A U.S. District judge threw out a defamation case against the makers of Borat yesterday, on the grounds that Sacha Baron Cohen’s fake journalist schtick is protected under the same laws as real journalism. A New York businessman had sued for unspecified, claiming he was humiliated against his will when footage of Cohen chasing him down the street appeared in the film, and complaining that 20th Century Fox had no right to make a profit off of said humiliation. But the judge disagreed, citing a section of a NY State civil rights law that says “nonconsensual use of a person’s image to depict newsworthy events or matters of public interest is exempt from the law.” If you’re scratching your head trying to puzzle out just how performance art built around the harassment of strangers qualifies as a “newsworthy event,” here’s Judge Loretta Preska’s explanation of her ruling:
[Borat] employs as its chief medium a brand of humor that appeals to the most childish and vulgar in its viewers..[But] the movie challenges its viewers to confront, not only the bizarre and offensive Borat character himself, but the equally bizarre and offensive reactions he elicits from `average’ Americans.
I’m alternately admiring of and infuriated by Cohen’s ability to exploit the right loopholes that allow him to get away with using real people as raw material for his act, which never seems to be as sharp as either comedy or social commentary as he thinks it is. But childish, vulgar, bizarre and offensive *does* sounds like a pretty accurate description of most televised news.
Pittsburgh, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006 before going straight to cable and DVD this year, is a mock documentary about Jeff Goldblum’s run starring in a production of The Music Man in his hometown. Some of the film is “real”; some of it is sketched to look real, ala Christopher Guest; some of it uses “real” situations, Borat-style, as the backdrop for improvisation. A stagehand captured in some of the latter antics is now suing to have her scene removed from the film.
Debbie Sue Croyle says she was never asked to sign a release, and in fact only learned of the film after it premiered on cable and “other people saw it and told her about it.” She says she is “humiliated” by her appearance in the film, because Goldblum used a double entendre in the scene in which she appears. But oddly, the actor is not named in suit: Croyle is suing the production companies that made the film, the film’s directors, and the Starz cable channel, for $4 million. Seems like a huge sum, considering the film had no theatrical release and all but flew under the radar of most non-Starz subscribers and non-Goldblum superfans. Still, it’s an interseting case; I’m fairly surprised the release form issue hasn’t come up before with higher-profile doc/com hybrids. More details here.
Sony’s 
