A RassKuzik about the ugly face of war, a beard and Don Juan

It was late autumn. Everyone was terribly afraid it would snow. But, as if by magic, the snow only fell on the very last day of filming, on the way back to Petersburg, when the shooting of "The Hunt" was already finished... ...And only two months earlier I was drinking coffee at Lenfilm when Aleksandr Rogozhkin came up to me. Clearing his throat as always — "Ahem-ahem…" — he began: "Vitya, I've written a part for you..." Sasha and I had known each other since '84, when he was shooting his first feature film, "For the Sake of a Few Lines". Back then he came up to me just the same way, went "Ahem-ahem…" and said: "Vitya, I've got a part for a German gamekeeper — you must play the ugly face of war." "The ugly face of war?" I was delighted. "Of course, Sasha!" I got the script and ran home to read the story "about the ugly face," where of course I had the lead and, covered in scars, I would tell everything about the war!!! Having read it, I was baffled: my hero, a young German lad, didn't have a single line. And only at the very end did he ask: "Geben Sie mir, bitte, ein Zigarette?" — that is, "Got a smoke?" I immediately started ringing Sasha: "Sasha, I don't even have any text. How am I supposed to play 'the ugly face of war'?" "Ahem-ahem," answered Sasha, "like Marlon Brando in 'Apocalypse' — do you remember his neck?" "I do!" I nodded. ... The bus rolled on... and on... we had already passed the shop we used to go to in the evenings, passed Priozersk. What bliss to have a nap!... Good thing I saved gamekeeper Lyosha — they won't lock him up now, he'll go on living as he did, looking after the forest... Who got into the fridge and killed the lights? That's it. I think I'm falling asleep… — "Bang!" That was a three-litre jar of honey that Ville had smashed. Seeing my Finnish friend's crestfallen face, I realised that my own three-litre jar would end up half empty. "It was good honey," Ville lamented, "I wanted to make my mum happy!" That's it, sleep, sleep... Honey? And why did we buy honey? Ah, he was a forester too, a friend of gamekeeper Lyosha — what an apiary he had! "Sleep, only sleep..." "I've written the lead role for you," Sasha went on. "He's a gamekeeper..." "The ugly face of war again?" I asked. "No, he's our gamekeeper, Кузьмич — only he's got a beard." Everything inside me went cold; by then I still didn't know whether I could grow a beard or not. "And when's the shooting?" I asked in a sinking voice. "In about a month!" Sasha stated. I remembered the fairy tale where G. Vitsin played a nobleman and, by the sovereign's decree, grew a nose. "In a month? I'll try!" I looked devotedly at Rogozhkin and went off to grow a beard. The bus kept rolling on and on. I scratched my full beard. Oh, and my fingers are all in place — all ten of them. Thank God! How did he not bite them off? The bear was brought at the very start and we filmed for five days. When they took him out of the big iron cage, Rogozhkin grumbled: "Ahem-ahem! What sort of bear is this? He's only 70–80 kilos, and he ought to be big — four or five hundred kilos." The people with the bear, the "trainers," explained to Sasha that the bear was a two-year-old. A big bear has a completely different notion of the world: he's the boss among animals and people, he can't be filmed because he's unmanageable! But little Borya can. At that point the film's director of production, Mikhail Kirilyuk, joined the argument: "And how much does this bear eat?" "Borya?" the trainers asked back. "Yes, Borya — how many kilos of meat does he get through in a day?" Kirilyuk wouldn't let up. "About 8–10 kilos," the "people with the bear" hesitated. "Ten times five, so-so. That's a lot! Sasha, can't we do without the bear?" the manager asked Rogozhkin. "Do what you like! Ahem-ahem! This is a small bear, I need a big one," Sasha muttered. "Well, knock about 3 kilos off 'your own' figure, or you'll eat up the whole film budget!" the manager pressed the trainers. "And how much meat does a big bear eat?" "Fifty kilos, well, forty…" the glum trainers answered. "What a marvellous bear they've brought us! Borya! Wonderful!!!" cried Kirilyuk. "Sasha, what a good bear Borya is!" "Ahem-ahem!" said Rogozhkin, and half a day later agreed that this bear would do. In that time Borya had managed to foul everything around him, and even marked Rogozhkin a couple of times. First we shot the bathhouse scene — the bear climbs in through the window — it all went smoothly, and everyone was pleased: "What a good bear Borya is! What splendid trainers!" Kirilyuk was jubilant! The next day we shot the Polaroid scene, where the "hunters" have their picture taken with the sleepy bear. "We need a bottle of cognac," the proud trainers said. "What for?" the manager fumed. "You want the bear to sleep. He needs a bottle." "But that wasn't our agreement! He already eats 50 kilos of meat," Kirilyuk snorted. "Ahem-ahem!" said Rogozhkin. "Fine, you'll have your bottle!" Kirilyuk snapped and headed off to his cottage. The bear drank, but wouldn't go to sleep. Quite the opposite — his mood turned decidedly frisky, he started bothering everyone and humming some sort of bear songs. "We need another bottle. Your cognac must be poor quality, it's not doing the trick!" the trainers announced. Kirilyuk went blue, then crimson, and trudged off to the cottage in silence. The second bottle knocked the beast out... "Mum! Look, it's starting to snow!" said Zhenya, Strugachyov's daughter, sitting at the back of the bus. "Hush, don't wake Daddy," whispered Tanya, Semyon's wife. "See, all the uncles are asleep..." "Mu-um!" bawled Semyon Strugachyov, and the Polaroid fell. "He nipped me!" But Borya hadn't managed it. Semyon proved quicker. "Why does the bear sit still for everyone, but nips you, Semyon?" Rogozhkin coughed. "I don't know!" Semyon panted, coming back to himself. "The bear must be an anti-Semite," I joked, having got into the role of Кузьмич the joker. Everyone laughed, but Semyon started somehow keeping his distance from the bear. One shot didn't make it into the film: a rock garden, Кузьмич meditating, and beside him the bear meditating too. To keep Borya sitting quietly he had to be given something to do. Bears, like children, can't stand being idle. The trainers took the muzzle off the bear and quickly ran off... Out of fear, one on one with the bear, I gave him my hand. Borya began blissfully sucking my finger, and, hoping they'd film it quickly, I got drawn "into the game." I passed him finger after finger. But at some point I gave him a wet one. Borya didn't like that. He nipped me! But gently, as a warning — give me a dry one! But where's a dry one? The dry ones had run out! Yet the shot didn't make it into the film not because of me and my fingers. When they developed the film, it turned out that a little fellow was scurrying about in the background. He ruined a lot of our shots. At first everyone blamed the administration — why do outsiders get onto the set? The set was fenced off, marker flags put up. They bring in the footage, develop it — again there's a little fellow scurrying in the background. And the main thing was, no one saw him during the shoot. I decided to track him down. At a moment when I wasn't in the shot, I slipped off into the bushes. I look — there stands this character, poking at a cowpat with a little stick, pulling something odd out from under it and quickly hiding it in a sack. "A spy!" I thought, and decided to follow him. The spy walked to the pioneer camp where we were staying and disappeared into the administration cottage. "Bychkov, get in the shot!!!" I heard Rogozhkin's voice and ran off to the set. I filmed until evening, but the thought of the man with the little stick wouldn't leave me. Who was he? After supper I sneaked into the administration cottage, opened the door a crack, and clouds of smoke rolled out at me. "The spies are on fire!" I thought. A little door under the stairs opened a crack, and out lolled a face with a joint between its teeth. It was the very man I had only seen from behind. "Good Lord, it's Lyokha Poluyan!" "Кузьмич, you swine, turned yourself into a cop!" came Poluyan's slightly hoarse voice. The bus stopped and Lyokha tumbled out into the open, a huge sack in his hand. Amid the falling snow, Lyokha with his sack looked like a lost Father Frost. "This is my stop," Poluyan said with a smile, said goodbye, winked at me and set off for the metro. The "spy" and I were bound by a secret. Remember the shot where Кузьмич and Raivo, after a night out with the milkmaids, find a man in the police van. Once freed, he takes a long, happy leak on the road, watching the departing vehicle. That's the actor — Lyokha Poluyan. Lyokha, by the way, dubbed Vitya Sukhorukov in "Brother," and did it so vividly and beautifully that Viktor himself was pleased. But let's return to the smoke and the cubbyhole under the stairs. In a place like that only Raskolnikov or Pinocchio could have lived. "Lyokha, why do you live here? Come to us at once, we've got plenty of room. There you go, the administration — they've housed an actor!" I fumed. "Come off it, old man, there are so many radiators in here!" Lyokha grinned. "And what have the radiators got to do with it?" "Come on! While you're off filming, I'm making money here! Take a look!" Lyokha lifted the rags and I saw that the whole cubbyhole was simply festooned with radiators. And on them... the very things he'd been digging out from under the cowpats. "Mush-rooms! Hallucinogenic ones!" Lyokha whispered. "So many of them! I'm drying them, I'll go to the city and sell them!" Puffing on his joint, Lyokha started checking the mushrooms. The ready ones he put into a huge kit bag that already held, at a rough guess, about 5 kilos, and the ones not ready he lovingly tucked closer to the radiator. Watching his unhurried "dance," I thought: "Some kind of Castaneda!" "Say hi to Don Juan!" I said goodbye and went out. Smoke was still pouring from the administration cottage, with giggles and the incoherent muttering of the administration... P.S.: We shot the film "Peculiarities of the National Hunt" in Priozersk, on the border with Karelia. The cold was dreadful. We stayed in a pioneer camp for troubled teenagers where, back in the '80s, Dinara Asanova filmed one of my favourite films, "The Lads". P.S. 2: Since Lyokha had acted in "The Lads," he evidently knew the area. P.S. 3: Lyokha settled down long ago, cherishes his wife, loves his children. Almost 15 years have passed since "The Hunt," and Lyokha became famous: the role of the maniac policeman in Balabanov's film "Cargo 200" brought him renown — but a strange, nationwide fame. Why strange? Fame is that sort of girl in general — a strange one… After Кузьмич, people were forever trying to get me drunk; Lyokha they're forever trying to beat up. Folks, leave Poluyan alone! He's a good man. P.S. 3: Borya the clubfooted actor came to a bad end. There are two versions. One: Borya was made to work in the city park, he grew up, got hooked on ice cream, and in time started lunging at children, seeing his favourite treat. He was shot. The second version goes: his owners hauled Borya to a criminal showdown to scare the "competitors," and there he fell "a brave death" from a police bullet. They say the "lads" buried him with honours, even put up a monument with the epitaph: "Boris, you were a fine lad, you loved she-bears and the movies," and so on.