Will the most popular "face of the 2000s" return to the country's main TV channels?
The history of the new Russian television journalism is unthinkable without this man. Even today, without working as a program host, Leonid Parfyonov remains well known. An impeccable gentleman on screen, he often found himself at the epicenter of conflict. In June 2004, Parfyonov was fired from the NTV channel, formally due to disagreements with the management.
Young Correspondent
Parfenov's childhood was, as he himself admits, uninteresting. In his native Cherepovets, the young man was "terribly boring." He was born in 1960 in the family of an engineer. Of all the joys of life - hunting, on which his father often took him, and the library, in which the guy spent a lot of time.
When Lena was 13, he was already actively sending notes to district and regional newspapers. For one of them, he received an unprecedented award for those times - a trip to Artek. By the way, Parfyonov distinguished himself there too - he received a diploma as the best cadet of Pionerskaya Pravda.
The first "foreign"
Parents did not strongly believe that Leonid would enter Leningrad State University named after Zhdanov (current St. Petersburg State University) after school. However, he easily passes the entrance exams and starts a new life in a big city. In addition to studying, he is engaged in part-time jobs - he leads tourists around Leningrad as a guide. He does not forget about journalistic practice, he writes a lot for Smena, Ogonyok, Pravda, and Soviet Culture.
At the university, Parfenov meets students from Bulgaria (they live together in a hostel) and in the second year he goes to visit new friends. Then Leonid experiences the first culture shock from abroad and realizes that he is "not a very Soviet person."
To Moscow, to Moscow!
After graduating from high school, the young journalist returns to his native Cherepovets according to the then established order. In the district newspaper, the young man in jeans was not accepted, he began to work in the regional newspaper, in Vologda Komsomolets. Then there was regional television, from which he was invited to the central one. In 1986, at a very interesting time for Soviet citizens, he became a special correspondent in the youth editorial office of the Central Television, working in the Peace and Youth program.
Parfyonov together with Andrey Razbash filming a three-episode documentary film "Children of the XX Congress". The film about dissidents and the first democrats - the generation of the sixties - has an unprecedented success, it is bought by television companies from nine countries. Parfenov receives the first solid fee, for which he buys an apartment in the capital, and goes to the team of "Author's Television".
Photo: booksite.ru At own frequency
In 1990, when the country lived at the turn of the eras, Leonid Parfyonov decides to engage in "non-Soviet journalism." The first issues of the program "The Other Day" are released. This is a slightly different program than the one with which Parfyonov will later be associated. Then "The Other Day" was published weekly in the format of "non-political news". A year later, he is suspended from the program for speaking too harshly about his resignation. Shevardnadze from the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Then Parfenov worked for a short time at the VID television company with Vladislav Listyev until he is invited to the new NTV channel. At that time, the channel did not even have its own frequency, but was broadcast under a contract on the St. Petersburg Channel Five. On weekdays there was a news program "Segodnya", on Sundays - "Itogi" with Evgeny Kiselev. "The Other Day" came out on Saturday evenings.
Parfyonov received his first TEFI for the New Year's Television project in 1994. By this time, the channel had already acquired its own frequency.
next year, along with Konstantin Ernst they come up with and implement "Old songs about the main thing."
Kissing Monroe
One of the main brainchild of Parfenov is a project whose full name is “The other day 1961-2003: Our era”. A cycle of documentaries dedicated to the history of the USSR and Russia was conceived, a brilliant attempt at historical reflection. Here Parfenov hones his style - in the script, historical events are mixed with a story about the life of a particular era. For example, after the plot about visiting Khrushchev avant-garde exhibitions, there was a sketch about the increase in prices for dairy products and meat, and a story about the execution of workers in Novocherkassk in 1962 was followed by a sketch about a hula hoop. Viewers also remember Parfenov's video jokes, where he is present at the talks of the leaders of world powers, helping to wash their hands. Nikita Khrushchev, kisses Marilyn Monroe.
The program was released in several cycles, in addition, there were also special releases in the New Year's program at the end of 2001, 2002 and 2003, where Parfyonov talked about the events of the past year that will go down in history.
Photo: booksite.ru NTV case
At the beginning of the two thousandth NTV, which by that time had become part of the media holding Vladimir Gusinsky will change ownership. Until that time, the channel had been successfully developing, but it was making enemies due to critical and even satirical (the Dolls program) coverage of the life and politics of the country. Outwardly, everything looked like a takeover by the Gazprom-Media holding. NTV employees collect signatures for open letters demanding public attention to the violation of freedom of speech, but Parfyonov remains neutral in this conflict. On the program "Anthropology", where he was invited Dmitry Dibrov, he stated that he did not agree with the actions of the head of the channel Kiselev and left the team. After the eighth floor of Ostankino, where NTV was located, was taken by storm and passed under the control of Gazprom on the night of April 13-14, 2001, Parfyonov became the top manager of the channel. Of course, among his colleagues in the shop, he was immediately called a "traitor" and a "strikebreaker."
Very soon, in 2003, the leadership of the channel changed again, NTV headed Nikolai Senkevich. Parfyonov first goes on a long vacation, but then returns to work again. In November, a story about the book is published in "The Other Day" Elena Tregubova from the presidential pool "Tales of the Kremlin Digger", which Senkevich bans. In May 2004, Parfyonov again had a conflict, this time with the deputy general director Alexander Gerasimov. The reason is the plot “Marry Zelimkhan”. It contained an interview with the widow of a Chechen separatist Zelimkhan Yandarbieva, who died in Qatar, that the Russian special services were involved in the murder of her husband. Parfyonov was fired for violating an employment contract after he published a written order from the channel's directorate to ban a story about Yandarbiev.
On Channel One
Leonid Parfyonov waited half a year for offers from other channels, without waiting, apparently, he realized that this was serious and for a long time, and agreed to the post of editor of Russian Newsweek.
Now he has time to create video content that he likes. He creates the film "Presenter" for the 70th anniversary Vladimir Pozner, the picture "Oh world, you are a sport!" about the Olympic Games. The first channel broadcasts them. As well as the films "Lucy" about Ludmila Gurchenko, "Bird-Gogol" for the 200th anniversary Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. Parfyonov writes books, voices cartoons, acts in films.
In 2010, Parfenov, at the Vladislav Listyev Prize ceremony, delivers his sensational speech on the state of the Russian media. In it, he criticizes the "evergreen techniques" of Soviet central television, which have taken root in modern media, and says that one does not need to be a hero, but one must at least muster up the courage and "call a spade a spade." Of course it wasn't shown on TV.
New songs about the main
Today Parfenov does not work on television channels. Over the past 8 years of such "unemployment" he has created 7 films and 7 books. Since 2012, he has been a member of the Council under the President of the Russian Federation for the development of civil society and human rights (HRC).
Last year 2016 participated in the project Mikhail Khodorkovsky"Open University", spoke about his view on the language of modern media.
Another documentary film by Leonid Parfyonov, “Russian Jews,” has been released, and it is planned to create a film about Russian Germans.
Among other plans is the release of a new program for the RTVi channel “The other day in karaoke”. The new format will incorporate the features of an informational and analytical program and an entertaining one ("Old songs about the main thing"). The show will be broadcast overseas. The Russian audience will be available on the Internet.
I haven't seen so many journalists recently at the Riga International Higher School of Economics and Management for a master class by Leonid Parfyonov. It is clear why: Parfyonov is not only a great storyteller (who would doubt it), but also a talented artist who instantly transforms, if necessary, into his character. Almost a one-man theater. After a general meeting, Leonid agreed to give an interview to Interlocutor.
"Fairy tales are over..."
– Don't you think that sometimes even the ProjectorParisHilton is much more topical than the news programs?
- I'm not a TV critic, it's embarrassing for me to speak out. Moreover, ProjectorParisHilton is another evidence that television (no matter what they say about it) is still developing. Because the times when humor was represented by Yevgeny Petrosyan ...
- Well, he still represents ...
- On other channels. It was just then that he had no alternative. And ProjectorParisHilton is a product of another generation. So there is some movement in those places where it is not regulated by the government. Television, of course, is changing. And in the same films that we have been making in recent years - for the 200th anniversary of Gogol or about Zworykin - we undoubtedly made some steps forward for ourselves. Even technologically switching to "ed" (shooting with a new type of camera-computer. - Auth.).
- Most newspapers and magazines are increasingly working for the needs of the crowd ...
- I don’t know, I read Kommersant and Vedomosti, and I don’t have such an impression ...
But their circulation is small...
- Everyone chooses his own, in the end. We told each other fairy tales about the fact that we are the most reading country. Turned out to be something else. Even under the Soviet regime, it became clear that they read more what they publish, as they said, for waste paper. For "The Woman in White", for example, they give 20 kilograms of other waste paper. So for me, the current times have not opened any news about mass preferences, mass tastes. It has always been that way, I am absolutely convinced of it. And as for television, someone thinks it sucks, that it is made for those who do not have their own lives - for marginals, outsiders who sit watching talk shows, serials. Therefore, sometimes it is difficult to announce your own work, to convince your audience, your audience group, that they should watch this or that program. But the situation is not hopeless. Much worse is the obvious presence of state power in television information.
"I won't make a movie"
- Your last tape about Zworykin sometimes resembles a feature film, and not only because such a great actor as Sergey Shakurov participates in it. Next - a feature film?
– we explained to the actors where and how this or that episode would be used. They didn’t play at full speed, but they kept their emotions as if they were being filmed by a documentary camera. Here the aesthetics are different. We pretend that this is not Shakurov in the role of Zvorykin, but a continuation of the chronicle. So there can be no talk of any filming of feature films. I don't know how to invent without relying on facts, it's a complete arbitrariness.
– You have been and are engaged in Russian history. Don't you think she's repeating herself all the time? Oligarchs, guardsmen, unrest, stagnation, wars - everything has already happened, right?
– This is not only a Russian trait. All recent books by Gaidar are devoted to the fact that there is no special Russian way. Because this statist model, when the state penetrates everything, it always gives rise to such an economy, such a type of social relations, such a relationship between society and power.
- How embarrassing it is when now, 65 years after the Victory, we are shown stories about veterans who are still powerless before officials ...
- In general, it seems to me that we should somehow be less proud of the victory in 1945, and more of what was achieved in peacetime. It turns out a strange thing: the unconditional victory of the 45th year seems to redeem all the way people lived these 65 years, what they believed in, how they were able to realize themselves. This is evidence of our helplessness in the face of modernity, because we cannot feel support in it, we cannot agree on how we want to live now. It’s bad if we can rely only on what was done not by us and not even by our parents, but by our grandfathers. What have we done that we can be proud of?
- Have you already watched Mikhalkov's "Expectation"?
- Have you ever thought about taking on a documentary series about the Great Patriotic War yourself?
- As for my plans, I was not going to make a film about the Great Patriotic War. There is such a feeling that the viewer is overfed by the war. There was once an idea to make the series "Soviet Empire", which was supposed to continue the "Russian Empire". But it didn't work out. But it would not be about the war, but about the Stalinist state model, which in some ways inherited the Russian one, but in some ways was different.
After Zworykin, they are now offering me to do literally everything: from the last day of Pompeii ... Like, everything should be filmed in this style. Apparently, the approach itself is quite contagious, and it seems that this is now the best form.
There are plans for the 80th anniversary of Gorbachev, and the 200th anniversary of the war of 1812, and the 100th anniversary of the Museum of Fine Arts. But this is not so much about the museum, but about the collection of Shchukin and Morozov, about two Russian Old Believer merchants who became the very first buyers of Matisse and Picasso. And they decorated their mansions with them. Matisse, for example, came to Moscow for marking, his canvas "Dance" was intended for the landing of the second floor of the Shchukin house ...
The popular project of the TV journalist "The Other Day" continues its life. At first it was a famous TV project, which was then easily translated by the author into paper format. It began in 1961 (recall: the author himself was born in 1960), reached our present time - and then “went back”: first a volume was published covering the years from 1946 to 1960, and more recently - from 1931 to 1940. Apparently , Leonid Gennadievich's "television leaven" makes itself felt: he paints a picture of history in a very special way, where numbers and dates are not the most important. The life of an ordinary person comes to the fore: what interested him at that particular time? What clothes did he wear, what furniture did he buy, what kind of music did he listen to? What surprised him and what upset him? A pedantic attitude to details, the talent of a "pathfinder" and the author's great respect for people make these books emotionally rich: they contain both the bitterness of eras, and sprouts of hope, and faith in the best ... And how could it be otherwise, if many events from the modern history of Russia directly touched the family of Leonid Parfyonov himself ?! Here is what he says about it.Leonid Parfyonov himself
A new volume of the book "The Other Day"
— Leonid, why is your next project dedicated specifically to the thirties and forties of the last century?
When I started the project, I came up with the motto for it: “We live in the era of the renaissance of Soviet antiquity.” It seemed that this neo-socialism, neo-Sovietism was growing, and therefore it is important to understand that era, to feel what was attractive in it, how and what actually happened. It all started in the 1930s... My conviction is that there was no socialism other than Stalin's, and it was formalized in the 1930s. And then - under Khrushchev, under Brezhnev - the system was already living by inertia. And we all saw that when fear leaves him, this system no longer works. Therefore, she worked worse and worse, and finally “covered herself with a copper basin” ... This is my eighth volume of The Other Day. It is the eighth in a row, but, as it were, “minus the first” in chronology, since the project originally began in 1961. Then I was persuaded to go back, because the "Thaw" - and its beginning dates back to the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 - cannot be understood without understanding the "post-war frosts", so the previous volume was about the time from 1946 to 1960
Cover of the new volume "The Other Day" 1931-1940. Image from Corpus website
These are books about the life of a Soviet person. And this time, all the "generic features" of the project are preserved. Here is a picture of an apartment from that time. But since televisions had just appeared - in 1938 there were only 10,000 of them produced - it was necessary to make an image of a richer apartment, and not an average one, as in previous projects. For example, the furniture in the photo is from the Krzhizhanovsky house-museum. Because such a luxury item as a TV could not be in an ordinary communal apartment. He himself was made of mahogany to be something like furniture. And everything else in the photo was reproduced exactly - a gramophone, the painting "Two Leaders after the Rain", the first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia - I myself brought from my dacha to place in the closet here. And so on and so forth...
— What were the difficulties? Still, these are not “close” years in time ...
Since that era was “black and white,” there were difficulties with illustrations in color. But we found something. For example, they used stamp reproductions. To illustrate the first Soviet passenger cars, they took Yury Pimenov's painting "New Moscow", it depicts two cars - from this point of view, no one has yet considered it ... There are very rare pictures - for example, a photograph of Pavlik Morozov. I would like to explain in root terms: what was the era from which, in principle, socialism "went". And this is not only the inner life, but also the outer one. For example, at that time Hitler came to power. Therefore, there is about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. But there is also information about skullcaps and berets, which then came into fashion. When you write, you don’t realize it, and then you yourself are surprised - this is how it turned out: two hats came into fashion at once! .. We also found a color watercolor drawing, very gently traced: Molotov and Stalin say goodbye to Kirov in the Hall of Columns . There is also a wonderful panel "Noble people of the country of the Soviets." There is a caste here: Stakhanovites, noble cotton growers, drivers of some kind of high-speed locomotives by the standards of that time - that is, shock workers of labor, and next to them - the traditional elite: academicians, writers ... And all in such festive clothes. This panel was made for the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937.
At the presentation of the book "Russian Empire", 2013
There is a story about Polina Semyonovna Zhemchuzhina-Molotova, who headed the perfume industry. She remade the perfume "Favorite Bouquet of the Empress" into "Red Moscow". In this form, they went to subsequent generations. It is also appropriate to recall the famous phrase of Stalin: “Life has become better, life has become more fun!” — it was a turn from a rigid model to hedonism. That is, they admitted that there should be pleasure in socialism. This was allowed - and this, in the end, ruined the system. Because as soon as socialism begins to compete with capitalism as a consumer society, it loses. There are too many examples that show that our shoes turned out to be worse than those of the decaying West ...
Are you interested in that era?
Yes, I also had a personal interest in that era. Nothing passed our family... In 1931 we were dispossessed - my grandmother's father on my father's side, my great-grandfather. And in 1937, former kulaks, clergymen and white officers - they were also finished off. And my great-grandfather was shot. I managed to get this decision of the "troika" issued to me. Then, after all, somewhere around 450 thousand people were shot on the basis of the decisions of the "troika" - this is the first secretary of the regional party committee, the head of the NKVD and the regional prosecutor. In fact, these were just lists of people whom they had never seen and who were sentenced to death for “counter-revolutionary activities”, “an attempt to create a counter-revolutionary organization” ... How could such an organization be created in the village - before that, no one cared …
Artifacts from the past
— You are talking about the opening of the subway in 1935. Was it difficult to collect information?The hardest part is photography and illustrations. But we even found the first green tickets - they were paper then. I was surprised to learn that there was such an installation - and in all seriousness - that passengers themselves should recognize the stations at the entrance to the platform. It turns out that only in 1951 did the machinists begin to announce stations - not on the record, but "live". By the way, it was in 1937 that the architect Alexei Dushkin, the author of the Mayakovskaya metro station, which was considered the most beautiful, and the author of the Kropotkinskaya station - then it was called the "Palace of the Soviets" - received the Grand Prix for these works at the World Exhibition in Paris and New York
— Will you publish a book about the Great Patriotic War in the same format?
No. It will be impossible to do it in such a mosaic way. And although it is possible to single out separate topics - for example, that shoulder straps were introduced in the army in 1943, or the Patriarchate was restored, the Pole Jerzy Petersbursky wrote the song "Blue Handkerchief" at the end of 1941, and something else - but this will not be much ... You can write about Jassko - The Chisinau operation - but how to write about it? After all, it is important to tell both about the war and about civilian life. Therefore, I made a book about the post-war period - from 1946 to 1960. In general, consider that I pass. Or, at least, I understand that this format is not suitable here. By the way, not after the war, but before the war - in 1940 Arkady Gaidar's book "Timur and his team" was published. And even before the war, the book managed to film
Excursion to the past
Do you feel when one era changes another? Are there any signs of this?
Probably, everyone draws conclusions for himself in his own way and decides something for himself. There is a well-known hashtag: #to overthrow - that is, someone reacts to the change of era in this way. And someone says that we have never lived so well. It all depends on personal feelings. At the dawn of a foggy youth, I worked at home in the newspaper Vologda Komsomolets. And he was on duty at the number in which they gave materials about the death of Brezhnev. And before that, there was a feeling that everything was dragging on, and it seems that we ourselves will all die with them. Then I was 22. First, after all, Suslov died, and then, as the people said, the “carriage race” began - cynically, yes, but they themselves brought it to the point that the people began to joke like that. It was in Vologda, and I had to return to Cherepovets. I bought a ticket for the Ikarus bus, there are 42 seats in it, and I have thirty-ninth. And here I am squeezing to my place, looking at people who, of course, already knew about it. And their faces - like in barber chairs - do not express anything! I then wanted to say: “People, wake up! Remember this day! After all, something will happen! And it will be completely different!” And the epoch was then changed in the simplest way: the epoch ended because its term had expired. Here is my personal impression. Although for some it remained just the day of November 10, 1982. Although on the 10th the fact of his death was concealed, the concert in honor of the militia day was cancelled. And on November 11, it became known that Brezhnev had died. And on November 7, he was still standing at the demonstration and trying to greet everyone with his hand - though it turned out badly, since his collarbone did not grow together after the rafters crashed on him in Tashkent. He looked, though not very much - but he looked like that for a long time, everyone was used to it ...
With Sergei Shakurov on the set of the film "Zworykin-Muromets" about the founding father of world television, Russian engineer Vladimir Zworykin
— You shot a large and complex project for the anniversary of Nikolai Gogol. Is there anything else planned?
“Gogol” is two big episodes, fifteen hours each… Of course, the channels are easier to follow the “Danish principle”. If you come to Konstantin Ernst in 2007 and say that in two years it’s Gogol’s anniversary, and we need something that includes computer graphics and phantasmagoria, and in general that modern technologies show Russian classics for the first time, and we are also striving for and we will probably get permission to “crawl into” Gogol’s Roman apartment, then Ernst will say: “Interestingly, no one has talked about this yet - come on, go ahead!” But actually it was very interesting to me. And so I missed a lot of dates. In 2014, I did not make a film for the 200th anniversary of Lermontov. I guess I don't feel it that way. That's about Gogol, I understood the most important task. I made a film for the 80th anniversary of Solzhenitsyn - with him ... But in fact, I did not make many films for any specific dates. In this sense, I am not a "prince of Denmark"! (Laughs.)
- What do you think, what gives for the "real" comprehension of history?
Of course, there are some parallels. But history does not repeat itself directly. “Notches for memory” are important, the enrichment of experience with which a person goes further in life ...
With teledives Ksenia Sobchak, Tina Kandelaki, and Ekaterina Mtsituridze and wife Elena Chekalova at a social gathering
Photos by Vadim Tarakanov, Ruslan Roshchupkin and from the personal archive of Leonid Parfyonov
Leonid Parfyonov: “Nothing is directly repeated in history” published: October 26th, 2018 by: Madame Zelinskaya
Today Yuri Dud (30) posted on the Web a new episode of the Vdud program, by the way, the second in a week: director Boris Khlebnikov (45) came to visit him on Tuesday, and today journalist Leonid Parfyonov (57).
Parfyonov has not been on television for fourteen years, and during this time he made about 15 films and wrote eight volumes of The Other Day. Recall that in 2004 Leonid was fired, and the program "The Other Day" was taken off the air. The reason was the violation of the labor contract by Leonid Gennadievich, at least this is what the NTV management said: in 2004, despite the ban of the general director of the channel Alexander Gerasimov, Parfenov aired a story with the widow of the ex-president of Ichkeria Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, Malika Yandarbiyeva, and then, in a comment to Komersant, he announced Gerasimov's decision not to show the issue. The management considered this a violation of the work ethic and said goodbye to the presenter. In general, as the journalist Dudyu said, after this incident, his work on TV did not work out for him, and he did not really want to.
“I will never go back to the office again. It's over, I don't like all these meetings, flyers and stuff. Officially, my work is nowhere, and thank God!” Leonid also spoke about his attitude to the mat: neutral. The fact is that recently Parfenov's wife Elena Chekalova scolded Dudya on Facebook, she did not like that Yuri described her husband's film, albeit with approving words, but using a mat, but, as it turned out, this does not bother Parfenov.
“We are all used to the fact that when they scold us, this is normal, but when they praise us ... I don’t know, it’s a little strange, but in principle it’s normal. Even Pushkin had verses with obscenities!”
Leonid Gennadyevich also spoke about the situation with (48), we recall that he is suspected of embezzlement of public funds, and until October 19 the director is under house arrest.
“After the arrest of Kirill Serebrennikov, it occurred to all the people of this circle that they had to leave the country. I don't know anyone around who wouldn't take this as a call to action." By the way, when asked by Yuriy if Parfenov himself would like to leave Russia, Leonid replied that he had not thought about it, and in principle there is nowhere to go - all the work is here.
“Where will I go? Who is waiting for me there, it's already late, before I had to think about it. But my children are studying abroad. In general, I think that getting an education in Moscow and next to your parents is a bad idea. This is a metropolis, there are clubs, parties, what kind of study?
Finally, Yuri asked Parfenov to reveal the secret of how he manages to stay “on the move and so happy”, despite the fact that he has not worked on television for a very long time.
“There is no specific technology, I'm just lucky! At the moment when I was not allowed to engage in political journalism, I already had a different license - about culture, about history, so I could go into this area. Boris Akunin simply forced me to return to the Namedni as a format, since it is still relevant. Plus, I remain in demand in advertising and conduct master classes, but they do not pay for them. In general, you have to be lucky and try to play different drums - be able to do a lot.
But once in front of Putin, Leonid Gennadievich would not have asked him anything, he says, Putin already said everything, or rather, showed it with his deeds.
Interview: Tata Oleinik
Photo: Yuri Koltsov
Is it possible to consider your active role in animation projects as a kind of escape from the realities of our television?
Well, why so? I have different works, and this is not the first time I have collaborated with cartoons, I like their boom. When I voiced Monkey Dust, "38 Monkeys" in our translation, I was very amused how political correctness, observed everywhere, is easily managed in a cartoon. His heroes can swear, call other nations and minorities names, mock traditions, follow deep prejudices, and so on - and they get away with everything, because although they are humanoid, they are not people, and, therefore, all this is possible for them. In my career, I also had the experience of working with Oleg Kuvaev, when we showed cartoons about Masyanya. They were such a lyrical diary of a contemporary. Who else can show today's St. Petersburg spirit in two or three minutes as through Masyanya and Khryundel? Only cartoon. And the best of them have very low depreciation. A good cartoon is made so densely, so characteristically, so capaciously that it can be reviewed many times with the same interest.
And what is politically incorrect, capacious and topical in a cute cartoon about a dog that adopted a boy Sherman?
There is something else... Well, consider this a story about how American adoption can be good.
American response to "Dima Yakovlev's law"? Will our learned males adopt your orphans?
You see, a heated discussion has already ensued. Anyone can read anything.
Is your interest in animation unrelated to the fact that you feel cut off from big TV?
Every year I have a TV movie coming out, you can’t do more in a year. Right now, on Channel One, our new film is being prepared for display - “The Color of the Nation”.
And you don’t want to become the owner of your own program again, your own broadcast?
You see, the box teaches you to do what is possible. A box is not a print, it's not a book, it's not an A4 sheet lying in front of you, on which you can create whatever you want. In the box, everything has a huge cost price. It involves money, equipment, technology, people... And you learn to correlate your desires with opportunities. I have not suffered for a long time without the current broadcast. A film year is a good result. I am busier than ever.
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How would you assess the general state of affairs on our television now?
Since I still partly continue to be a practicing television journalist, I still prefer not to engage in television criticism.
Nevertheless, lately you have begun to rank among the persons, so to speak, opposition-minded. Speeches at rallies, bright speeches in defiance of the authorities and all that. Can you call yourself an oppositionist?
I? No, I won't. For some, I can be an oppositionist, for someone - the mainstream. And since the activity is public, public, the assessment from the outside is much more important than your own.
And assessments from the outside are very different. For some, you are almost the banner of the revolution, for someone - a servile talent, in fact, a strikebreaker.
If you are a journalist, you are a public figure by definition. Take freedom of speech. If you are really a journalist, you defend it, win it back, and try to expand it. And not so much for their own working comfort. After all, journalism does not exist for journalists to work and feel good in it, but for society to receive timely and complete information about everything that happens. Is this opposition activity?
Undoubtedly.
Yes? Well, then, in this I am an oppositionist. A journalist - I often say this - is objectionable to someone not because he said something or filmed something. And the fact that others will hear or see it.
Have you ever been held accountable for what you said was heard?
So what? I am ready to pay for this luxury.
Payback was not too expensive?
Listen, people who sit and remain silent in a rag should not go into journalism at all. Of course, everyone has different temperaments: for some, “I can’t be silent” happens earlier, someone lasts longer. But personally, I don't regret anything. It would be torment for me to deny myself the opportunity to be who I am and say what I think.
That is, you don’t have this popular feeling today “they are choking me, they are persecuting me and they don’t let me work”?
This is the majority of the sixties so they said and drank in the kitchens during the Brezhnev stagnation. They felt that this was not their time and only regretted the short days of the thaw. And in my opinion, in vain they chose this path. We must act, we must try to do something anyway, even if it is difficult and impossible. Do not think that I condemn the sixties, no. But it wouldn't work for me. But today the situation is completely different. Now anyone can leave. And the authorities like to repeat that the borders are open - please, bring down, the air will be cleaner without you. And many go. To the Czech Republic, for example. Beautiful country - the Czech Republic.
And why are you not in the Czech Republic?
Because my profession is the Russian language, and my audience is the Russian audience. And we don't have that kind of freedom. Books, for example, no one controls at all. Incidentally, for the first time in the history of Russia.
But there are lists of prohibited literature.
Not true. Now there is no technical possibility to track the book before its release, it is possible only later, in hindsight, to react to something. If you can publish "The Day of the Oprichnik", "Sugar Kremlin" or "Dialectics of the Transitional Period"*, then there is free book publishing in the country. No one runs around with a fly swatter and slaps objectionable "admargenums".
* - Note Phacochoerus "a Funtik:
«
The first two books are by Sorokin, the third is Pelevin's work. All three works are satirical, often obscene description of modern reality»
Do you think that by and large we are not deprived of freedom of speech?
It is clear that the situation with freedom of speech, opinion, and public discussion is worse in our country than, for example, in Ukraine. For other voices to be heard in the Rada, on state television channels, for the public to defend its opinion, including on the Maidan - of course, we cannot have anything like this yet.
And you miss it?
This is not what I should miss. This society should miss. There will be a request for freedom - there will be an answer. And grab a person by the chest, shake and say: “Wake up! How do you live without civil society? You need freedom! It should be included in your consumer basket!” - it is pointless.
Isn't she in the cart?
As a rule, no. The absence of a voice of the people means that most people are rather satisfied with the state of affairs. There is a social contract: “You steal, let us live, but don’t interfere with us,” everything rests on it. Silent means consent.
On the Internet, which already covers 75 percent of Russians, there is no silence. A continuous mat-remake, for the most part - to the address of the superiors.
And what? What does it all lead to? Where is self-organization, where is some party of active users? Yes, our circulation of high-quality press is several times lower than, for example, in the UK, despite the fact that the population there is smaller. In our country they are even lower than in Poland.
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