Borat Subsequent MovieFilm director Jason Woliner revealed that an extended version of the film has been discussed. The Borat sequel hit Amazon Prime in October, a few weeks before the presidential election. The politically charged film is a sequel to the 2006 film Borat that finds Sacha Baron Cohen inhabiting the character of Borat, a reporter from Kazakhstan, as he explores America. The sequel caused a lot of controversy, mainly for a scene revolving around Donald Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, something Woliner says was always the end goal.
The film received critical acclaim upon its release. Filmed in late 2019 and early 2020, production of the film encompassed the tumultuous 2020 presidential election and its various hot button issues. When COVID-19 hit, Cohen and the crew continued to film, leading to a particularly timely mockumentary. Still, much was left on the cutting room floor in favor of a streamlined narrative, but Woliner has teased the possibility of more footage.
In an interview with Collider, Woliner says that discussions around an extended edition have taken place. Woliner reveals that they shot hundreds of hours of footage, including the days when Borat lived with two QAnon conspiracy theorists. The movie runs a short 96 minutes, but Woliner says the extra footage adds to the film's realism. While there are no official plans in place, Woliner says that he hopes to one day figure out a way to release it.
It's something we've talked about, but we haven't... Nothing final or announceable yet. But you can't help but talk about it when, on a movie like this, we shot hundreds of hours of footage, and every scene has just pages of material and jokes that we try. And then we pare it down to the best version of the 95 minute movie, but there is so much great stuff out there. He did live in that lockdown house for days with Jim [Russell] and Jerry [Holleman, two QAnon conspiracy theorists featured in the film]. That was another thing where the longer versions of these scenes show without a shadow of a doubt how real it was, how he was really living with these guys. So there's just so much of them existing together that I thought was so funny. So hopefully one day we'll figure out a way to get that out there.
The idea of more Borat is enticing, if not a little bit nauseating. While the new film eviscerates the current state of America, it can be unsettling. Just about anyone who enjoyed the film would probably jump at the chance to see Borat interact more with the QAnon conspiracy theorists and, with the actor living with the pair for a few days at the onset of pandemic lockdowns, there's surely plenty of material available. Still, the film sometimes has a hard time balancing its more comedic pursuits with the very real problems it's critiquing.
Cohen's performance, like the first film, is no holds barred. It may be hard to tell for some what is real and what is staged, but blurring those lines is part of the process. Pointing out the absolute absurdity of the country we live in is Cohen's forte. The film also has very real consequences, though, and some are hard to justify. With the film already out in the world, though, there's not much else that can be done. It's an effective piece of filmmaking, if not entirely the type of comedy that is soothing in a year that has already been quite traumatic. More Borat Subsequent MovieFilm may not be what the world needs, but we might just get it anyway.
Source: Collider