Driver's ed teacher sues 'Borat' producers, says they tricked him

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A driving instructor has sued the makers of the movie "Borat," accusing them of lying to him about the nature of the crass comedy by telling him he'd be in a documentary about the integration of immigrants into US life. The lawsuit was brought Tuesday by lawyers for Michael Psenicska, a Baltimore high school mathematics teacher who has owned a driving school in Perry Hall, Maryland, for the last 32 years. The suit, filed in US District Court in Manhattan, seeks $100,000 (€67,838) in compensatory damages and unspecified punitive damages, saying the hit movie earned hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. It says Psenicska is entitled to damages because defendants including producer Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. and star Sacha Baron Cohen used images of him extensively in advertising the film, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." The 2006 film, in which Cohen plays an uncouth Kazakh journalist traveling across America in pursuit of Pamela Anderson, has led to several lawsuits and criticism that it depicts Kazakhstan as bigoted and backward. Others who have sued include Southern conservatives, frat boys, Romanian villagers and a businessman seen fleeing from a hug from the British comedian.