Twenty minutes into last night’s North American red carpet premiere of “Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”, the film began to visibly sputter on the screen and go off its track. The screen went black and the sold out audience cried out a wave of disappointment and frustration. An attendant came out on stage and explained that the technical delay would only be a few moments, but the delay was more serious than anyone thought and as the night passed it would bring filmmakers Michael Moore, Larry Charles, and “Borat” himself up on stage to fill out the evening.

The first Midnight Madness screening for the Toronto International Film Festival had started out really well. Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen arrived at the red carpet already dressed and immersed as his Borat character, riding in on a horse-drawn cart driven by two women dressed in Kazakhstan costumes. He stepped down into a throng of TV crews representing every major and minor network in Canada and immediately answered interviews “in character”, glad-handing everyone in sight in that uncomfortably affectionate way he’s known to do.

Both the ticket-holders line and the rush line (where hopefuls can wait to see if there are any empty seats that might magically be found) both stretched around the block despite the movie’s sold-out status. As predicted, there were several people walking the lines, offering to pay three times or five times the price for a ticket.

When I bought my own ticket at the box office over a week ago, the festival staff had warned me to “guard it with your life” and Canada AM film critic Richard Crouse explained to me that the film was not be screened for the press and due to its possibly controversial nature, there were a number of critics and reporters eager to get their hands on one of the tickets sold to the public.

Once everyone was settled inside the Ryerson Theatre, there was a constant audible buzz of excitement that filled the two story cinema. Word quickly spread that Fahrenheit 9/11 filmmaker Michael Moore was sitting in the reserved seat section.

When program director Colin Geddes took the stage and introduced “Borat” himself, he was greeted with hoots, screams, and cheers. Still completely immersed in character, Cohen pulled out a Canadian and a Kazakhstan flag, kissed them both and waved them in a greeting before leaving the stage to grab a seat at the back.

The movie is based on a skit from the television series “Ali G” where Borat Sagdiyev is a television reporter from a fictional version of the Eurasian country of Kazakhstan. The premise is that he flies to the United States to interview people about western culture and values and the inevitable conflicts between his own beliefs and values, which are shockingly racist, sexist, hateful, and often downright bizarre, provide a unique slice of politically incorrect humour mixed with juvenile, collegiate gags.

The twist is that his interviews are with real subjects who are, for lack of a better word, ambushed. They are completely unaware that they are part of skit for late-night television and when Borat and his camera crew arrive at their door, they treat him like the real thing. The reaction of these people to where the interview goes is as much the cause for laughs as Cohen’s own portrayal and physical performance of this unique character who can seem childlike, sweet, and eager to please at one moment and bizarrely focused on his own virility and strong, hateful beliefs the next.

In the movie we get a brief glimpse of his home town. It’s a poor town filled with dilapidated homes and everyone in different stages of poor health. It’s a society that believes that letting a woman drive is bound to lead to a catastrophe, that “the jew” is as much a social ill as crime and poverty, and the most important thing in the way a man carries himself is his virility. One of the biggest laughs is a scene where Borat appears in bright yellow thong bathing suit that circles the trunk of his body, from neck down and through his legs, like dental floss. Borat is considered to be a wealthy man in his home town. In a race to improve property values with his neighbour, he first installs a glass window, then a step, and eventually wins by purchasing a tape cassette recorder which no one in town can afford.

His first interview in the United States is with a man who teaches corporate employees lessons in humour, in how to tell jokes and ice breakers at social functions. Borat meets with him under the pretense of learning to understand western humour. The instructor began by explaining there were certain subjects that were acceptable and some that were clearly not. Although he was visibly uncertain as to what to make of Borat, the instructor warmly and optimistically jumped into the lesson. When Borat asked him if it was okay to make a joke about someone’s mother-in-law, the instructor brightened almost in relief and explained that, actually, yes jokes about mothers-in-law were actually quite popular and suitable. Borat then launched into a story about having sex with his mother-in-law and you could almost hear the internal alarms and confusion as the instructor tried to figure out how to recover from this and steer Borat back on point. Clearly there were no ideas leaping to mind.

These are the kind of interviews Borat is known for and it got big laughs. Unfortunately it was in the middle of this first interview that the movie skipped and went black.

Immediately Cohen stood up as Borat at the back of the theatre and apologized for the poor quality of film stock which he said was made in Kazakhstan and was made with “strong horse glue”. He then asked everyone to “talk sexy amongst yourselves” until it was fixed.

An attendant leaped up on stage and said it would be just a few minutes. The cacophony of audience chatting that followed was mostly made up of Borat impersonations and favourite quotes from the TV series.

Twenty minutes later, the movie’s director Larry Charles, who also directs the TV series Curb Your Enthusiasm and wrote many of the Seinfeld episodes, jumped up on stage with Michael Moore. Moore explained that, having been a projectionist in a former life, he went up to the booth to look for himself and that the problem was with the projector, not the film, that a specific part had blown. Fortunately, he remembered that we Canadians don’t lock out doors (a nod to Bowling For Columbine) and so sent out two Americans to the nearest theatre, the Elgin, to steal the needed part from its projector. Assuming that they don’t get arrested by the RCMP he said, it should only be a few minutes more till the movie would start up again. Until then, he and Larry Charles were happy to answer questions about “anything”.

They took the opportunity to single out high-power Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel in the audience, who immediately stepped up to the edge of the top balcony to scream out to the audience below. Moore explained that this Ari in the house with us was the inspiration for the character Ari Gold on the TV series Entourage. Jeremy Piven recently won an Emmy for playing the series-stealing character. Having now seen the real Ari, I can say the resemblance is uncanny. If you had told me that was Jeremy Piven yelling out crazily, I would have believed it.

Among the questions put to the two men:

Moore was asked if it was past his bedtime, he replied that he doesn’t sleep, that you can’t sleep if you’re American these days.

Larry Charles was asked if his beard was real or if he was wearing a disguise, to which he answered “both”.

Moore was asked if he had seen Team America: World Police, the satirical string puppet movie made by the creators of South Park. Moore said that he hadn’t actually seen the movie, but understood that he is blown up in it and for that reason alone it’s something he should probably watch.

Larry Charles was asked if Cohen crossed the Canadian border in his Borat character. Charles replied that he knew no one named Sacha Baron Cohen, only “Borat” and that they had to smuggle him through customs in the trunk of a car, under a blanket.

Moore was asked if he’d be willing to team up with Borat on a documentary and both he and Larry Charles seemed genuinely intrigued by the idea to promise to talk about it after the screening.

The session quickly degraded into audience questions like “Have you seen Snakes On A Plane?” “What’s your favourite Cheers episode?”, etc.

Moore interrupted to take a quick poll of the audience to see who thought we’d get to finish the film. When only a minority of people stuck up their hands, he cried out “The conservative government had crushed the Canadian’s optimism!”. He then asked why, why did we vote in a conservative government, explaining that he understood that we wanted to punish Martin, but was this really the way to do it? With most of the audience made up of Toronto citizens (a city which voted heavily for the Liberals) he didn’t get much of an argument back.

Moore took a moment to testify that, as a filmmaker who has brought all of his films to the Toronto International Film Festival, he has never in the history of the festival heard of a problem with a projector, of any screening suffering technical difficulties. He joked that the festival has an entire shift of employees who’s sole job is to just clean all the projector parts to perfection.

It was shortly after this that program director Colin Geddes took to the stage to explain that, bad news, the projector could not be brought back to life and the screening was to be moved to the following night at another theatre. This was met with a lot of moaning.

Geddes then offered to still honor the Q & A with Borat himself who took the stage. He answered a few simple questions, but was mostly distracted by a gaggle of four girls sitting next to me on the front row. They were screaming, giggling pillars that went into fits of laughter over everything Borat did. When he asked them “Why is it you do not wear socks?” and flirted with them by asking them “How much? (for sex)” it sent them flying. I had to follow behind them later as we all left the building and it’s great to see four friends enjoying themselves so much. They’ll be talking about this for weeks.

Borat finished the night by turning on progamme director Colin Geddes and demanding that everyone in the theatre get a refund, and Geddes confirmed that if you didn’t want to use the ticket stubs to go to the rescheduled screening of the movie, you could take it to the box office for a full refund.

“Because if you do not” Borat boomed out over the audience, “I will crush you, I will crush the film festival”. Tremendous applause.