Rewatchables Reference

• Kyle: The dinner scene. 'The most Sacha Baron Cohen scene you could possibly do — the talk, the shitting, and then not so much you. Once a year I'll see naked Azamat — but it's the dinner table for me.' The Southern Manners dinner. 'Three wives — you two, in my country, not so much.' The poop in a bag. The retired/retarded confusion. 'You let someone at the table with retardation.' Brutal moment — 'an absolute drive-by shooting of that poor lady.' This is the Sopranos-finale-conversation scene: AJ and Meadow argue about Borat's etiquette dinner.
• Bill: The Jewish B&B / Bed & Breakfast scene. 'I think it's like a perfectly constructed comedy scene. The shifting shapes, the Halloween music, busting out of there like the end of Django Unchained.' (Bonus: Sacha Baron Cohen is Jewish, so the joke layers nicely.) Kyle dissents: 'I almost feel bad for those people — that's the P break scene for me. They're so nice.'
• The naked fight (consensus, but most memorable, not most rewatchable). Kyle remembers seeing this in the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd in 2006 — 'people pulling their jackets up over their head, people leaving, screams. The most chaotic two minutes I've ever had in a movie theater.' Sacha's penis blurred (a giant blackout for a one-and-a-half-foot blur), Azamat fully unblurred. Sacha's Golden Globe acceptance speech credits 'a small pocket of trapped air beneath his buttocks for 30 years' for saving his life. The scene goes 69, then Yokozuna face-sit. Then the elevator with the blank-faced man, then the Realtors conference — which they had to film three times before a crowd actually reacted (the first two were engineering conferences in Dallas where nobody moved).
• Bill's 8-throwaway-line list: 'Erkin not too much raping humans, only one'; the car negotiation ('how about 85? — I said 117, why don't we call it 85? — no, let's call it 117'); 'how is my back-pussy? Her vagine hang like sleeve of wizard'; 'even though my annulus was broken'; 'have you offered the pubic hair? Making romance explosion on her stomach'; 'hey, fuck off death.'
• Other A+ scenes: the opening Kazakhstan town tour (the rapist, the abortionist, his sister the #4 prostitute, the running of the Jew); 'very nice — how much?' on the New York street; the New Yorker who threatens to pop Borat in the balls (Bill: 'this guy's had dinner with Schrager at Luger's'); the Pat Haggerty humor-coach tutorial ('story about his special needs brother breaking out of the cage to rape his sister and then gets a high-five'); Borat watching TV with chicken quesadilla room service (Married with Children, Jingle All the Way, Baywatch, Cops); driving instructor Mike Pattipo; Channel 16 weatherman in Jackson MS ('worst suit of all time'); the rodeo (Kazakh national anthem to Star-Spangled Banner; 'all the countries are run by little girls'; 'we'll drink the terrorist blood'); the horse falls over (miracle); the South Carolina frat-boy van; the church cleansing; Pam Anderson at the Virgin Megastore; the iPod-mini joke walking off into the credits.

• Pre-social-media Muslim resentment / post-9/11 baseline. The whole anti-Semitism / 'will the Jews attack the World Trade Center' joke layer is rooted in 2006.
• The Pam Anderson tape nostalgia (~10 years out, she's been out of the limelight 6-7 years). Pam having an autograph line, not a selfie line. At a Virgin Megastore.
• The iPod mini punchline at the end of the movie. 'They're sitting in the writers room — what's the last joke going to be? Let's make an iPod mini joke. Not even an iPod, an iPod mini.' Plus a Married with Children / Jingle All the Way / Baywatch / Cops channel-surf is a 2006 hotel-life set piece.
• Kyle: Pre-smartphone public fuckery. 'Watching this guy at the rodeo and all anyone has in their hand is a beer. It's awesome and I miss it.' Compares to early-2000s Tom Green campus visits — 'the rumor would just spread by word of mouth, no tweets.'

• Bill: 'You will never get this' as a saying — running joke at the Simmons house ever since they saw the movie (B-Lo / not getting things). Plus the Pam Anderson tape's place in the sex-tape canon ('it really was the 2001: A Space Odyssey for sex tapes — the Big Bang theory').
• Kid Rock divorcing Pam after he saw the movie. ('Has Kid Rock ever seen Pam Anderson?')
• Kazakhstan adopting 'Very Nice' as a real travel slogan in 2020.
• DVD bonus: pick Hebrew as the audio language and funny stuff happens.
• The Realtors conference re-shoot anecdote — first try in a Dallas engineering lecture, no reaction. ('How do you not react to two naked guys running into your conference?')
• Bill's number-one: throwaway lines. The car-spit handshake at 85, 'sleeve of wizard', 'making romance explosion on her stomach', 'fuck off death'. The architecture of the movie is throwaway lines.
• Kyle: Watching porn with your boys on a motorhome. 'You'd watch it like you're watching a movie — it was so funny in the 70s and 80s.'

• Kyle (winner): Azamat freshening up with swamp water on his neck, then the camera pans right and Borat is just pissing into the same water. 'That could be an album cover. Great sight gag.'
• Bill: Borat after getting cleansed in the church — the wide shot where he kind of rises up.

Steppenwolf's 'Born to Be Wild' (Kyle: 'the cheesiest road-trip song you could ever come up with — a deliberately corny foreigner's idea of American music'). Plus 'Take My Breath Away' the second they see Pamela. MC Hammer 'Can't Touch This' as a runner-up.

• Bill: The length. 'It bothers me. I really feel like there's two more set pieces. You're on a road trip, you can literally go anywhere.' (Sets up his recasting-couch nitpick about the missing Vegas scene.) Kyle agrees: 'A clean 90.'
• Kyle (real weak link): The etiquette dinner lady. 'A nice-looking apparent grandmother, so polite, and he breaks out the Polaroids of the kid with his big old Dick hanging out. This movie was in every AMC, every cineplex around the world. That woman in her life to this day is — you looked at the cock pictures with that guy.' She's the one Kyle feels really bad for, more than the bigoted frats / racists / antisemites.
• Bill: The bear is kind of ridiculous. Not really a weak link, just feels weird.

• The Wayne's World Effect: people doing Borat impressions for years afterward — 'My wife! High five!' Kyle: 'The annoying guy in your friend group for the next 5 years would do it and ruin the character.' Apex Mountain for movies that set off accent frenzies.
• Saying the N word in the rodeo scene (the frat-boy/anti-Borat trifecta — slavery, misogyny, anti-Semitism). Bill mentions it but doesn't really feel defensive on a rewatch — 'they're adults, there's a big-ass camera filming them, those idiots aren't victims.'
• Watching Pam in the Pam tape on screen now feels different. The whole Pam-as-ultimate-prize premise wouldn't land the same in 2026.
• Naked fight on a 50-foot screen vs. on a TV at home — Bill: 'It's almost a what's-aged-the-worst, because it's never going to be the same.' Kyle was in the Chinese Theater for it.

• Bill: Sacha Baron Cohen should have been in the 2006 Best Actor race. Bumps Peter O'Toole (Venus) — 'an old-man award' — for Sacha. The actual nominees: Forest Whitaker (won, Last King of Scotland), Leo (Blood Diamond — Kyle: 'the accent's ridiculous, you laugh at it'), Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson), Will Smith (Pursuit of Happyness). 'Once again, the Academy does not respect comedies — there's no way Borat wasn't one of the five best performances of 2006.' Floats Ken Davidian for Supporting but no room (Alan Arkin wins, Jackie Earle Haley, Djimon Hounsou, Eddie Murphy, Mark Wahlberg).
• Kyle: We as a culture should bring back the kiss-left, kiss-right greeting. 'Quick, crisp, classy, debonair. Hands are way more disgusting than faces — we should just kiss-kiss.' Not just with friends' wives — 'with your boys, like you show up to a fantasy draft and just start knocking out left-right kisses. Isaiah and Magic would do it.' Borat's variant: kiss-kiss and then sometimes a third one straight down the middle on the lips, only with men. 'It's so good.'

• Practically none — but Johnny Depp, George Clooney, and Steve Martin all reportedly wanted to be in the movie because they loved Sacha Baron Cohen. He turned them down. The cast is a pure four-actor unit.
• Director switch: Todd Phillips was the original director (creator of Hangover / Joker / Road Trip) and quit 11 days in after the rodeo scene. Larry Charles came in. 'Probably the right move — it was a huge hit Phillips walked away from, but he had plenty of other movies coming.' Plus Sacha then broke his foot at Garry Shandling's basketball game and they had a 3-month gap.

Winner: Ken Davidian. He just became Azamat. 'The ultimate That Guy — you just see him and go Azamat, Azamat.'

• Kyle: 'Hooey Lewis' (Borat's son in the photo). 'Minimum work, maximum impact — he's just holding Borat in the photographs with his full Dick out, and then in the next picture Borat's face is right next to the penis showing how proud he is of it.' Played by adult porn star Stoney (sixty movies, fifty box covers, 2001 Gay VN nominee).
• Bill's nominees: Luenell as the prostitute; Borat's first wife Oxana; the drunk South Carolina frat guy (B-Lo); the gypsy estate-sale lady; Pamela Anderson; the cute couple at the Jewish B&B. Plus the New Yorker who threatens to pop Borat in the balls — Kyle: 'I had him for a possible Dion Waiters with one line. I like him so much.' Bill: 'Pat Haggerty the humor coach, the suit at the news station — but the B-Lo story just kills me.'

Bill's hottest-take recasting (the missing scene): the movie should have had a Vegas set piece. 'It's a no-brainer. We're driving east-to-west, coming up from Texas — a Vegas casino scene with Borat at the blackjack table or roulette is the easiest 6 minutes they ever could have had.' Kyle: 'He'd take out his bag of pubic hair and try to put that down to double down. The pit boss would come over.' Floats Azamat in the topless pool at the Wynn, the buffets, the mankini. 'Borat's Vegas could be the sequel.'

• Police were called on the production 92 times. The FBI followed Sacha at one point because of reports about a Middle Eastern man driving an ice cream truck through America (post-9/11).
• Sacha lived in the Borat suit for a year and never washed it (per writer Dan Mazer). The film smell was apparently rancid — Bill rates it 9.8 out of Indiana Jones on the on-set body-odor scale.
• Director Todd Phillips quit ~11 days into the shoot, post-rodeo scene. Creative differences plus 'people are trying to kill us.' Larry Charles took over.
• Mid-shoot: Sacha broke his foot playing basketball at Garry Shandling's house. They paused for ~3 months.
• Six lawsuits, all lost: South Carolina frat brothers, subway chicken guy, Baltimore driving instructor (wanted $100K), the New Yorker who said 'I'll pop you in the balls', the etiquette-dinner lady, the Jackson MS Channel 16 producer (claims Borat's appearance got her fired). Their lawyer was a semi-retired guy who used to work for Public Enemy.
• Some of the long-form research lore: the deleted porn-set scene, the 'Hooey Lewis' actor's career arc (Stoney → trans porn star Brittany CoXx), Sacha doing the entire DVD audio commentary in character (per the show, Borat-style narration throughout).
• Pat Haggerty's chalkboard had a darker side with molestation/sexual jokes written on it that the directors may have planted (Pat shows up in 'a stupid blazer with gold buttons, like he's going to a piano recital').
• Kazakhstan changed its national tourism slogan to 'Very Nice' in 2020.
• Kid Rock divorced Pam Anderson because of how he reacted to the movie.
• The Realtors conference scene had to be filmed three times. The first two were engineering lectures in Dallas where the audience didn't react at all.

• Sacha Baron Cohen: Yes. 'The biggest he's ever been after this movie. He could have signed whatever he wanted to do.' The movie gets a Sopranos shout-out; he's everywhere; he breaks character to win the Golden Globe.
• 'Pussy magnets' as a phrase: there's not an actual magnet — they just mean the car. ('Can you install pussy if I give you money? That's such a great bit.')
• Sketch comedy movies: Maybe — Bill: 'is it better than Wayne's World? It's the 2000s version of Wayne's World.'
• Ken Davidian: Yes.
• Socks full of shit (poop bag): Yes.
• Virgin Megastore book-signing assaults: Yes (the Hotel Wellington).
• Luenell: probably yes — bounced around to other roles after.
• Potassium exporters: Best in the world — Kazakhstan, yes.
• Shape-shifting cockroaches: Apex.
• Pamela Anderson: No.
• Naked brawls in movies: 100% yes. (Kyle compares the male-nudity-in-movies field — Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Eastern Promises, Boogie Nights ending — and lands on Borat for non-porn male nudity apex.)
• Movies that set off accent frenzies (the Wayne's World Effect): Yes.

Bill: 'I'm going to probably say Scorsese for this one.' Kyle: 'You'd get to see Borat on cocaine, which is always a plus. And they could do it in Vegas.'

• Bill: Who is the cameraman the whole time? At one point Azamat runs the camera guy into a wall in the naked fight — but somebody is calling that camera. Who is it?
• Bill: Geography of the road trip is wrong — they're in DC, then Mississippi for the Channel 16 scene, then back east to Virginia for the rodeo. Should have gone DC → Virginia → Mississippi.
• Kyle: Why did they blur Sacha's penis? 'If Sacha's all in, like why did they blur it? Was it to make a joke that Borat's penis is big, or did he just not want to show his?' (Bill thinks it's the joke.)
• Bill: The Indiana Jones map sequence at the start has them doing 6 loops through Europe to leave Kazakhstan. Their navigation isn't pristine.
• Kyle: How are the handlers for politicians like Alan Keyes and Bob Barr getting hoodwinked into these interviews? When Alan Keyes is talking about a rubber fist going up his anus, at what point does someone stop the camera? Is Alan Keyes firing somebody after the fact?
• Bill: The bear in the ice cream truck is kind of ridiculous (also under weak link).
• Kyle (under naked-fight nit): Did Azamat wash his ball sack before the fight scene? 'Sacha's putting his face in there 10 times. Did Azamat say I'm going to go wash my grundle?' (Bill: 'This is the only podcast where someone can seamlessly tie Becky Barnett and Azamat together.')
• What ultimately happened to the bag of poop? Was it Sacha's actual poop? You can't flush the bag — you just take it to the curb like dog poop?

They did a sequel ('Borat Subsequent Moviefilm', 2020). Bill on it: 'A weird time for it to come out.' Pre-pandemic 2008-ish was the last possible window for the original premise to work — after that, social media made the unknowing-real-people setup impossible. The South Park guys have said the same thing about doing satire now: 'Reality is what our show used to be.'

• Kyle: The 'let that tongue go' guy from the church scene. 'I'd like him to do a rundown on all the Rewatchables hosts and just get the shit out of them. Sean Fantasy, do you really need all that physical media bullshit? Do you really need K-19: The Widowmaker in 4K? Craig Horlbeck, you don't need a four-hour version of The Dark Knight, let that tongue go. Bill Simmons, you watch Lord of the Rings every Christmas — tongue go.' Bill: 'We've got to add him to the list with Zane and everybody.'
• Bill (winner): What if naked Borat and naked Azamat crashed Doctor Charles Nichols's 1993 International Association of Cardiologists conference in Chicago, and Nichols said 'Ladies and gentlemen, my friend Borat Sagdiyev doesn't feel well'? (Kimble-from-The-Fugitive crossover.) Kyle goes full Kimble: 'I'm sorry, Azamat, I'm in the middle of this speech. Did you kill my wife too? Falsify the research so you can give them Provasic — you switched the samples.'

Bill: Best Adapted Screenplay (the actual nomination it got). Kyle: 'Sacha Baron Cohen, Best Lead Actor.'

• Was the poop in the bag actually Sacha's poop? Was it real poop they got from somewhere else? (The dinner-table lady's reaction is strangely calm.) And what do you do with the poop bag afterwards — you can't flush it.
• How do they pull off the elevator scene with two naked guys? The reactions are weirdly subdued — 'I would be way more horrified.'
• What are the handlers doing with these political interviews? Kyle: 'How does it get to that point with Alan Keyes?'
• Did Azamat thoroughly wash before the fight scene? (Kyle's repeated question.)
• Bill's How-Did-The-Horse-Fall-Over question: at the rodeo. 'It just felt like a miracle.' Kyle agrees — 'and they cut right after it falls.'

• Kyle: The mankini, originally — but after the pod, the Polaroid of Borat's son 'Hooey Lewis' with his big old penis on display, plus the matching one with Borat's face right next to it. Kept on his desk.
• Bill: The Baywatch book — the actual Baywatch book Borat carries with the small towel covering it to make it look like the Quran. 'I'd want the whole package.'

• Coach Finstock from the South Carolina frat boy in the van: 'Do not let a woman ever, ever make you who you are.' (What does that mean? Kyle: 'You do whatever she says — that drunk guy is hammered.')
• Kyle's: 'I like you, I like sex, it's nice.' That's all he's got.

• Bill: 'Best in Show' first, then 'Borat'. 'Christopher Guest first, then Borat.'
• Kyle: 'Brüno' (2009). Hadn't been talked about much, but some amazing scenes — including a Bruno fellatio sequence with a psychic medium where the deceased ex-boyfriend is summoned. Not as good as Borat but still funny.

Sacha Baron Cohen. Easy. 'Borat. So easy.'