Behind the Schemes

Newsweek, October, 2006 by Devin Gordon

He arrives at the very last second for his interviews, and he doesn't stick around afterward for small talk. As soon as the camera's off, he vanishes. "His crew wouldn't let anybody near the guy," says Jim Sell, a car salesman at the Criswell Dealership in Gaithersburg, Md. About 18 months ago, Borat Sagdiyev, a "TV journalist from Kazakhstan" who's actually an English guerrilla comedian named Sacha Baron Cohen, visited Sell to buy a vehicle for a "documentary" he was making about his experiences driving across America.

"We had to move to a remote area on the lot," says Sell, "and now I understand why." After a few hours, during which Borat, cameras rolling, requested a car with a "p---y magnet" and tried to buy a $70,000 Hummer for $600, the strange visitor was gone. Later,...

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