Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Fratboy suing Borat exposed by The Smoking Gun

Justin Seay, one of the two "John Does" suing Sacha Baron Cohen and the producers of "Borat" for getting him and his pals drunk and inducing them to engage in "behavior that they otherwise would not have engaged in" has been tracked down by The Smoking Gun.

As The Smoking Gun puts it, Seay "does not seem like an amateur when it comes to partying." They found his MySpace page, which contains numerous photographs in which Seay is either carousing in a bar or has a clearly visible drink in his hand (which are helpfully pointed out with red arrows). His MySpace page has "gettin' drunk and having a good time" as one of his interests, and friends' comments include greetings like "Hi Drunk Friend!!!" and "Hey Hey Justin Seay, Drinks like a fish everyday!"

The Smoking Gun provides pages from the lawsuit and photos from his MySpace page for handy comparison.

(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)

UPDATE: Radley Balko makes some reasonable criticisms of the Borat movie (which I've not seen).

UPDATE: You can find more Borat backstory here. The deceit used to make this film strikes me as quite unethical, though I have little sympathy for Mr. Seay, described above.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I watched BORAT for the first time over the weekend. I admit it: it was funny (in spots) and I laughed.

But the next morning I realized that it wasn't that funny--that the film not only blurs the line between reality and fiction, but it takes advantage of the people who appear in the film, by putting them in situations where, on film, they are rather like monkeys playing with balls in a cage, for our enjoyment, ridicule and sense of superiority.

What the producers did on BORAT to innocent people reminds me a bit of what has recently happened to me with the NPR radio show Fair Game.The producer asserts that I wasn't actually deceived, because he was "upfront about the fact that he was not going to be completely upfront." The show is clever, and no harm was really done to me, but I did experience the feeling that when you go out into the public arena, the media can twist what you do like a pretzel, with very little, actually sometimes NO ramifications to them, but potential damage to YOU.

Be careful out there, all you folks hoping for "exposure." There are plenty of producers who will sense your lust for it, then give you just what you wanted, but not the way you wanted it!

Not sure what that means, but here's my post: http://www.advicesisters.net/advicesistersblog