I was warned well in advance that Sacha Baren Cohen is extremely difficult on the art department. I saw the distant vietnam gaze in the eye of the art director from the movie. He's just very particular and wants to make sure everything is done right. We were creating the news station in Kazakhstan that Borat supposedly broadcasts from.
The production designer was on a vacation in Canyon Ranch and wasn't even accessible by phone. He would return the night before we were shooting so I handled every aspect of the design and made it appear is if he were there the entire week of prep.
Tacky is a difficult thing to do. I do "pretty" very well and I'm sure many people do, but there is an art form to making something look genuinely tacky. I didn't even know where to begin. So I chose my two least favorite colors: teal and peach. And then it just flowed out of me. Notice the map (all writing was in Kazakh) with Kazakhstan enlarged... and the clocks on the walls in different countries, but none of the times were consistent. All of the beta tape labels were hand-written.
Sacha didn't want to come and see the set as it was progressing. So it better be right because there wouldn't be any time to change anything. There actually was a lot more to it, but all he wanted to do was take a few pieces away. And then he brought the poor art director of the movie in to show him the shade of green that we used. He made him repaint the set next door a third time to match ours because he loved it so much. He did throw me a curve ball and said "where are the Kazakh cigarettes? They're supposed to be here!". I was panicked, was I supposed to have those? There really wouldn't be enough time to have those made. And then, he laughed and pulled them out of his pocket - totally messing with me.
Working with a live cow was exciting (I love cows) until it peed about 40 gallons on the set and that carpet was just soaked. Larry Charles was the director and it was awesome to be with him when his show "Entourage" won an Emmy that night while we were shooting. And of course, working with Sacha was fascinating. I had a conversation with him with a British accent and once he got into wardrobe, he remained in character and I had a full conversation with Borat. He's also very nervous while he's acting and made the entire crew (with the exception of the director and camera people) wait outside.
They loved the set design so much that they asked the production designer (who will remain nameless) to do their next film, Bruno. I'll admit that I'm a little bitter about this because he took full credit and I did the ENTIRE THING! And even more insulting, he didn't even have me set decorate that one. Grrrrr.
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