Mysore/Mysuru: The SmithDehn India team in Mysuru provided legal support work, including legal research and drafting, for the Borat sequel ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.’
Two members of the Mysuru team, Vidya Devaiah, Managing Director of SmithDehn India and Padmavathi Shanthamurthy, Director — Legal Services, received screen credit in the movie as part of the production legal team.
‘Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan’ is a 2006 British-American mockumentary comedy film where Sacha Baron Cohen stars as Borat Sagdiyev, a fictitious Kazakhstani journalist who travels through USA to make a documentary which features real-life interactions with Americans. Much of the film features unscripted vignettes of Borat interviewing and interacting with real-life Americans who believe he is a foreigner with little or no understanding of American customs.
‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’ was released in October. Critics say that the sequel that serves as a jaw-dropping expose of America, culminating in a morally incriminating appearance by an elected official will be one of this year’s most talked-about films.
Vidya told SOM that much of the legal support was during production — research to ensure the filming crew could operate seamlessly. “However, most importantly, we helped defeat a threatened injunction against the film in Georgia State Court just a few days prior to the release. We, along with our colleagues in the United Kingdom, assisted the SmithDehn legal team in the US, allowing this urgent work to be conducted expeditiously in four different time zones across the globe,” she says.
“Defending against the injunction was incredibly stressful as we worked for five days with maybe two or three hours of sleep on each of those days. But ultimately it was so satisfying. With the new normal following COVID-19, we could attend the court hearing even from Mysuru and it was fantastic to be present when we won,” Vidya said. The SmithDehn India team worked in the first film as well.
This post was published on December 11, 2020 6:39 pm