Is it easy to be Letov?

Actor and musician Maxim Kozlov - about the film about Yanka, fights with gopniks and Russian Manchester

He plays Yegor Letov in the film of Igor Poplaukhin, “The White Sveta Bright came across you,” which comes out soon. The film is about the last day of the life of Yanka Diaghileva, this is all that is known. Maxim Kozlov is a musician, the leader of the Moscow undergrand group Amen. The Mumiy Troll has such a word in one of the songs - unstable. This is exactly about him. A tightly knocked down guy, dark glasses, a very short haircut ... It’s not at all like a summer.

- How did you find yourself in the film crew?

- Accidentally. He shot alternative cinema with his friends Yurat Shunyavichut and Rinat Bekchentaev, and they are fellow students of Poplaukhin. And somehow he says: "I want to call you to the film about Yanka." I was wildly worried at the casting, it seemed to me that nothing came of it. And they said: "You have some kind of magic with Kira in the frame." Kira Pievskaya is a girl who plays Yanka. I went to a friend, began to drink, because I could not cope with the condition, this is really very exciting. He returned home, and at night a call: “For me, it is a great honor to inform you that you are in the team, your participation in the film has been approved.” And I burst into tears, so it touched me. Then they came up to me on the site: "Maxim, and what theater are you working in?" I say: "I am here quite by accident." They all have acting education, and I have accounting, analysis and audit.

- And there is no external resemblance to Letov.

- At all. Here Kira really looks like Yanka. And I came a shaved one and in such clothes in which they go to the raves to the Mutabor club.

- You can make a trick.

- It is possible, but they were looking for a person suitable for temperament, and not externally.

And I get it, I am on the same contradictions and heads as a hero. And I know how people behave in such situations. On a platoon, on feelings.

-That is, they actually took a rock musician for the role of a rock musician. Is this a collective image or precisely letters?

-The name Yegor sounds there somewhere, but it doesn’t matter at all. And I definitely did not think that I was playing Letov. How do I know, for example, how did Letov fight? There is a scene of a showdown in the film, and I behaved in the frame the way you usually behave, with all the kid's Fishas. Well, I got into the nose, of course.

- Do you like to fight?

- Not really, but it was necessary, but what to do. Around me in life, this environment was: fans, punks, informals. I earned a fracture of the front bone, you see? It was I who fell, they beat me with a lying. As a child, I was a good child, and then I spread and became like that. I remember defending his brother and got his foot in the chest. In such moments, something turns on in me. Once, once. I came to my senses, sitting crying, hysteria. I think: “Yes, though on my side, I won, but this is wrong, this should not be. What kind of idiocy. He also crippled the guys. " Here I am such a sensitive fool.

- Your attitude towards Letov and to the Yanka?

-I did not immediately stuck it in all this, for a long time I was on some denial. Pull later, already at a conscious age. Siberian suicidal punk is, of course, a pearl.

- How do you feel about the song “I see, my homeland rises from the knees” ?

-As a dream, as a description of some distant future. I will tell you a story from my childhood, and you will understand where we come from and where. I was born in the north. The village of Batagay of the Verkhoyansky district of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Dad was a pilot, and Maman moved there from great love to him. They lived in the hut. The hut is so rickety, wooden. Long corridor, common kitchen. And then one day, I was four years old, I wandered into this kitchen. And I ask my mother: "What is this orange wand on the table?" It turned out to be a carrot, someone brought it. Mother in tears, says: "That's enough, a child under four years old has not seen carrots in the eye." And we left after some time.

- To Moscow?

- In Lytkarino. Moscow region, Lyubertsy district.

- How much does your group now get for a performance? Thousand 30–40?

- This is a rack in general. No, most often we play for travel and housing. But we still love to ride. They once drove to Bryansk, there a whole bar was filled, a man, perhaps fifty. After the concert, we went for a walk. We go like that, I'm in a cloak, I have a cap, Lech is also something like that. And here are the locals: "E-mine, Sherlock Holmes!" This is on me. And then on Lech: "And Dr. Watson!" Well, how to react to this? I have Lyubertskaya hardening, I could easily pull them. But we just stood and laughed, it was funny. We come back, go to the subway, and my girlfriend says to me: “Welcome to Moscow. There you were Sherlock Holmes, but here you are nobody again. "

- Tired of such a life?

- I'm tired of suffering. There was a moment when I got into a rehabilitation center for eight months. Well, just tired. I suddenly realized that life could not consist of suffering.

It’s now I am funny, but before - you are sitting in the porch under a dull light bulb and think: “Did you strive for this? And it's you? So do you want to be? " In short, he reached the edge. I was the only of 30 people who were brought to the center without injections and not in handcuffs. There is hard, the lattices are on the windows. I thought that I was going to where there are tennis fields, a pool, and this is like an army plus a prison. But in this center I met myself, every day I cleared myself, took off the skin.

Then he wrote the song: “Oh, these days are in coma! Oh, these nights without sleep! Prison, stupid body ... ”I generally born a lot of material there. And the name of the Amen group was also invented there. And then the crazy clip was made for "nights without sleep." The girls left us in the apartment alone, went to take a walk. We put on, well, I performed there: lying around, smoked on a treadmill with a knife, Lech in a sheepskin coat, ten rings on his fingers, all that kind. We send the producer, he says: “You are fucked up. This is the propaganda of an unhealthy lifestyle, AUE* and politics. You can't do it. "

- And now nothing is at all. Mat, religion, homosexuality, drugs, and politics, of course.

- We have all this. Yes, they can get to the bottom of anything if desired. But even in this situation, I will not choose expressions. They, prohibiting them, can be easily deceived, and where to go from yourself?

- Do you have politics?

- But what about: "The king is tired and practically does not breathe, the king is tired, but he hears everything, hears ..."

- Well, this is quite Light in the current times.

- And I don’t want to go on the forehead. More precisely, it does not work, it will be not true. If I were another warehouse, I would love to write something like: "Everything is on the barricades, forward and forward!" But I can't.

- Do you consider yourself a poet?

- Of course not! I come to visit me, they represent me: “Here is Maxim, he is a poet, actor ...” You begin to joke, light up, and they are: “Ah, well, it’s clear.” The poet ... wow. Too loud word. The class in the ninth was re -seized, and since then I have been writing every day. I have notebooks, papers pour out from everywhere. But this does not mean that I am a poet. And with rock and roll, by the way, the same garbage. This is not a job. Poplaukhin says: "Now the film will be released, and you will not have a end to offers, the phone will be cut off." And I don't really want to contact this. I would like to participate in something interesting, and not so that I came, did my job, left. It was really cool in the White World. And they threw the coins, and the people are good, and the attitude is this: feel like a star. It's nice, of course.

- In the "White World" the same producer as in the "summer" of Serebrennikov, Ilya Stuart. And everyone, of course, expects that it will be “summer-2”, only about Yanka and Letov, and not about Mike and Tsoi.

- I have not seen the final version, but in the sensations - nothing in common. "Summer" in my understanding is a comic, you excuse me. And the "white light", it is tragic. I probably did not act otherwise.

After the interview, he played in the bar at the shock installation for three hours and was completely happy. I remembered who he looked like. On Sean Raider from Happy Mondays, and there is much in common in music. This is a Russian Manchester, a Russian Manchester wave. Manchester of the 80s-a terrible industrial city, such as Novokuznetsk. Hooligans, unemployed, drug addicts. And there is a lot of will to life, the desire to have fun, no matter what. Manchester is a place of power. But Lytkarino, apparently, is also not a mistake.

*recognized as extremist and prohibited in Russia