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Today we have a meeting with the cinema and theater actor,
the honored artist of the Soviet Union, one of the most demanded among the Soviet actors
Lev Konstatinovich Durov in connection with his 80th birthday.
Thank you
Lev Durov will celebrate with the Shakespeares The Tempest where he will play Prospero.
Lev Durov, Director, actor, teacher
On the eve of this whole affair, I somehow managed to be shot in the movie,
to write a new book and now I am directing and playing in a new performance.
I am not alone.
It was not my initiative to stage The Tempest, but the idea of Drevalev,
and it is just impossible to refuse, because it is Shakespeare, and such a role,
and in addition he started all this because of me, but offered to stage it together.
This is the story. My book tuned out to be funny.
I have 25 bone fractures..
Why arent you laughing? Where is the applause?
None of you has 25 fractures.
When I recently broke my foot I realized that it is the 25th fracture, there is a jubilee,
so I decided to write a book about all these fractures.
Not in the literal sense.
I remember when the first of them happened.
The first one was in the dovecote where I was fighting with a driver,
he was very big, and I was very skinny, but strong, so decided to fight with him,
I knew what to do, to throw him, but my foot got trapped in a dint, so cracků this was the first one.
But I am not writing about this.
I write about the courtyard life.
Now we do not have this notion.
Rarely. There are only small playgrounds, but generally people rarely go to the courtyard.
And previously courtyard was a life of its own.
The weekend before had only one day, so everybody went outside, adults were playing chess or cards,
but cards very rarely, domino, while young people were playing some other games
that do not even exist anymore.
You, young people, do not even understand these names.
Once, when I was in the Sklifosofsky Medical Institute,
my doctor, very handsome and tall, visited me and said:
Durov, please sell us your skeleton - What? Right now?
"No, when you die. We will sign a contract.
You will get some money in advance, but when you die we will get your skeleton.
You know, you have so many fractures, it is very useful educational illustration.
I asked how much, turned out to be 300 rubles.
I asked if I can think for 10 minutes and then said that I would like to keep my skeleton for myself.
This is how the title of the book was born in the Shakespearean way
There is no sadder story in the world than the story of my skeleton.
So I kept my skeleton.
This is my book.
Lev Konstantinovich, this is all about your book, we will have a look at it later if you do not mind.
But I would like to asků
Ask, ask
For more than 40 years you work in Moscow theater on Malaya Bronnaya
and even were its artistic director for some time.
Not really artistic director.
As far as I know, you were personally invited there by Anatoly Efros,
and you theatrical destiny is tightly connected to that man.
You worked together for a long time, more than 30 years.
37.
37 years. Perhaps, you consider him your teacher?
Of course. Now this word is too wide-spread genius.
Everybody is a genius now, everybody is a star.
But he is really a genius.
I called him the Pushkin of theater directing.
At one point people started to mock the Stanislavsky system, in MKhAT, they were looking for mew images.
But they were laughing in vain, because a lot was lost,
although in the West, in America they used the Stanislavsky system,
and even some Hollywood actors followed this system.
In my formulation, Stanislavsky created a periodical system for the theater,
while Efros got to the level of atoms.
Psychological level, what is happening between us not physically, but internally.
We talk to each other, but we still influence each other, something is happening between us.
So Efros was a master of this.
Lev Konstatinovich, you belong to this category or actors who got everything in their life
love, recognition, and all this during your active creative life.
You spent about 60 years in the movies, you have about 200 roles in the movies
it is even difficult to imagine that one can have time to do all this. How did you manage?
I dont know, they invited me, so I managed.
Maybe there is some secret. Is it professionalism?
You know, once journalists were asking me "In which movies are you starring now?,"
and at that moment Valya Smirnitsky was passing by and replied
"You should better ask in which he is now starring now!"
Well, it just went that way. I don't know.
I did not have big failures.
Some of the roles were not very important, so it did not make a difference to take it or not.
But you know, in this profession, if you refuse for a couple of times,
they will think that you always refuse.
But do you have most favorite roles? Or maybe it is yet to come?
When I am asked which role I would like to play, I have ready answers for this. 85 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:54,000 I don't know. From the films I like very much Farwell, on Rasputin, made by Elem Klimov.
You are a person who spent so many years with cinema.
And contemporary cinema develops according to the different lines,
it is different from before so many people, even young people, feel certain nostalgia for the old movies.
How do you like the new cinema?
It is different. It depends.
The time is different. It is not that the cinema changes by itself.
The time is changing, the new tastes appear, something new is born.
There are different movies.
Excuse me, I am the member of the Cinematographic Academy, I receive numerous movies,
because I do not have time to go to the cinemas, so I watch it at home.
If out of 12 films 4 or 5 are good, it is already not bad.
But I can say why people watch Soviet movies with pleasure.
It is because they are about good, despite all their naivety, we were ironical about it ourselves,
when the country had nothing to eat we had The Cossack of Kuban.
When we were staging "Brother Alyosha" where I wan playing Snigirev, one of my best,
as I think, roles in the theatre, and Bondarchuk came in, very upset.
I asked him if he did not like our performance so much.
He said that the performance is wonderful, played amazingly,
but one cannot do it like this -
you put the knife and do not take it, you should take it for a while, allow to breath.
And I thought that in our tense times of waiting, but not waiting of something good,
but some danger, some crisis, we don't know but we live in tension, not in harmony.
I think that this naive cinema allowed people to think that it is possible to live the other way.
Do you transfer your experience to the young actors?
Are there any actors about whom you can say that they are yourů
I have graduates in MKhAT. 4 years.
But you know it is very difficult.
Sometimes I ask students how many times a year have they seen the master,
and they say that at the beginning, then once during the semester and then at the graduation,
so maybe around 4 times.
I was there almost every day.
Although I had movies, rehearsals.
I went to be with them.
It was very pleasant.
We were making a movie in Azerbaijan a continuation of "Don't be afraid, I am with you."
Do you remember this movie?
Yes-yes.
I was the protector of the orphans.
The team was the same.
Bul-Bul Ogly, although he is an ambassador of Azerbaijan to Russia, we was participating as an actor.
So we all were in the mountains, in the same place, I was fighting,
50 karatists, we were flying on the helicopter, and Zapashnyi even wanted me to hug a tiger,
but the tiger got annoyed by the lamps and Zapashnyi did not allow,
because the tiger became uncontrolled.
Gusman also forbade it.
Everything was very joyful.
I liked Baku very much, I have not been there for a long time,
it is a totally different city, everybody is smiling, so pleasant.
I hope that the movie will be very nice.
You know July Gusman, his humor, although he is very strict at work,
he cutting the eyebrows and mustache himself,
argues with everyone whoe does not work properly, but he humorů
When I came to the shooting place he says to me "Boy, you know" - this is how he calls me now -
you run up this mountain and cries ehei, then runs down, jumps on the horse, do you understand?"
I say of course, I will run.
This was the beginning of every day. Seriously.
How did you come to the idea of this new movie?
It was not me, it was Gusman.
He wrote the plot.
When he told me, I thought he is joking.
He said that we will do it while we all are alive.
I tell him that 30 years have passed.
He said that it is just the right time.
He gave me the script, I started to read, to laugh, it was very pleasant.
He calls me to ask me what I think, but I cant say a word because of laughter.
There is a great sentence, a boy is sitting then a bandit comes to him and tells him to free the place
"No, I will not" - "Get lost" - "No, I will not" - "Who are you?" - "Who? A human being"
"Whom would you like to become?" - "A doctor" - "What is your name?" - "Solomon Gusman."
It was Gusmans father, who was a famous doctor in Baku, he is loved and remembered.
July had to include his dad.
I was laughing because July does not forget anyone.