In his interview with Borat star-producer Sacha Baron Cohen, L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein says that “a number of people who appeared in the film have complained or filed suit, claiming they’d been hoodwinked [but] Cohen isn’t exactly sympathetic. ‘This wasn’t Candid Camera,’ he says.
‘There were two large cameras in the room [every time we spoke to these people]. I don’t buy the argument that, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t have acted so racist or anti-Semitic if I’d known this film was being shown in America.’ That’s no excuse. If you saw all of our footage with the gun-shop owner, for example, we had a whole conversation about the right gun to use to shoot a Jew’s horns off his head.”
