Richelle Olson's scene (which was apparently cut, per the comments) has her hosting a charity bingo game with a mostly elderly audience when "Bruno" starts to call out the numbers with "vulgarities." Olson, her husband, and their lawyer Kyle Madison originally alleged that Baron Cohen and her camera crew assaulted her, which caused her to run off stage crying hysterically, falling unconscious, and hitting her head on a concrete slab, which caused two brain bleeds and now has her "confined to a wheelchair."

Universal then released that it was actually Olson assaulting Baron Cohen, and showed the footage of it to Madison. He's since amended the lawsuit to drop the charges of assault and battery. But they're still pressing on:

"The amendment to the original complaint does not change the cause of the injuries plead in the original complaint," Madison says. "Mrs. Olson's brain injuries were never alleged to have been derived from an assault or battery. She suffered two brain bleeds after the confrontation ensued with Mr. Baron Cohen. According to California case law, any injuries deriving from intentional infliction of emotional distress are recoverable. Mr. Baron Cohen and those associated with the production of 'Bruno,' are accountable for inflicting serious emotional distress and the resulting injuries to Mrs. Olson."

The movie is currently wiping the box office competition all over the place; they're slated for the third-highest comedy opening in Australia, and the film's now projected by the studio to make $35.8M in the weekend wrap, which, according to Nikki Finke, would make it one of the five highest R-rated comedy openings ever.

Again, if Borat's record shows anything, it's that Baron Cohen and his respective studios set up enough legal shields to protect themselves from almost any kind of liability, anywhere. Ambulance chasers and their clients are always more than suspect; they bring to mind a particularly bad episode of The People's Court. That being said, how fair is it of Baron Cohen and his team to descend on otherwise non public-figures and film scenes with them that can potentially change the way they live their lives thereafter? Maybe not at all; many of the people got in front of the camera under somewhat false pretenses. Then again, they're in front of the camera. There's always that.

'Bruno' bingo victim drops assault and battery claims [THR, Esq.]
'BRUNO' IST BIG: $14.2M Friday Opening; Sacha Too Shocking For $40M Weekend [DHD]

Both characters were from Baron Cohen's wildly funny Da Ali G Show, so either could have been made into a movie at any time. But we're just not sure that Brüno would be feasible as a market-ready comedy character had Borat not come and paved the pseudo-real, envelope-pushing path for him. Borat is awful—a misogynistic, racist, antisemitic boor—but, sadly, he's more palatable to a broad American audience than a gay Austrian fashion maven who exists solely to point out one of the country's most dearly-held prejudices: that most gays are just silly mockeries of themselves.

Borat certainly made fun of American xenophobia and jingoism, but those are things that people can't recognize in themselves as easily as a tetchy, and heartily defended, aversion to the gays. Borat was loud and political, whereas Brüno is an out, loud, and proud creation of a more immediate social hysteria, of an issue that's been at the forefront of the American culture wars these past few years. He teases at something far more tangible and taboo and unsettling to the popcorn-scarfing masses than Borat's buckshot blast at Stupid Americans that certainly aren't us. So had oh fashion friend come first... Well, Borat might not have been possible. Because Brüno is unlikely to catch the popular wave as easily, it's already been deemed a bit too dangerous and too outsider (plus aren't we all so sick of it already? We saw this one coming a mile away). And though Borat had its fights with the demands of decency (male nudity!), Brüno is all about those strictures.

And nobody likes to be taught a lesson, especially about themselves.

Sasha B. Cohen
London

Amsterdam 17th of November 2008

Please mister Borat,
Will you come to the world premiere of Carmen meets Borat, so that we can discuss our film? [...] A nice town and accommodation will be provided.

Awww! The ad leads to the sales agent's Dutch-language Web site, but as the ad notes (and as the festival's site confirms), Carmen Meets Borat premieres next Sunday at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam — plenty of time for 20th Century Fox to draft a cease-and-desist note defending its Borat brand from the doc's portrait of "chaos," "Jealousy" and "suspicion," and hopefully enough time for Cohen to plot a way to introduce the scenario into Bruno. Does IDFA have a Fashion Week or Yes-on-8 component?

• 'Carmen Meets Borat' [IDFA]

We’re not going to do anything that’s insulting to the culture that we come from. But 99.9% of movies made in Hollywood are released here in Abu Dhabi and don’t insult anybody. I don’t think that’s an issue. For the kinds of stories we want to make, we’re not going to have to go there (to R rated territory). Most successful movies in the financial sense have been G and PG: Star Wars, Gandhi, Lord of the Rings.

Q: Would you back a major production like a Lord of the Rings?

A: I don’t think we’ll be in the studio business of launching $200 million summer tentpole movies and hoping against hope they succeed.

Q: What’s your favorite movie of the past few years?

A: I loved Gandhi. I love movies like Chariots of Fire. Dances with Wolves. Star Wars. I like comedies. I couldn’t sit through Borat. We won’t be making Borat 2.

And somewhere at the end of a long, thirsty queue in the desert, Rupert Murdoch softly cries.

• Meet Hollywood's Newest Billionaire Player [WaxWord]

Most of the ladies who gave up fearing Jesus remain happily married to their Chosen Person. Stunner Elizabeth Banks married the businessman Max Handelman in 2003, and her mother not only approved of Banks’ choice, but made the chuppah herself. First Lady of Dreamworks Kate Capshaw, though still hanging on to her surname from her first marriage, made the switch for Steven Spielberg, and Anne Meara’s conversion put a quasi-end to the primary source of material for her comedy act with Jerry Stiller, “Stiller & Meara,” which used their religious differences for many a punchline. And who can forget Miss Connie Chung, whose baffling adoration of silly Maury Povich convinced the anchor to go Jew for life.

But it’s not all dradles and festivals of lights! Model/actress/bimbo Nikki Ziering went through the lengthy process for, of all people, Steve Sanders himself, Ian Ziering. But predictably, the union went bust after four short years. However, Nikki’s still Jewish! And most memorably, Liz Taylor very famously converted to Judaism to become Eddie Fisher’s second wife, only to eventually become number two of five just a few years later. But her “guts and guile” found its way into Sex And The City, inspiring Charlotte to be proud of her decision to convert for her bagel-loving Jewish baldie, and even name her fancy puppy after Liz.

[Photo credits: Getty, FilmMagic, Wireimage]

• SACHA BARON COHEN AND ISLA FISHER'S WEDDING ON HOLD [Daily Mail]

They took us down winding stone stairs and through long corridors, ostensibly to have some make-up dabbed on our noses for the cameras, in fact to meet the interviewer and test his disguise. We confronted a tall, blond-ish man in his thirties, dressed in leather and studs, his face heavily powdered, his arms and chest shaven. He spoke in a heavy German accent, his movements and mannerisms ultra-gay. He tried to write down our names, but they came out dyslexic.

And they were, indeed, basic, relating to our expectations for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Then one of us mentioned Hamas, and the exchange that ensued went something like this:

"Vait, vait. Vat's zee connection between a political movement and food. Vy hummus?"

We exchanged astonished glances. "Hamas," we explained, "is a Palestinian Islamist political movement. Hummus is a food."

"Ya, but vy hummus? Yesterday I had to throw away my pita bread because it vas dripping hummus. Unt it's too high in carbohydrates."

The Hamas-hummus confusion went on for several minutes. Then, the interviewer declared: "Your conflict is not so bad. Jennifer-Angelina is worse."

Alpher offers a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a SBC mark as he attempts to explain why he and his Palestinian counterpart submitted themselves to a series of increasingly imbecilic questions: "We knew something ludicrous was happening but couldn't quite figure it out...we were pressured for time and just wanted to finish." There also exists, of course, the possibility that they knew exactly who Bruno really was was all along (Cohen did plenty of Israeli promotion for Borat), and that they just wanted to take part in a summer comedy blockbuster. And if they were to be poor sports about it, there's also the promise of a lawsuit payday, due to the emotional pain and suffering of having been subjected to the Austrian whipping down his skinny-jeans and displaying his führskin in an impromptu game of anatomical show-and-tell.

• 'What's the difference between Hamas and hummus?' Ali G star tricks Palestinian and Israeli spy into spoof debate on Middle East [DailyMail.co.uk]

Universal will release the film on May 15, 2009. So far, there are no other R-rated comedies near that date.

Twentieth Century Fox’s “Borat” was a box office hit, grossing $128.5 million domestically in an early November release.

U believes “Borat” made Cohen enough of a household name to open “Bruno” in the high-profile summer sesh.

While it's true that Cohen has already proven his pedigree by selling America an unqualified blockbuster featuring little more than his signature, yak-herding cultural ambassador, Bruno still has its fair share of hurdles right out of the gate. For starters, the fashion correspondent's fey, Österreichian inflections might ultimately prove to be off-putting to the same masses who had initially warmed to the simple, everyman pleasures of Borat. Sure, Mr. Sagdiyev may have occasionally demonstrated an affinity for fist-shaped dildos and neon, nuthugger swimwear, but that was easily laughed off as eccentric-foreigner, not eccentric-queer-foreigner, behavior.

• Universal sets a date for 'Bruno' [Variety]

We didn’t think it was possible, but the insanely dateable John Krasinski is not looking so hot these days. Due to an upcoming role in the Sam Mendes-directed Farlanders, John is sporting a nasty beard that resembles something one of the Geico cavemen would wear. And while we’d never judge an actor for tossing out their razors for months for the sake of their craft, this terrible beard inspired us to take a look back at the most cringeworthy facial hair in cinematic history. From one actor’s frizzy salt-and-pepper rat's nest to one mustache’s journey inside another man’s taint, our top five lie after the jump:

Though most Napoleon Dynamite obsessives instinctively recall that Napoleon envied Pedro's ability to quickly grow a mustache, we were far more grossed out by Kip Dynamite's stringy gelled strip. As for Daniel Day Lewis' portrayal of Bill the Butcher in Gangs Of New York, his Dali 'stache served to heighten the character's intimidation factor. And of course, there was poor Tom Hanks, whose Castaway role forced him to grow out a tangled mess of curls covering his entire mug. Though really, we feel sorrier for wife Rita Wilson. Shudder.

Insisting for months that he would only appear as Borat in public and during interviews, jet-black puffy 'stache and all, Sacha Baron Cohen claims he "woke up one morning and was quite hung over, and I accidentally shaved my mustache off.". But topping our list of the most horrendous facial hair grown for a movie role is the most tragic tale of all. After spending months growing out a woolly, scraggly beard for a role in Darren Aronofsky's sci-fi bomb The Fountain, Brad Pitt abruptly quit the picture and started work on another bomb, Troy. Rumors that Brad just couldn't jibe with Aronofsky's script abounded, but some suspected he just couldn't stand sporting that greasy uncomfortable mop on his face for so long.

• A FEW OF THE 'OFFICE' CAST AT THE NBC UPFRONTS [ONTD]

Kathleen Tracy reports in her new bio, "Sacha Baron Cohen: From Cambridge to Kazakhstan," that "the apparent adrenaline rush to survive under Davitian's ample weight" caused an awkward surge of blood toward one of Cohen's extremities.

The film was spared an NC-17 rating by that long, rectangular fig leaf.

At least we were spared a scene in which Borat visits a plastic surgeon to have a reverse circumcision performed "so Pamela Anderson won't think he's Jewish. [Cohen] dropped his pants," presenting his manhood for inspection, only to have the doctor recognize him from one of his earlier comic incarnations. "Wait! You're Ali G!" the doc exclaimed, ruining the whole scene.

Once again, Cohen's own notoriety proved to be his own worst enemy, as what could have easily become one of the movie's most memorable sequences wound up on the cutting-room floor, so to speak—and all because one savvy inverse-mohel was so familiar with the shlong-obsessed prankster's canon, he instantly recognized him the second he laid eyes on his patient's world famous package.

• Sacha Baron Cohen pads his part [NY Daily News]

"When I was being Ali G and Borat I was in character sometimes 14 hours a day and I came to love them, so admitting I am never going to play them again is quite a sad thing," he said.

"It is like saying goodbye to a loved one. It is hard, and the problem with success, although it's fantastic, is that every new person who sees the Borat movie is one less person I 'get' with Borat again, so it's a kind of self-defeating form, really.

"It's upsetting, but the success has been great and better than anything I could have dreamed of."

Indeed, it's sad to face the reality of a world in which we'll never again see the wide-eyed Kazakh journalist proudly present a Southern etiquette coach with a fresh bag of his own feces at a dinner party or nearly asphyxiate under the crushing weight of an obese compatriot's fetid hindquarters. Still, we have the considerable promise of Bruno to look forward to, as well as a new round of lawsuits filed by homophobic Baptist ministers who never thought that the seemingly innocent hot oil, full-body "anointing" they were talked into giving the Austrian TV fashionista would play out so erotically when presented on a multiplex screen.

• Sacha Baron Cohen: Killing off Borat [Telegraph]

Michael Psenicska was duped into participating in the film after it was described to him as a "documentary about the integration of foreign people into the American way of life," he said in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court.

The suit named British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays the title role, One America Productions and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., a unit of News Corp. It also named Todd Lewis, a representative of One America who is listed in other lawsuits as Todd Lewis Schulman.

Psenicska said he was paid $500 in cash to give Borat a driving lesson. He described the experience as "surreal," saying Cohen drove erratically down residential streets, drank alcohol and yelled to a female pedestrian he would pay her $10 for "sexy time."

The lawsuit seeks $400,000 in actual damages and additional punitive damages for misleading Psenicska and for emotional harm he continues to suffer. Psenicska said if he had known the true nature of the film, he never would have participated.

Psenicska's action comes about a month after one filed by the Southern etiquette coach who tried to teach the faux-Kazakh that returning from the bathroom with one's bagged feces is considered poor manners in most places in America. We suspect that both suits will eventually be dismissed like the one brought by those South Carolina fraternity brothers, with annoyed judges in Manhattan and Alabama informing both plaintiffs that they should probably consider themselves lucky their participation in the film didn't involve being strangled by the fetid anus of Borat's hirsute producer.

• Another unwitting "Borat" cast member files lawsuit [Reuters]
• Previously: New Yorker Finally Stops Running From Borat Long Enough To File Lawsuit Against Fox [Defamer]

Cohen told Moore he had drawn inspiration from the filmmaker's documentaries, in which Moore doggedly pursues corporate and political bosses and puts himself into uncomfortable situations.

"I said to him, `But yeah, I've never done anything like wrestle naked with another guy on the floor of an insurance-brokers or mortgage-brokers convention," Moore told The Associated Press. "So after I saw `Borat,' if he says I was an inspiration for those things, I now have to up the ante for him. So we sailed into the mined waters of Guantanamo Bay with sick 9/11 workers and a bullhorn."

Not only did Cohen inspire Moore to attempt larger-scale and ballsier stunts than ever before, but his faux-Kazakh counterpart's misadventures also provided some highly effective field tactics, ultimately resulting in securing Moore's ill 9/11 workers the medical attention they so desperately needed after the Sicko director won a nude wrestling match with a wiry guard by suffocating him with his anus.

• Moore: Borat steeled him for Guantanamo [Yahoo News]

Jeffrey Lemerond, 31, claims in a U.S. District Court complaint that the film depicts him "fleeing in apparent terror" from Borat, the phony Kazakh reporter portrayed by Cohen...Lemerond notes that he was screaming "go away" at Cohen, who was seeking a hug from the rattled stranger.

He also claims to have suffered "public ridicule, degradation, and humiliation" as a result of his brief appearance in the film. Footage of Cohen chasing Lemerond was first seen in the movie's trailer, though Lemerond's face had been pixelated from view. However, the film company did not "scramble Plaintiff's face in the film itself."

Lemerond's lawsuit names only Fox as a defendant—he had filed another in January naming Sacha Baron Cohen, director Larry Charles, and producer Jay Roach, but quickly withdrew it. Based on the outcomes of the many other Borat cases, however, we'd say the odds are stacked heavily against the panicky claimant. That doesn't mean he'll walk away completely empty handed, however, as he can still proudly tell his grandkids how he once so vividly put a human, terror-stricken face on New Yorkers' general attitudes towards being accosted by swarthy, vaguely Middle-Eastern-looking lunatics during their morning commutes in the early 21st Century.

• "Borat" Sued Yet Again [TSG]

Before the bidding frenzy started, Endeavor sold Bruno to a financing entity called Media Rights Capital. MRC didn't take much of a risk, since the studios were fighting to buy the project before the proverbial ink was dry. In fact, MRC sold the package to Universal at such lightning speed that some at the studios have wondered aloud (if not on the record): Why did Endeavor need to bring MRC into the deal?

And that raises the question: Is MRC a separate company, or is it Endeavor in different clothing? It is against California state law for agencies to produce films, and Endeavor has said that MRC is a separate entity. But some in Hollywood perceive MRC as a unit of Endeavor—a unit positioned to cherry-pick projects. Former Endeavor agent Modi Wiczyk is co-CEO of MRC.

One executive who passed on Bruno said MRC seems to be an "internal production machine" for the agency. An executive at another company also expressed doubts about the deal. "None of the math made sense," this executive said. Estimating high, the film seemed to require a budget of only about $30 million, "even if you give Sacha the $15 million that he wanted" for starring. And if that were true, then whose pocket would be lined with the markup?

An Endeavor source says all this is the bitter cavil of the defeated. "MRC is its own company," he says. After all, Endeavor would hardly risk its business by breaking the law.

If fear of illegality stops Endeavor from fully exploiting this lucrative strategy, maybe a certain bolder rival will seek an advantage by taking things to the next logical level. When negotiating for the services of CAA clients in the near future, executives should be wary of high competing bids from Century City's new Death Star Pictures, even if the agency insists that the apparently deep-pocketed upstart is "totally independent from Creative Arists" amidst damning evidence that the shadowy studio's only output is a series of culinary training videos on proper baby-preparation techniques.

• Throw the Money Down the Well [Slate]

· Var chief Peter Bart pens yet another memo to Tom Cruise, this time encouraging his successor at United Artists to ignore the skepticism of the press, take a big swig of some Oprah-endorsed positivity Kool-Aid, and realize that he's not the only one in this town trying to figure out how to run a studio. [Variety]
· Spunky test-pattern alternative MyNetworkTV will kick of a new schedule on Monday, shifting its focus from cheaply produced telenovelas that no one wants to watch to low-cost reality programming audiences will be eager to ignore. [THR]
· Clint Eastwood may direct and Angelina Jolie is in talks to star in The Changeling for Universal, the story of a woman who suspects that the abducted son that's eventually returned to her is not actually her child—material that the actress instantly connected with because of a paranoid fear she's been harboring that careless partner Brad Pitt lost Maddox at a Ralphs a year ago and has been trying to pass off another Cambodian orphan as their beloved tyke ever since. Imagine's Brian Grazer is also on board to superproduce the shit out of this one. [Variety]
· ABC elevates Ellen Pompeo to $200,000 per episode, while Grey's Anatomy co-stars James T. Pickens Jr, Chandra Wilson, Justin Chambers, and TR Knight are expected to get raises to $125k. No word on whether Isaiah Washington's successful completion of gayhab will earn him a similar reward, but should he be passed over on this round of renegotiations, he plans to recoup some of the withheld salary bump by stealing Knight's lunch money each day. [THR]
· USA pays $11 million for the rights to air Borat for five years starting in 2009, a relatively low sum due to the fact that the network will be forced to pixelate Ken Davitian's hairy, suffocating anus during the movie's iconic wrestling scene. [Variety]

The 2006 report, released in Washington on Tuesday by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, criticized the real Kazakhstan, a vast oil-producing Central Asian state, for increased restrictions on freedom of speech and other abuses. [...]

The report cited Borat's loss of his Kazakh webpage www.borat.kz in late 2005 alongside court cases and limits on free speech faced by the few domestic media critical of Kazakhstan's long-serving President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

"The government deemed as offensive the content of a satirical site controlled by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and revoked the .kz domain," the report said.

The report refers to events that occurred towards the end of 2005, well before the Borat movie phenomenon turned the sister-tonguing simpleton into a household name, when a special-ops force of mercenaries absconded with Borat.kz in the dead of night. (A group of Kazakh schoolchildren would later stumble upon its grisly remains, the pillowcase-hooded website floating face-down somewhere in the Tuolba River.) It was a political crime the current administration wouldn't soon forgive, and despite humoring diplomatic efforts with the Central Asian nation, they would ultimately vow to seek vengeance on behalf of the strange, mustachioed foreigner who won their hearts with his repeated, earnest efforts to personally reach out to the American premier.

• Borat seen as human rights victim by U.S. government [Reuters]
• Previously: Kazakhstan Multiplexes To Pass On 'Borat' [Defamer]
• President Bush Declines Offer To Throw Back A Few Rounds Of Fermented Horse Urine With Kazakh Filmmaker [Defamer]
• Kazakh Leader To Meet With President, Make Generous Offer Of Two Donkeys To Make Sex With First Twins [Defamer]