"I was inspired by the movie Beware of the Car
The plot of the criminal-adventurous comedy "Gel" was based on a real story from the life of a Yaroslavl distiller. The director of the film, which had just won a prize at the Window to Europe Film Festival in Vyborg, told Izvestia where he overheard the plot of the future hit, why the casting failure was a great success for Ilya Malakov and how many jokes you can come up with about the color of a single luxury car.
"Our car is a girl, let's make it a vivid image"
— You are well known for both "JUZZZ" and "High Season". And there are near-criminal plots everywhere, just like in "Gel". Did it happen by accident?
— I have two more very important projects for me: the series "The Germans", thanks to which I became known in professional circles as an interesting director. This is an anti-corruption detective story, which also has a criminal component, but it is in the background. And the full-length drama "One Day" is very personal and painful for me. We received two awards for it at the Vyborg Festival in 2023. But they really know me more from the TV series "JUZZZ", which makes me feel like I'm an expert on crime dramas. I've shot 15 films, of which there are only three crime dramas. And the "high season" is, as many say, the "BUZZ" in Vietnam.
— "Gelya" is not a drama at all, but a comedy!
— Yes, it's a different genre. Although, of course, there are similar characters and dramatic solutions. There's my handwriting. But it is perceived in a completely different way.: This is a classic road movie.
— There are features of the buddy movie.
"What's a buddy movie?"
— Well, such a "fraternal" movie.
— In the sense of a bromance? Well, yes, it's a story for two. The two characters collide in a common interest, in a central collision, and over the course of the story become friends and partners.
— Isn't "Gela" herself also the hero of the film? And the main question is: what color is it?
— We don't know what color it is. We have a scene where a traffic police crew is chasing a Gel, and a policeman says through a megaphone: "A Hyundai, number so-and-so, stop." Usually, you need to add to this what color the car is, and the policeman begins to list his associations: the colors of gasoline stains on asphalt, scales of minnow, and so on. This, by the way, was an improvisation by actor Egor Shchedrov. The car is covered with a film that changes color very much based on the lighting. It's one color at night, another color during the day. Then pink, then mother-of-pearl, then blue, then purple, then something else.
Production designer Polina Chereda said: "Our car is a girl, let's make her a vivid image so that she will be remembered by the audience as a heroine, like in her time "black boomer", so that "Gelya" also becomes something of a household name."
"Hijackers have their own castes"
— And how did the two antipode heroes appear?
— Let's start with the fact that this whole story was overheard in the legendary Yaroslavl cafe "Actor" in 2014. Until recently, it was the main place of Yaroslavl's cinematic hangout, created by Yuri Mikhailovich Vaksman. I used to sit there with my laptop, work, write something. Many screenwriters have this feature: you hear something interesting at the next table and then you take it into your work.
And now I hear: one of my friends is telling someone a story about a distiller. It turns out that the scheme is like this. The car is stolen, put in a septic tank, it waits there for a month or six months until it is sold. Then the distiller picks it up and takes it to the remake or directly to the client. Hijackers have their own castes. Hijacking specialists are more valuable, they are not "wasted" on driving. Distillers are a lower caste. Most of the time, they don't even know what kind of car it is or who is connected to it, they are being used, as they say, "in the dark." So, the story was about a certain distiller San.The trucker. A family man, four children, two large loans, the only earner, always on flights. He moved cars between flights.
Once he took a wheelbarrow that was being herded by the police, a special operation of the State Drug Control. He flew in abruptly, went to jail: there were illegal substances in large quantities in the car.
I was interested in this character. Just like Yuri Detochkin: "He's to blame, of course, but he's not to blame." On the one hand, he is a family man with a reputation for being a very proper person. On the other hand, he deals with stolen cars. I found this contrast very cinematic and appropriate for a sitcom. I decided to record this story. Just a few lines about such a hero. A few years later, I wrote another page of text. Each scriptwriter has about 100 such short requests on his computer. It's been almost 10 years since this story found its producer, Georgy Shabanov. So I sat down to write the script.
If there is a hero in a criminal story and with him a certain axis of evil, it needs to be countered somehow. Usually, a certain valiant policeman takes on the role of a fighter for justice. That's how Captain Orekhov appeared — a man who is in the system, but does not agree with it when the law is violated before his eyes. And so we have a criminal group of bad cops that a good one accidentally gets into. He understands where he is, but he does not give up and does not close his eyes, even though he is in the minority.
The policeman Orekhov and the sledge driver have a common interest. The distiller unwittingly became a drug courier and now just wants to get to his wife's birth to see his long-awaited son. The policeman wants to find out who ordered the theft and, consequently, the owners of the prohibited goods. The heroes make a deal. If they solve the crime, one will punish the criminals, and the other will go into labor, fulfilling the promise made to his wife.
— They say Ilya Malakov auditioned for one project, and eventually got a role in "Gel".
— I was casting for the project "High Season". Ilya was auditioning for the lead role. But as soon as he started playing, I immediately realized that this was Sanya from Geli. Which is what I told him after the "stop" command: "Ilya, don't worry. I won't take you in the "High Season". But I really want to cast you in another movie." That's how Ilya became the main character.
I've been friends with Anton Vasiliev, who played Orekhov, for a long time. He is probably one of the most famous film police officers in the country, with eight seasons of the Nevsky TV series under his belt. In Zhora Kryzhovnikov's "The Word of a Kid" he played a policeman. There's an investigator in Khrustalny who's looking for a maniac.
Anton does not want to be a hostage of this role. That's why I heard "no" at first. We had more than one long conversation "in the kitchen," and at some point I convinced him that this story required a completely different existence from him. It's a comedy. He played the gloomy sled ten times, but not the funny one. We agreed that he should not play a funny, but rather a charming policeman who gets into unusual, even fabulous, collisions. And that was the end of it. They invented a mustache for him, a cap that he never takes off. He doesn't have any special speech characteristics, but there is one saying. Every detective has one. Poirot's, or Peter Falk's hero, whatever his name was...
— Columbo!
— Exactly! Anyway, Anton and I remembered how we shot the movie "One Day" in Yelets and met a local businessman there. A very serious person who helped us a lot in organizing the filming. When we asked him about something impossible, like blowing up a quarry rock in the frame, he said, "We can work it out." We gave this phrase to Anton's character, Orekhov. At the same time, he can't really "solve" anything for the entire film until the very last scene, but in the end, a difficult decision for him allows the film to have a bright ending.
"The role of the reservation is brilliantly played by the city of Vyborg"
— Did you have any references?
— I'm afraid to say "Beware of the car" because it's too great a movie to compare it. But we're talking about what inspired me.
— And a little "Fast and Furious"?
"If only a little." There are chases, fights, and shootings in the film, but the main thing is not the form of the story, but the story itself. Our film is a journey of the heroes to the fabulous reservation of the last bandits. The role of the reservation is brilliantly played by the city of Vyborg with all its authentic texture, which is perfectly combined with colorful characters. For example, with Buba, played by Anton Kuznetsov, who played the main role in my "Juzzze". Buba is a kind of Robber Nightingale. Or Koshchei the Immortal. Overseer of the kingdom-the kingdom of the "last of the Mohicans".
— Other directors are making films based on your scripts. Do you have any jealousy in such cases?
— There was only one situation in my career when I had a script, but they couldn't approve me as a director and took another one. The series "Seagulls" is a sports drama about a women's volleyball team from Kaliningrad. I was really hurt at the time. But when you don't write a script for yourself from the beginning, you perceive it differently and let it go. However, I also wrote "The Surgeon" with the idea that I would put it on, but it didn't work out. Directed by Ilya Ermolov, and judging by the audience's reaction and ratings, the series turned out well. So that's how it was supposed to be.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
