"In the beginning there was a word, not an image"

Gennady Ostrovsky is a key, albeit several shadow (as, however, any screenwriter in Russia), the figure of our cinema of the 2000s. In his filmography are the most important paintings of the decade: the “lover” of Todorovsky, the “Mechanical Suite” by Meskhiev, the “tulip” of Paratov, the “poor relatives” of Lungin and that became the legend of “Belyaev” (in 2007, Nikolai Khomeriki launched with him, the shooting was soon suspended). Now Ostrovsky continues to write (he even entered the directory of the Dumplings comedy, not very, however, noticed), and is also more actively engaged in teaching - at the British MSK , MMNK Mamulia and Bakuradze, and now he is even gaining a course at the freshly organized institute of film scoresters . Vasily Koretsky talked with Ostrovsky about the principles of scenario skill and the fatal features of Russian history.

- Earlier, you always talked about how you can’t stand the Russian series, and that it is impossible to teach to write in principle. But at the same time, you read the courses in one or another film school, and now you will generally deal with a script school , moreover, also aimed at the production of series. How so?

- Well, how? Any person who is engaged in cinema hates him. And on the other hand, he idealistically thinks that it is still great.

Yes, I myself hate the series - well, in their worst manifestation, I hardly watch them. Only those who make me look, saying that they are beautiful. Sometimes I look at our Russians to understand what is wrong with them, especially adaptation. It is almost always bad ...

But we want to make products at the HBO level! If possible. Another thing is whether this product will be in demand by a channel. I think it will be. Because gradually the quality is still improving. The world market requires quality, requires interesting things, otherwise we will always buy American or European formats, which are very difficult, almost impossible to adapt to the Russian texture.

So we need to do our things. To shoot about this, today's life. I once asked everyone around: "Well, why will no one make a series about how Basayev was killed?" A wonderful story, I would have taken up for it. But television is afraid to touch some pain points-they told me: "This topic is closed." On the one hand, he is afraid correctly. On the other hand, if they do not touch them, they will not become less painful from this, we must talk about it. In general, I want to make the Crimea cycle - about today's days. Ukrainian and Russian are talking about Crimea - and each has their own truth. Interestingly, everyone will watch. Or Syria. Go to Syria and shoot the series how our pilots are fighting there. So I wonder if someone will guess or not? Guys, go, think of, go to the Ministry of Defense, tell them: we will remove the series awesome, patriotic, interesting. No, it does not occur to anyone.

Any person who is engaged in cinema hates him.

- So who will take on such stories, if, as you yourself say, “all topics are closed” ...

- So it will still be in demand. And then, the series is not a fifteen -minute thing. A good series you write a year or two. Take off another year. What can change in three years?

- Yes, all ...

- Here you go! Here is an example, by the way. For a long time I want to shoot the "Stone Bridge" by Alexander Terekhov. This is a huge saga ... I don’t even know about what ... about the impossibility of life and at the same time its opportunity. The film cannot be made from it, and I converted it to the series; The only series that I would like to shoot. He took other plot moves, but left the mood, sensation, hero, the essence. He wrote two episodes and showed the first channel. Nothing. And now they tell me that they want to do it. Something has changed during this time. I have scenarios that lay seven years. “Belyaev”, aka “King of Water”, has been lying about fifteen years old, they are still going to shoot him - at first he wanted to, then Voloshin; They even came with HBO , they wanted me to make a series of it ... History, even completely everyday, would never become obsolete if there is something in it that lifts it over everyday life. Then it will work. I would love to film Solzhenitsyn, I would like to shoot about Pasternak. About Richter. About Sakharov. These are blocks, it is interesting to shoot about them. About Harms, about his women, generally about his circle, how they lived, about the time of dashing freedom, deaths and murders. And the expulsion of Trotsky! And the "philosophical ship"!

- Well, now you just painted the broadcast of the first two years in advance. Why does everything come out so badly if there are so many topics?

- All killed KVN. All the people who are now engaged in the series are Kaveenchiki. And our television is KVN. They are there talented guys, beautiful people. But dramaturgy and KVN are different things, they have different nature. Drama is not one -time jokes, it is a big job.

In addition, they pay very little, pity money for the script. Two to three times, five times less than for cinema. And you can’t regret money for the script, because this is what the series nourishes. Cinema may grow due to something else. Therefore, they write a lot and quickly for television. And if you write well and slowly, you will not earn anything. And so it is necessary - good and slowly. There will be no buzz from shit!

At the same time, we have a serial market, but there are no cinema markets. Therefore, we will write the thesis by the students in the series. We will have three or four topics that, as I suppose, will be interesting to the TV channel and if the channel says yes, we write the script. Write what they will shoot is the task. But in general, of course, we will cook station wagons. To teach the screenwriter only for series is how to learn to read, but only consonant letters. No, with us they will read all the letters!

You need to write well and slowly. There will be no buzz from shit!

Another problem is that there is no community. After all, before, when I studied, we went to the house of cinema, watched films, discussed, we had communication. Of course, less than in Soviet times, but then it all ended at all. No one was. Everyone began to sit in different apartments, studios. But the screenwriter must exist in the world of people, communicate, love people, talk to them. Otherwise, he is not. Why is the director, the screenwriter usually let go of working to seventy years? Because the author focuses on his society, and he goes away over time, disappears, and you lose contact with reality. That's when Fedya Bondarchuk was the last time in the subway? And what can he shoot? Some kind of Hollywood fairy tale ... A person must go to the subway if he wants to make films about him.

Here is something similar, a sense of environment, we want to create at school. Our task is not to give an education to people, but to force them to write: these are different things. Therefore, we do not take everyone, but only those who can definitely write.

-Do you already have some kind of worked out technology for working with the authors so that they plunge into this nutrient medium? If you are not teaching technical skills ...

- Listen, well, of course, we will have the theory. I myself do not know her myself-so, I guess that there should be the beginning, middle and end (laughs), all these templates that exist in the professional world. Of course, they have not helped anyone yet, but they did not interfere; The more knowledge, the better. Therefore, let there be a theory. In general, when we gain the course, we will see what we can give each student individually so that he can write. That is, we will make the program based on the composition of students. But as a person who has never loved educational institutions, I believe that the main thing in this matter is to teach to think freely, get rid of thoughts like “who needs it”, “this is impossible”. It is necessary that they learn to talk about a person, then everything will be fine.

After all, the main problem of our cinema - and any cinema in general is the absence of not scripts, but stories. To come up with a story is the most difficult. What is a story, I’ll tell you now: here we are sitting at the table, there are a huge number of people around us. This is all a scattered piece of the world. This world has hundreds of entrances, outputs, movements, millions of opportunities and impossible. And history is a way of harmonizing the world. That is, you collect all this in an accurate, understandable current. Gather, collect - and sailed along this river. And all these people with their affairs and circumstances are involved in this stream. This is a story. It flows exactly from beginning to end. There may be bends, small streams, but they still run and fall into a general course.

Why was there a word in the beginning, not an image? What is a word? This is a story. And everything else is chaos. There are no words - a person does not know how he lives, he does not know what his story is. But we think precisely stories! In fact, we are really interested in this - what did he say in life? And she? Did he hit her? Killed? What did the doctor say? That's what interests us. Everything else is a form. I am not very interested in the form. I understand that this is important, but the first is dramaturgy. Not in the sense as the dialogue is built, but the essence of history. People do not understand at all what this essence is, and this is very simple: a sentence in which there are words. Words are episodes. The proposal consists of episodes. Mom washed Mila. We must tell a story where mom, soap, sweet are episodes.

I would like my heroes to be more lively than people.

- How do you write? Are you starting with this tie? Or do you first come up with the final?

- I see a movie - a frame, a sequence of personnel. And I would like my students to think with personnel: since you do not just write in words, but write down a movie. It happens that I see the first frame and I understand that there is something that excites me very much. And he begins to grow ... Here are the “poor relatives” arose from this image: a man meets a woman who no one is, but he wants to believe that she is his sister. This is not a story about deception, not a story about a desire for love - although there are all these motives. This is a story specifically about the person who went to see his sister.

Returning to the damned question - why “there” they write better. You see, there is an inviolability of the course of life. From this course of life, you can grab some unusual elements that no one sees, no one knows. You can combine them. And we do not have an ordinary course of life, our life constantly breaks! We cannot even come up with a fairy tale! We cannot say about the heroine: “But 150 years ago she was a sorceress there ...” 150 years ago she was a serf! And 50 years ago - sat in the camp.

Here I have one student invented a story about a civil war. He writes: "In 1935, two former enemy, red and white, meet at the airfield, kiss, hug." Second: in the 35th year?! And in which they could? We began to think: only in sixty. And even then they would be killed by this time. That is, it is impossible to even combine the heroes together. The history of the country is so broken, painful and terrible that it is very difficult to come up with the harmonious stories of people. Our scenarios are inharmonious because they are scary. And we cannot come up with others. They say: we need melodramas, the viewer wants a melodrama. But where to get them? We must forget about the rest of the world and say that there is a small world in which people live without noticing anything around. The whole texture of life opposes history. You write "Zenit" - champion! " - And Zenit is no longer a champion. Even Moscow streets cannot be called normally, as in America, because they are rebuilt and renamed all the time. Note: in modern Russian cinema there is no household at all!

- Documentaryism successfully takes this function.

- Well, yes, documentary cinema will always be interesting - how people live, what they do. But I never loved it.

- That is, as a screenwriter, you do not strive for documentary?!

- No. I would like my heroes to be more lively than people. This is the point. Create a world that is not. Here is the script “in motion” - I did not know this world, I invented it. Of course, I am making a reservoh so as not to get into trouble. But still: if you do not have your exact look, your script will be a fragmented movement of the chaotic world. After all, what is a documentary movie? Here is Seryozha Paratseva: a documentary - and is now shooting a playful film according to our scenario. Because at some point it became uninteresting to run for reality, not to be able to manage it.

- Well, he still runs for reality now - everything cannot wait for the right snowfall to remove it.

- No, this is another matter. This is a matter of money: there would be money - it would be snowing on a computer. Like Tarantino.