Sacha Baron Cohen

Fictional Kazakh reporter Borat Sagdiyev, who made movie audiences laugh and cringe as he toured the United States, is going into print with a book of travel advice. Borat, the creation of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, has signed a book deal with Flying Dolphin Press, an imprint of Random House Inc.'s Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group. The book, due this fall, will be two texts in one -- one half a guide to the U.S. for Kazakhs, the other a guide to Kazakhstan for Westerners.

IN the ground floor lobby of the Kodak Theatre, less than an hour before the Academy Awards are set to begin, a crowd mills and buzzes around a stationary center -- Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz, with their respective posses, are separately holding court. To a knot of young women, Diaz performs a fairly biting parody of herself, talking at a thousand words a second, gesticulating wildly. "I gotta get the ... out of this dress, that's all I know."

WHEN you think of Ken Davitian, you probably think of him naked, obese and pendulous, nearly suffocating the tall but waifish Sacha Baron Cohen in their famous naked hotel room fight in the hit movie "Borat." But there is so much more to Davitian, the 53-year-old actor who so completely inhabited the part of Borat's humorless Kazakh producer Azamat Bagatov that industry people with whom he is taking meetings even now don't realize he is a thoroughly local American actor.

But what about Borat? Much to the relief, no doubt, of ABC's standards department, Sacha Baron Cohen will not be a presenter at this year's Academy Awards. "He was asked," Oscar broadcast producer Laura Ziskin said Friday, "but he declined." Baron Cohen has been reluctant to make appearances as himself, preferring to do interviews as Borat Sagdiyev, star of the faux documentary, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan."

WHEN it was revealed in 2003 that William J. Bennett, author of "The Book of Virtues," had a secret gambling habit, more than one commentator termed it a delicious irony, and it was indeed a pleasure to see a sanctimonious scold get his comeuppance. But it wasn't irony, just hypocrisy. It was ironic when, on "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart commended Bennett for his indignation, and for "standing up to the William Bennetts of the world."

British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has signed a deal to make "Borat 2," a sequel to the hit film about an intrepid Kazakh journalist's road trip across America, News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said Thursday. "He's signed up to do a sequel for us," Murdoch told reporters.

OSCAR organizers are not, of course, required to reserve a role at the telecast for Sacha Baron Cohen. After all, there's always the chance that he may turn up in character as the bumbling, impossibly swarthy Kazakh reporter Borat Sagdiyev and unsettle the tuxedoed attendees by offering one of his heavily accented and characteristically inappropriate greetings, such as "Good evening, gentlemen and prostitutes!"

Maybe it's another sign of the approaching apocalypse or simply a signpost along the evolutionary trail of comedy screenwriting, but "Borat" -- a film that relies heavily on the unscripted reactions of nonactors -- had no fewer than four screenwriters, including the hit film's star, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

OK, so I have to admit -- it was a little disconcerting to see Sacha Baron Cohen without his "Borat" mustache.