The editors of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm have a clip of Mike Pence to thank for the story idea of the film. Sacha Baron Cohen's latest movie was released fourteen years after its popular predecessor, Borat, with Cohen reprising his title character Borat Sagdiyev, a Kazakhstani reporter who visits America once again to give his daughter away to Pence. The film featured breakout newcomer Maria Bakalova as Borat's daughter Tutar.
The sequel to 2006 mockumentary film was shot in secret from the end of 2019 to throughout 2020 and was set on being released before Election Day. Much like its predecessor, the sequel has had it shares of success and controversies, becoming one of the most streamed films of last year while also having conflicts with its featured subjects, most notably Pence and a revealing scene involving Rudy Giuliani. Due to the major events occurring during filming, the plot of the film kept evolving to fit the relevancy of the story and the people involved had to stay on their feet with a short amount of time before releasing the finished product.
Per Deadline, Cohen disclosed that editors Craig Alpert and James Thomas found a moment while editing that led to the story of the film. That moment comes during one of the many stunning feats featured in the movie where Borat goes to the CPAC convention disguised as Donald Trump with his daughter while the former Vice President is giving a speech regarding the coronavirus cases in the United States. Despite having that scene be the original ending of the movie, Cohen and the editors realized that there was more to the story they were trying to tell that examined the issues deeper. During an interview with Crew Call podcast, Cohen explained why this particular moment changed the course of the whole film:
"CPAC was the culmination of act 3: I rescue Tutar from Giuliani. She trips while I’m being chased and Mike Pence is speaking and that’s the end of the movie. We’ve been shut down due to Covid. Myself and my producer Monica Levinson, we decide to keep the edit going. James (Thomas) says ‘You gotta see this!' Cast your mind back to March and people were treating Covid like it was a tropical storm…[We] had this epiphany. This is a movie we’re releasing before the Election and making to show our protest against Trump and Trumpism and the conspiracies that the government was propagating. We see the Vice President spreading this calamitous lie that we’re ready for Covid. We knew the numbers would get to the hundreds of thousands in America.
"It was a way to show the incompetence of the Trump government. This was an emotional father-daughter movie, this had questions about the patriarchy, but fundamentally it was a catalog of wrongdoings of Trump and Trumpism in 90 minutes. There was a realization that his greatest, most catastrophic wrongdoing was the willful incompetence on Covid that led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, and here he is, the Vice President, on the day he’s been put in charge of the Covid task force saying ‘It’s alright guys! We’ve got it under control!’ That moment that these editors found transforms the whole movie, and transforms the whole production.”
Since the production was shut down due to the pandemic, Thomas and Alpert had to assess the hours of footage already shot to edit everything down to a reasonable length for a movie. And it is usually during the editing process where the basis of the film is put into focus, which puts incredible pressure and responsibility towards the editors. With the former Vice President blatantly spewing dangerous lies about a significant illness that would impact millions, it makes sense to shift the narrative of the sequel that involves a worldwide catastrophe to blend in with the borderline humor and controversial jokes.
Despite the popularity of Borat and the courageous stunts he pulls, it is refreshing to see him assert himself into the transformative events of the current times, however comical that may be. And the editors have done a wonderful job maintaining the humor of the film while also telling a much bigger story. While Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is at its very essence a comedy movie, it does shine a light on the serious subjects that shape society as a whole and reveals the tremendous effects it has on individuals; all of which just makes the process and creation of the film all the more impressive.
Source: Deadline