromptu, deadpan sexual embrace on The Tonight Show—yes, even Martha Stewart is game! The Kazakh government has also since come around, with President Nazarbayev stating, "There is no such thing as bad publicity." And the movie has been linked to the dissolution of at least one celeb marriage, that of Borat’s muse, Pamela Anderson. Suddenly, Borat Sagdiyev is a white-hot commodity—and Sacha Baron Cohen is a green bull’s-eye! To help allay the unrest his movie has caused, Cohen ditched the ‘stache and soiled suit and spoke to Rolling Stone magazine as—drum roll, please—himself, a move literally and figuratively out of character. The story didn't paint a contrite Cohen, but rather a surprised one who defended his movie against charges of you-name-it. And the latest tidbits? Cohen has been recognized by not only several critics' choice award circles but both he and Borat were surprisingly-but-not-surprisingly nominated for Golden Globes on Dec. 14, adding the Hollywood Foreign Press to the growing list of his entertainees. And, oh, right—what a difference a box-office-winning weekend makes!
Photo(s) by FOX- © 2006- 20th Century Fox- All Rights Reserved