Name: Sclerosis scattered through life
Alexander Shirvindt
Year of writing: 2016
Volume: 300 pages
Genres: Biographies and Memoirs, Cinematography, theater
Read online
Alexander Shirvindt is an outstanding actor, screenwriter, humorist and TV presenter, one of the most respected teachers of the B.V. Schukin. Alexander Anatolyevich gives his life experience, memories and reasoning about many acute problems of modern society to his fans in the form of books - poignant, sincere, witty. One of his most ambitious works is a whole gallery of memoirs, biographical revelations and a collection of well-aimed quotes with the ironic title "Sclerosis Scattered Through Life".
Starting to read this amazing book, you immediately imagine the author in front of you - with a slight smirk and a calm peaceful look. This work was published in 2015, when Shirvindt was over eighty years old, but there is no senile grumbling or grumbling in it.
There were many trials in the fate of this great man, but life wisdom and calmness always allowed him to emerge victorious from any situation. And now, looking back at his rich life, Alexander Anatolyevich describes it with sincere kindness, gratitude and an ironic tinge. It reflects the memories of friends and colleagues on the stage, of their relatives and friends, of casual acquaintances, meeting with whom Shirvindt brought many important discoveries and shocks.
The book "Sclerosis Scattered Through Life" is an inexhaustible source of positivity and youth, always topical reflections on all life's problems in one bottle. Alexander Shirvindt chose a very successful manner of presentation. When reading a work, you imagine that you are having a sincere conversation with the author and absorbing his wisdom, humor, honesty, love of life.
The bright and witty description of the moments of his biography, the curious cases with him and his colleagues - famous artists, fascinates. Self-irony, which runs like a red thread through all the pages of the work, proves that we are facing a tactful, intelligent, sincere and self-aware person.
In the book Sclerosis Scattered Through Life, special attention is paid to modern society and its values. From his own life, the author gives eloquent examples of what love and true friendship mean. It is impossible not to notice sadness among the positive lines of Alexander Anatolyevich - most of all it slips in the memories of the artists who have passed away. The author dedicated a separate chapter to each of his close friends and colleagues.
If you want to learn how to live with pleasure regardless of age, charge yourself with inexhaustible optimism, you definitely need to download and read this inspiring work.
On our literary site vsebooks.ru you can download for free the book by Alexander Shirvindt "Sclerosis scattered through life" in a suitable format for different devices: epub, fb2, txt, rtf. The book is the best teacher, friend and companion. It contains the secrets of the Universe, the riddles of man and the answers to any questions. We have collected the best representatives of both foreign and domestic literature, classical and modern books, publications on psychology and self-development, fairy tales for children and works exclusively for adults. Everyone will find here exactly what will give a lot of pleasant moments.
Sclerosis scattered through life
Alexander Shirvindt(No ratings yet)
Title: Sclerosis scattered through life
About the book "Sclerosis scattered through life" Alexander Shirvindt
Everyone's favorite theater and film actor, director, screenwriter and TV presenter Alexander Shirvindt wrote his memoirs. The book, entitled "Sclerosis Scattered Through Life," tells about the life and creative path of this bright and talented personality.
Honored and People's Artist of the USSR, awarded with many orders and medals, professor and teacher at the Shchukin Higher Theater School, this person is known to every reader primarily as an actor. Today we will learn about him as a writer.
Sclerosis Scattered Through Life is not a book written out of pride and vanity. The author wants to consolidate his mark left on the cultural field of the Motherland. He perfectly understands that the legacy left after him will serve the benefit of society for a long time, which means that you need to open up to the people to the maximum. Without hiding.
Note that many years ago, Alexander Shirvindt already published his memoirs "The Past Without Thoughts." Now, after a while, having accumulated even more experience and experienced various events, the author writes in a new way. Everyone knows that he has no problems with a sense of humor, as well as with a great style, so reading new memoirs is even more exciting.
“Sclerosis scattered through life” are the most vivid memories from the life of a talented person. The author's memoirs are closely connected with other creative personalities, such as Mikhail Derzhavin, Andrei Mironov and others. Many of them no longer exist. They appear before readers in a new light. Not blue screens and theatrical scenes, but the words of a friend will tell a lot of interesting things about folk idols.
Fans of Alexander Shirvindt will be delighted with this work. Sclerosis Scattered Through Life is a great example of a memoir that is fun to read. His stories bring joy and laughter. A person who strives to live and sees the positive in every moment cannot but leave a mark on the soul. It infects with energy and positivity. And he shares the wisdom of the past years.
Every page is an adventure. Not invented. The real story of the artist's life. How many there were! Tours, business trips, funny incidents on the stage, gatherings with friends who are as "crazy" as he is, their funny pranks and "setups", relationships with family and relatives - all this and a little more you will find in the book of memories from a loved one. artist.
On our site about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read online the book "Sclerosis, Disseminated in Life" by Alexander Shirvindt in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For novice writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you can try your hand at writing.
Quotes from the book "Sclerosis scattered through life" Alexander Shirvindt
Any faith - Marxist, Orthodox or Jewish - on the one hand, creates some kind of internal restrictions, and on the other hand, gives some kind of purposefulness to the development of the organism. Most importantly, she gives a young individual a sort of tucked up tail. You cannot live fearlessly. It is impossible not to be afraid of anything from the point of view of the cosmic - it is not clear what is there. And you can't help but be afraid when you cross the street. And now no one is afraid of anything.
If you foolishly begin to comprehend the past, of course, you need to dance from an obituary. Cheerful dance - a kind of dance macabre.
My generation had a clear idea that humanity is divided into good and bad heroes. Positive ones are silent, non-drinkers and love the Motherland in any of its capacities at the moment. The negative ones drink, change women and doubt the quality of the Motherland.
So, for example, talking about the danger of the future, she sighed: "So that Vitaly Wolf does not inquisitively penetrate into our unrequited postmortality."
Venice in its purest form was erected on a pleshka behind the Mosfilm garages - real Venice, with canals and palaces. In general, we did not even have time to gasp, as we were already sailing in a gondola towards Leninsky Prospekt.
With these grateful descendants, there is also some kind of foppishness and literaryism.
Firstly, the descendants do not thank anyone, but mostly vilify and despise. Secondly, if descendants selectively pounce on some previous figure with gratitude and reverence, then this is done so frantically and tastelessly that one wants quiet oblivion.
Yes! Perhaps the time has come-
Time to give in to temptation
And sum up life
So as not to flirt with oblivion.
unknown poet
(I don't know if he's a poet.
It is known that he is not a poet. my poem)
A patchwork quilt of thoughts
Senile thoughts come during insomnia, so the blanket here is not an attempt at an aphorism, but a natural covering. We must have time to reach the sheet of paper. If the route is through the toilet - write wasted. That is, what I wanted to write was gone.
The physical state of the body provokes comprehension. Understanding gravitates toward formulations. The formulations begin to smell of thought or, in extreme cases, wisdom. Wisdom looks like individuality. In the morning you understand that all this senile cowardice already has a centuries-old background and is dictated by all sorts of geniuses. Dead end!
Years go by… Various media are increasingly turning to demand personal memories of departed peers. Gradually you become a commentary on the book of other people's lives and destinies, and your memory weakens, the episodes get confused, because old age is not when you forget, but when you forget where you wrote it down so as not to forget.
For example, I wrote down the previous thought in one of my three books that came out earlier. And I forgot. Now I read it - as if for the first time. What I wish to those who also read them.
Sclerosis came as an epiphany.
... How often do we supposedly utter philosophically different words, without thinking about the essence of stupidity: "Time to scatter stones, time to collect stones." What is this? Well, you scattered all the stones according to your young strength - and how to collect them in your old age, if you bend down - is a problem, not to mention straightening up, and even with a cobblestone in your hand.
But since this is a textbook truth, then I also want to collect the stones scattered throughout life, so that all the most precious things do not lie around anywhere, but are in one heap; in order not to languish in time and space, sclerotically stuck in traffic jams of memories when trying to move from one milestone to another.
And this, it turns out, I already wrote. True, a few more milestones have passed since then. And there is something to remember. Rather, there is something to forget.
I was once asked: “What, in your opinion, should not be included in a book of memoirs?” He answered: "That's all, if you are afraid of revelations."
Memoirs are pushing Swift, Gogol and Kozma Prutkov off the bookshelves, and many graphomaniacs are coming up with documentary fables.
The theater of satire was directed by Margarita Mikaelyan. Once, at a meeting of the artistic council, she stood up and said: “I am many years old, I have been working in the theater for a long time. I am listening to this discussion now and I think: well, how much can you do? And I decided - from today not to lie. Pluchek says: "Mara, it's late."
One should not fall into the temptation to write a monumental work within the framework of memoir stereotypes under the most modest title “I am about myself”, “I am about me”, “They are about me” and, at worst, self-deprecatingly: “I am about them” ...
Today, everyday dishes of life are passed off as a la carte - hence the cheap biography menu and heartburn in the finale.
Once I came up with a formula for what I am: born in the USSR, surviving under socialism with a capitalist face (or vice versa).
I think that cloning was invented by Gogol in The Marriage: “If Nikanor Ivanovich’s lips were put to Ivan Kuzmich’s nose…” So, if this is here, and this is here, then, unfortunately, it doesn’t work out. It doesn't work with cloning your own biography.
For 80 years, I have not seriously despaired - I just pretend. This preserved the hair, the smooth skin of the muzzle of the face and the infantilism of the old asshole.
Once I came across, it seems, from Romain Gary (aka Emile Azhar) - sometimes I painfully want to show off my erudition - the phrase: "He has reached the age when a person already has a final face." Everything! The prospects for growth and reincarnation are no more - you have to put up with it and live with this physiognomy.
The number 80 is unpleasant. When you pronounce it, it still somehow slips. And when it is drawn on paper, I want to glue it. Recently I caught myself thinking that I began to pay attention to the years of life of famous people. You read: he died at 38, 45, 48 years old ... - and sadness overcomes. But sometimes you look: another lived 92 years. A great weight off one's mind. Therefore, I now have a reference book - a calendar of the House of Cinema, which is sent every month to members of the Union of Cinematographers. On the first page - the heading "Congratulations to the anniversaries." There are dashes next to the female surnames, and round dates next to the male ones. But starting from the 80s, non-round ones are also written - just in case, because there is little hope for congratulations on the next round date. And this calendar is my consolation. True, sometimes completely unfamiliar names come across - some props, a second director, a fourth pyrotechnician, a fifth assistant ... But what numbers: 86, 93, 99! Ichthyosaurs of Hope.
It is customary for great writers to sum up, to have a complete collection of works. And when there are only three essays in a lifetime, then you can put them together, add something, and you get a “multi-volume” work of 300 pages.
I've always wondered why biographies and autobiographies are written from birth onwards, and not vice versa. After all, it is obvious that a person can more clearly and thoroughly describe his current uncomplicated life, and only then, gradually, together with a fading memory, sink into the depths of his life's time.
I turn on reverse.
The conclave of today's artistic directors of theaters is approaching the age of the Vatican.
I remember one of the congresses of the Union of Theater Workers a few years ago. We have nostalgia for conventions. This one was held in some kind of green hall of the mayor's office. "Turn on the first microphone ...", "Turn on the second microphone ...". I sat, listened, listened, froze, I wake up, and I get the feeling that I am in a billiard room: a huge green cloth and billiard balls, only a lot, a lot. These are balds. And Alexander Alexandrovich Kalyagin, sitting on the podium, is also a powerful billiard ball. (Although, of course, it's a blessing that there are people of such an acting level who at the same time want to be the main bosses.)
A lot of years have come unexpectedly. In a second for some reason. Was fishing - brought friends. Friends are also not the freshest, but still ten or fifteen years difference. There is a descent down to the lake. They go back and forth, and I fell down there, but I can’t get back up.
I scale in a straight line, like a stayer, but there is already a problem with the steps. knees.
With age, everything concentrates in a person - all the parameters of the mind and heart. But there is also physiology, by the age of 80 it dominates all parameters. When you neither sit down nor stand up, then everything obeys this, and "physics" begins to dictate. When you get up, and the knee does not unbend, then you become stingy, and angry, and greedy. And at the same time. And if the knee is miraculously unbent, then everything is ready to give, nothing to regret.
For the first time I understood the meaning of the expression “weak in the knees” about twenty years ago - it turns out that this is when, firstly, they hurt, secondly, they do not bend well and, thirdly, they become weak. I turned to two familiar luminaries on the knees - both gave diametrically opposite recommendations, and decided to wear the knees in this form, because I can’t afford new ones.
I am treated with a special warming gel for joints, which I buy at a veterinary pharmacy. Rider friends recommended. Here are the instructions for use: “Smear from knee to hoof. After the procedure, it is recommended to cover the horse with a blanket. It is advisable to refrain from working on soft ground. I smear! Amazing effect! At the same time, I refuse soft ground. Fundamentally. I agree with hard cover. Like tennis players. One likes hard, the second - grass. So am I now.
© Shirvindt A. A., text, 2014
© Trifonov A. Yu., design, 2014
© Azbuka-Atticus Publishing Group LLC, 2017
Hummingbird®
* * *
Yes! Perhaps the time has come -
Time to give in to temptation
And sum up life
So as not to flirt with oblivion.unknown poet(It is not known if he is a poet? It is known that he is not a poet. My poem)
A patchwork quilt of thoughts
Senile thoughts come during insomnia, so the blanket here is not an attempt at an aphorism, but a natural covering. We must have time to reach the sheet of paper. If the route is through the toilet - write wasted. That is, what I wanted to write was gone.
The physical state of the body provokes comprehension. Understanding gravitates toward formulations. The formulations begin to smell of thought or, in extreme cases, wisdom. Wisdom looks like individuality. In the morning you understand that all this senile cowardice already has a centuries-old background and is dictated by all sorts of geniuses. Dead end!
Years go by… Various media are increasingly turning to demand personal memories of departed peers. Gradually you become a commentary on the book of other people's lives and destinies, and your memory weakens, the episodes get confused, because old age is not when you forget, but when you forget where you wrote it down so as not to forget.
For example, I wrote down the previous thought in one of my three books that came out earlier. And I forgot. Now I read it - as if for the first time. What I wish to those who also read them.
Sclerosis came as an epiphany.
... How often do we supposedly utter philosophically different words, without thinking about the essence of stupidity: "Time to scatter stones, time to collect stones." What is this? Well, you scattered all the stones according to your young strength - and how to collect them in your old age, if you bend down - is a problem, not to mention straightening up, and even with a cobblestone in your hand.
But since this is a textbook truth, then I also want to collect the stones scattered throughout life, so that all the most precious things do not lie around anywhere, but are in one heap; in order not to languish in time and space, sclerotically stuck in traffic jams of memories when trying to move from one milestone to another.
And this, it turns out, I already wrote. True, a few more milestones have passed since then. And there is something to remember. Rather, there is something to forget.
I was once asked: “What, in your opinion, should not be included in a book of memoirs?” He answered: "That's all, if you are afraid of revelations."
Memoirs are pushing Swift, Gogol and Kozma Prutkov off the bookshelves, and many graphomaniacs are coming up with documentary fables.
The theater of satire was directed by Margarita Mikaelyan. Once, at a meeting of the artistic council, she stood up and said: “I am many years old, I have been working in the theater for a long time. I am listening to this discussion now and I think: well, how much can you do? And I decided - from today not to lie. Pluchek says: "Mara, it's late."
One should not fall into the temptation to write a monumental work within the framework of memoir stereotypes under the most modest title “I am about myself”, “I am about me”, “They are about me” and, at worst, self-deprecatingly: “I am about them” ...
Today, everyday dishes of life are passed off as a la carte - hence the cheap biography menu and heartburn in the finale.
Once I came up with a formula for what I am: born in the USSR, surviving under socialism with a capitalist face (or vice versa).
I think that cloning was invented by Gogol in The Marriage: “If Nikanor Ivanovich’s lips were put to Ivan Kuzmich’s nose…” So, if this is here, and this is here, then, unfortunately, it doesn’t work out. It doesn't work with cloning your own biography.
For 80 years, I have not seriously despaired - I just pretend. This preserved the hair, the smooth skin of the muzzle of the face and the infantilism of the old asshole.
Once I came across, it seems, from Romain Gary (aka Emile Azhar) - sometimes I painfully want to show off my erudition - the phrase: "He has reached the age when a person already has a final face." Everything! The prospects for growth and reincarnation are no more - you have to put up with it and live with this physiognomy.
The number 80 is unpleasant. When you pronounce it, it still somehow slips. And when it is drawn on paper, I want to glue it. Recently I caught myself thinking that I began to pay attention to the years of life of famous people. You read: he died at 38, 45, 48 years old ... - and sadness overcomes. But sometimes you look: another lived 92 years. A great weight off one's mind. Therefore, I now have a reference book - a calendar of the House of Cinema, which is sent every month to members of the Union of Cinematographers. On the first page - the heading "Congratulations to the anniversaries." There are dashes next to the female surnames, and round dates next to the male ones. But starting from the 80s, non-round ones are also written - just in case, because there is little hope for congratulations on the next round date. And this calendar is my consolation. True, sometimes completely unfamiliar names come across - some props, a second director, a fourth pyrotechnician, a fifth assistant ... But what numbers: 86, 93, 99! Ichthyosaurs of Hope.
It is customary for great writers to sum up, to have a complete collection of works. And when there are only three essays in a lifetime, then you can put them together, add something, and you get a “multi-volume” work of 300 pages.
I've always wondered why biographies and autobiographies are written from birth onwards, and not vice versa. After all, it is obvious that a person can more clearly and thoroughly describe his current uncomplicated life, and only then, gradually, together with a fading memory, sink into the depths of his life's time.
I turn on reverse.
80 to 40
* * *
The conclave of today's artistic directors of theaters is approaching the age of the Vatican.
I remember one of the congresses of the Union of Theater Workers a few years ago. We have nostalgia for conventions. This one was held in some kind of green hall of the mayor's office. "Turn on the first microphone ...", "Turn on the second microphone ...". I sat, listened, listened, froze, I wake up, and I get the feeling that I am in a billiard room: a huge green cloth and billiard balls, only a lot, a lot. These are balds. And Alexander Alexandrovich Kalyagin, sitting on the podium, is also a powerful billiard ball. (Although, of course, it's a blessing that there are people of such an acting level who at the same time want to be the main bosses.)
A lot of years have come unexpectedly. In a second for some reason. Was fishing - brought friends. Friends are also not the freshest, but still ten or fifteen years difference. There is a descent down to the lake. They go back and forth, and I fell down there, but I can’t get back up.
I scale in a straight line, like a stayer, but there is already a problem with the steps. knees.
With age, everything concentrates in a person - all the parameters of the mind and heart. But there is also physiology, by the age of 80 it dominates all parameters. When you neither sit down nor stand up, then everything obeys this, and "physics" begins to dictate. When you get up, and the knee does not unbend, then you become stingy, and angry, and greedy. And at the same time. And if the knee is miraculously unbent, then everything is ready to give, nothing to regret.
For the first time I understood the meaning of the expression “weak in the knees” about twenty years ago - it turns out that this is when, firstly, they hurt, secondly, they do not bend well and, thirdly, they become weak. I turned to two familiar luminaries on the knees - both gave diametrically opposite recommendations, and decided to wear the knees in this form, because I can’t afford new ones.
I am treated with a special warming gel for joints, which I buy at a veterinary pharmacy. Rider friends recommended. Here are the instructions for use: “Smear from knee to hoof. After the procedure, it is recommended to cover the horse with a blanket. It is advisable to refrain from working on soft ground. I smear! Amazing effect! At the same time, I refuse soft ground. Fundamentally. I agree with hard cover. Like tennis players. One likes hard, the second - grass. So am I now.
Fatigue builds up. Moral, not to mention physical. I didn’t sleep here at night: my knee! I turn on the TV. There is a film "Three in a boat, not counting the dog." Just the moment when we are chasing catfish. I am standing in the boat, Andryushka Mironov is standing on me, and Derzhavin is on Andryushka. I think: but it was!
And on the set of the film "Ataman Kodr" I galloped 12 kilometers for a drink to the nearest Moldovan village and back. The film was shot by a wonderful director Misha Kalik. We played all the time on horseback. And on horseback after filming they rushed to the store. Many years later, at one of the Golden Ostap festivals, of which I was the permanent president, they brought me a horse. I had to ride out like a sovereign on a white horse, easily jump off and open the festival. You don't understand when you're dipping your body into disaster. I jumped on this horse with the help of everyone around me. And I couldn't jump at all. Therefore, he slid down the croup, hugging the horse by the neck.
I have a very heavy workout in the morning. Lying down, I first twist my legs for the lower back. 30 times. Then, with difficulty, groaning, I sit up on the bed and make a rotational movement on my creaking neck five times there, five times back. And then shoulders 10 times. Someone once taught me, and I got used to it. And I feel that I have done exercises.
Recently in the winter at the dacha, my wife and I went for a walk, but so that this activity would not be completely meaningless, we went to a rural store. And there we were seen by the loader Mishka, who used to work as a mechanic in our dacha cooperative. He was not very fresh, but joyfully rushed to us with the words: “I haven’t seen you for a long time! Why do you look so bad? Have grown old. Oh, it's just scary to look at you! We try to break away from him, we leave the store. He is behind us. On the street - the bright sun, snow, beauty! The bear looks at me attentively and says: “Oh, and in the sun you are even x ... wow!”
75, 85 and 100. If it's not the waist or hips, then the numbers are very suspicious.
When Bernard Shaw was asked why he does not celebrate his birthdays, the writer replied: “Why celebrate the days that bring you closer to death?” And really, what kind of holidays are these seventy and eighty years?
Old parties are terrible. Live so that everyone is touched that you look 71 at 85? Although, apparently, the great attraction of public longevity is the immortality of optimism.
Young - everywhere we have a road,
Old people are respected everywhere.
I am the old man standing at the threshold
Life that is closed on the account.
Old people should be helpless and touching, then they feel sorry for them, and they are needed for the landscape and for a second understanding of the frailty of existence by young people. Militantly youthful old men must be thrown off the rocks. For lack of rocks - to discount. I mean banking.
One good doctor put my mind at ease. “Dates are all nonsense. The age of a person, he said, is determined not by dates, but by his being. Sometimes, for a very short time, I happen to be somewhere in the region of 20 years. And sometimes I'm under 100.
The famous line of Bulat Okudzhava: "Let's join hands, friends, so as not to disappear one by one" - in our case now: "So as not to fall one by one."
Long life is honorable, interesting, but dangerous from the point of view of shifting the temporal consciousness.
I remember (still remember) the 90th anniversary of the great Russian actress Alexandra Alexandrovna Yablochkina on the stage of the Actor's House, which after a while began to be called by her name. In response, she said: “We ... are artists of the academic, Order of Lenin, His Imperial Majesty the Maly Theater ...”
The birthday of our theater coincides with the Day of the old old man, or (how is it?) the elderly person ... So I have a double holiday.
The theater of satire is 90 years old. Every ten years we celebrate an anniversary. During the reporting period, I made four of them - 60, 70, 80, 90. By the 60th anniversary, a ramp in the form of a snail was installed on the stage. The whole troupe lined up on it. Upstairs, on the platform, stood Peltzer, Papanov, Menglet, Valentina Georgievna Tokarskaya, a lovely lady with a tragic fate ... I led the program and represented the troupe: “Here are the youth ... but the middle generation ... and here are our veterans who are on their shoulders ... And finally , - I shouted, - forever young pioneer of our theater, 90-year-old Georgy Tusuzov! He ran against the movement of the ring. The audience stood up and began to applaud. Peltzer turned to Tokarskaya and said: “Valya, if you, old b ..., didn’t hide your age, then you would run with Tuzik.”
By the way, about the "forever young" Tusuzov. Using his preservation at the age of 90 once almost cost me a biography. The 80th anniversary of the most powerful circus figure Mark Mestechkin was brewing. In the circus arena, on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, people and horses crowded behind the forgang to express their admiration for the master of the Soviet circus. In the government box sat the Moscow authorities - the MGK of the party.
Having assembled the anniversary team, I brought Aroseva, Runge, Derzhavin on stage, who demonstrated to Mestechkin the similarity of our creative directions with the circus. “And finally,” I habitually pronounce, “the standard of our circus hardening, the universal clown, 90-year-old Georgy Tusuzov.” Tusuzov, in a trained manner, runs out into the arena and, to a flurry of applause, cheerfully runs along the route of circus horses. During his run, I manage to say: “Here, dear Mark, Tusuzov is ten years older than you, and in what form - despite the fact that he eats shit in our theater buffet.”
I wish I hadn't said it. The next morning, the Theater of Satire was invited to the party's secretary for ideology. Since it was impossible to invite me to the Moscow Conservatory alone - due to my persistent lack of party membership - my dear Boris Runge, the secretary of the party organization of the theater, led me by the hand.
At the morning table sat several stern ladies with “challahs” on their heads and a couple of men combed with water, obviously after yesterday's alcohol mistakes.
They didn’t delay the execution, since there was a long queue for the carpet, and they asked, naturally, turning to fellow party member Boris Vasilyevich Runge, whether he considered it possible for a person who dared to say something repeated inside the walls of the academic theater Nobody can MGK party. Borya looked at me helplessly, and I, not being burdened by the burden of party ethics, made a naively surprised face and said: “I know what my native CIM incriminates me, but I am surprised at the depravity of the perception of respected secretaries, because in the arena I clearly said:“ He has been eating for a long time in the buffet of our theater. The embarrassed MGK let Runge go to the theater without party penalties.
I gave my life to other people's anniversaries. When asked why I don’t celebrate mine, I came up with the answer: “I can’t imagine an anniversary for myself on which Shirvindt and Derzhavin would not congratulate the hero of the day.”
But once we played the play "Honoring" in the premises of the Mayakovsky Theater. A huge poster was posted there - my portrait and the phrase: “In connection with the 60th anniversary of Shirvindt -“ Honoring ”. And finely - Slade's Play. People came with letters, bottles, souvenirs. Somehow, Yuri Mikhailovich Luzhkov even came with his retinue - not to the performance, but to congratulate the hero of the day. When the situation cleared up, some people in the Moscow government were missing.
At the anniversary, as at a pop concert, you must be successful. Not at the hero of the day - they didn’t come to him, but from the public. One day, Boris Golubovsky - he was then the chief director of the Gogol Theater - had Gogol's portrait make-up done. He grabbed me and Lev Losev backstage, took me aside and said nervously: “Now I’ll check your congratulations.” And he began to read to us in Gogol's make-up a greeting written for the anniversary. Then he looked at our faces - and frantically began to tear off his wig and undress.
Anniversaries, anniversaries, anniversaries… Hangouts, hangouts… When over decades you become an obligatory attribute of any dates – from high-state to small-departmental ones – the price of the importance and necessity of meetings and feasts gradually atrophies. Let me compose another rhyme - with a bad rhyme:
Soaring in table whirls
And barely sipping friendship
It's scary to think how many songs
We haven't listened to the bottom...
On the 10th anniversary of Sovremennik, I called the team a "terrarium of like-minded people." Who just did not appropriate the authorship of this boorish aphorism! I don't sue for copyright, I'm generous.
Decades have passed. There are no more like-minded people. There are units left. Volchek is the great Tortila of an empty terrarium.
At her recent anniversary, I remembered how in the 90s we stood with her on Red Square, hanging the Order of Friendship of Peoples on ourselves.
Immediately after that, the order was renamed simply Friendship. Obviously, considering that the friendship of our peoples with her ended with us.
Today she has everything. To reward her, you need to come up with a new order. She has a unique theatre. She has a wonderful son - the closest friend of my wonderful son. May he live long! Let this lousy planet see who should ideally inhabit it. For some reason they don't make people like her anymore.
Events fill the existence very densely. The anniversary of a colleague smoothly turns into someone's memorial service. And there, you see, the 40th day of the next colleague is articulated with the 80th anniversary of the next one. Horror!
There is an anecdote: a crematorium worker sneezed at his workplace and now does not know where anyone is. Now the era has sneezed on our generation so much that it is completely unknown where who is.
Unfortunately, more and more often have to bury friends. I'm afraid that I myself may not reach the level of a legend, but it has become a prestigious mission to cater for the departures of true legends. The work is bitter, difficult, but at least sincere.
And at the same time…
Bury and congratulate
No strength - fuck ... fuck.
About the dead - either good or true! At funeral services, I have questions: do the guys hear what they say about them? For example, I would be interested to know who will come to my funeral, what they will say about me.
The funeral also became some kind of show. Already, as at anniversaries, they say: “Yesterday, such and such performed great at the memorial service.” And they discuss, speaking in pop language, who "passed" and who "did not pass."
Tragedy, farce - all back to back. They buried Oleg Nikolaevich Efremov. The memorial service was coming to an end. I was sitting in the hall and suddenly I heard someone near the stage faint. Who fell, I could not see, and how this story ended, I learned a few days later.
My old friend Anatoly Adoskin comes up to me, a most intelligent, gentle, subtle person and ironic to the marrow of his bones. “You can imagine what happened to me,” he says. - I fainted at Oleg's memorial service. There were a few minutes left before Oleg was carried out, the whole Kamergersky Lane was filled with people, and suddenly they carried me out. True, head first. I understand: I need to at least move, but I'm weak. I began to think that Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko were carried out like that. And then I got a little bit up.”
Our life is similar to this case with Adoskin. Today's anniversaries differ from memorial services in less sincerity only because in the latter case there is no global envy for the hero of the event.
I read how they boasted about one nursing home. After the fires and orders to check all such houses, the commission came across a wonderful boarding house somewhere, in which they really take care of the elderly. Clean, well-fed old men and women crawl there, and the administration has a trained mechanical cuckoo. Every day at dawn, she cuckoos 20-30 times, no less - therapy!
And then I went fishing. Early morning, wind, slush, no bite. Suddenly the cuckoo is the first of the season. Cuckoo and cuckoo. I counted - 11 times! Well, I think he's lying. And then he thought about it - she didn’t stop, her voice was clear, without pauses, almost like a metronome. Who knows, maybe really? And then I suspected that it was mechanical.
Cowardice is the sister of panic. I am not afraid of death. I am afraid for my loved ones. I'm afraid of accidents for friends. I'm afraid to look old. I’m afraid of gradual dying, when I have to grab onto something and someone ... “Our Everything” wrote very correctly: “My uncle of the most honest rules, when he fell seriously ill ...” Being young, I thought that this was a preamble and not more. Now I understand that this is the most important thing in the novel.
I am a handsome old man, afraid of becoming helpless. In general, the diagnosis is “old age of moderate severity”.
* * *
For more than forty years I have been in the Theater of Satire. The endless controversy about the archaic hospital and the modern entrepreneurial movement is wildly tired of its senselessness and illiteracy. Also an invention for me - an entreprise! At the end of the century before last, the great entrepreneurs gathered a theatrical company, put on some kind of “Thunderstorm”, sailed down the mother river on the Volga to Astrakhan on a steamer and played this “Thunderstorm” on all the berths, snacking on chilled vodka with sturgeon then found in the Volga with black caviar.
When they ask me why I don’t flicker in the entreprises, I say that there is absolutely no time for this, and then, if I wanted to play something, I would somehow go to the management in my theater and agree with him. But seriously, the situation with the repertory theater today is dangerous. Some smart specialist proved that peat fires are a consequence of the drying of swamps. Before thoughtlessly and incompetently draining the swamps of repertory theatres, it is not out of place to think about the coming fires.
Unfortunately, there is no consolidation of people who have lived their lives in the theater. Everything can be covered in a second. Why, when the threat of eviction loomed over the Actor's House, did he win? Why is the huge building on the Old Arbat, on which many vulgar billionaires drooled, is still preserved as the Actor's House? Because the actors united and closed the entrance with their bodies. Now the sword of Damocles hangs over the meaning of the theatrical existence.
“I'm a tired old clown, I wave a cardboard sword…” Satire is no longer mine, it implies anger. Self-irony is closer to me - salvation from everything that is around.
In the play "Ordinary Miracle" with Valentina Sharykina
So, when you know that everything will be fine and end sadly, what kind of satire is there. Satire should only be alarming. If the addressee of the satire is not a complete cretin, he will be alert when he smells arrows. You can’t laugh only at idiocy: when a person is absorbed in some kind of idiotic idea, you can’t move him. He can only get angry, fight back. In a joke, in irony, there is still hope that the subject of irony will hear this.
Before Valentin Pluchek, Nikolai Petrov was the chief director of the Theater of Satire. Very intelligent, smart person. Once he was told that Tovstonogov staged a wonderful performance, all of Moscow goes to St. Petersburg. He replied: "I can also put on a wonderful performance." - "Well?!" - "What for?"
This is the "why?" it has always been here. And this despite the fact that, for example, the artist of the Theater of Satire Vladimir Lepko received the first prize at the festival in Paris for his role in the play "The Bedbug" (this happened at a time when our people did not know where Paris was). And still they said languidly: “Well, yes ...” And there were “real” theaters nearby.
Pluchek always suffered from this "... and the Theater of Satire." As the theater began with blue blouses and TRAM, with humorous reviews, this trail continued. Pluchek, on the other hand, tried to raise acute problems, and “Terkin in the next world”, “Sword of Damocles”, “Suicide” tried to go here. But all the same, these were separate geysers, plugged up by censorship, against the backdrop of various “Women's monasteries”. This trend cannot be reversed. It still exists, although today everything is blurry.
Now there is such a madness of festivals and figurines - it is impossible to understand whether there are any criteria at all. There was a habit of saying: “But this is a wild success with the public ...”
With such a giggle, as if justifying himself: they say, the audience is a fool. But the public is really different. I know that there are only viewers of Fomenko Workshop or only Sovremennik.
We don't have that. Fortunately or unfortunately, it's hard to say. I think unfortunately. But this is because of the sign, we have it democratic. And the hall is huge. We do not complain about the fees, but sometimes you look through the crack before the performance, of whom these one thousand two hundred seats consist, you want there to be other faces. And the faces that are. And in general, it is difficult to determine by their faces whether they need to go to the theater or not.
A career is a measure of vanity, and my vanity is dosed by the need not to fall out of the cage of worthy people.
I accidentally got into the chair of the head - I was persuaded. Pluchek was already ill at that time and did not appear in the theatre. There were no new interesting performances, the actors began to leave.
We were the closest neighbors of the Zakharovs at the dacha in Krasnovidovo, and after dinner we sat down to play poker. Ninochka, the wife of Mark Anatolyevich, always said that she had forgotten what was more valuable, “troika” or “quads”, but as a result she beat everyone. And they played for money and the next day they drank it. After the game and the calculation at two or three in the morning, they went for a walk. There, at the dacha, at the torch, Mark Anatolyevich began to persuade me to head the theater. My relatives were against it, they said that I was sick, crazy, senile and paranoid. The wife could not even stand it: “And if I set a condition: me or the theater?” I replied: "Actually, you both bothered me."
When I was appointed artistic director, Elena Chaikovskaya, our famous figure skating coach and my good friend, said: “Come on, Shurka, try it!” She is also a gambling person. I really was interested.
Here, somehow, the most intelligent Mikhail Levitin, during our tour of the stage of the Theater of Satire, honestly said that, in addition to the tempting possibilities of stage footage and a lovingly condescending attitude towards me, everything personally rejects him here. This is a wonderful, sincere position, rare in our sanctimonious circles.
Being with this suspicious muse for more than half a century, I long ago learned to separate emotion from necessity. Here somehow Galya Volchek, answering some question, said that staying at the post of artistic director is not a desire, not a choice, but a sentence. I, too, was sentenced to this chair - not as a reformer and destroyer of the hated past, but as a keeper of this circus-like "ship" afloat. There is no ambitious mercantilism in my theater, but there is only the need to constantly focus on the 90-year life of this institution and try to be (of course, portraying this) a patriot.
With Olga Aroseva, Valentin Pluchek and Mikhail Derzhavin
In addition, my position is special: I am sitting in an office, and on the floor below there are men's dressing rooms, even lower - women's. And there, the policy of the theater management is discussed around the clock: “He was completely stunned, I have to go, I need to talk to him ...” And then I go downstairs to prepare for the performance and immediately join my colleagues: “He was stunned as much as possible!” And in the midst of a riot, they suddenly realize that this is me. So - I leave the office and immediately plunge into the brewery of those dissatisfied with the leadership. I am dissatisfied with them the most. And this is my salvation.
Everyone tells me: soft, kind, sluggish, where is the hardness?
I warned that in my old age I don’t want to suddenly become a monster. And playing this monster is boring. Therefore, what is it. But when it goes off scale, it has to. Here with Garkalin once went off scale. He is an artist in demand, and we adapted to him, that is, we were already dependent. Nobody says that it is impossible to work in entreprises. It is known that everyone roams on the side, and I roam. But there must be some moral barrier. When in the center of Moscow, on Triumfalnaya Square, there is a poster for The Taming of the Shrew and tickets for the performance are sold out, and the wife of the artist in the lead role calls us and says that the artist is lying and cannot raise his head, he has a terribly high temperature and in general, some kind of horror is happening to him, we are forced to give a replacement. Spectators hand over tickets, because sometimes they go to a specific performance and a specific artist. That evening, 600 tickets were handed over - this is half the hall. Huge money for the theatre. And at this time, the dying Garkalin on the stage of the theater "Commonwealth of Taganka Actors" plays the premiere of some kind of private performance. Moscow is a small city, of course, we were immediately informed. Our deputy director went there, bought a ticket, sat in the hall and waited for Garkalin to come out - so that later there would be no talk that this was not true.
Then everyone in the theater hid, thinking: “Well, this kind one will now say:“ Put it in front of him ”and that’s it.” But I kicked out, and everyone said: "Look, he showed character, he kicked out Garkalin, well done." Some time passes, and I already hear: “Drive out such an artist!” However, there is no return.
Theatrical performances crumble very quickly - this, unfortunately, is a property of our art form.
The horror is that no one asks for roles in the theater. Roles are now being abandoned. Previously, they gnawed out their eyes for the role, but today ... In the Theater of Satire, my students come to me: "Father, I'm sorry, I can't rehearse this year." - "Why?" “I have an 80-episode film. And it's not soap. Perhaps Schwarzenegger, Robert De Niro will be filmed there. Or maybe even Zavorotnyuk herself. I start yelling: “The theater is your home! Aren’t you ashamed, why were you taught then?” They nod, cry, kneel. They explain: an apartment, a divorce, a small child.
Can I stop them from doing something? But it is impossible to make a repertoire for a month. This one asks for time off, that one - there. If ten actors who are in demand in the cinema play in the play, it is almost impossible to calculate the day so that they are free at the same time.
When my students ask if they can participate in television commercials, I answer: “Yes. But you can’t act in Viagra, dandruff and beer.” I tell the actresses: “So you washed your hair in the frame, and your dandruff disappeared. And in the evening you go on stage as Juliet, and everyone in the hall whispers: “Oh, this is the one with seborrhea.” Juliet with dandruff is unbearable!
We have wonderful young people in the theatre. Although youth is a relative concept. There was a time when the great Mikhail Ivanovich Tsarev played Chatsky at the age of 60 at the Maly Theatre. He was feared like fire. He flew onto the stage, flopped down on his knees and said: “A little light on my feet! and I am at your feet." And then he quietly said to Sophia: "Pick me up." And the trembling young Sophia picked it up.
Forty years ago, playing King Louis in the play "Molière" at Efros, I felt like a godfather to the king. My king was young, handsome, smartly dressed, infinitely impudent, with a wonderful director. When someone turned to the king: “Your Majesty”, I said: “Ay ...” And then gradually crawled to the dependent, unhappy, aging, complex Molière in the play “Moliere”, staged by Yuri Eremin. What it means to have your own theatre, manage it and at the same time play in it - I know by heart. Molière in the play screams that he is surrounded by enemies - and this is the only line that I play brilliantly.
The themes "artist and government", "artist and state", "artistic director and troupe", "old boss and young actress" - do not disappear. But to say that artists today are being pressured and hounded is ridiculous. Yes, and Moliere is not enough. It is known what tense relations Bulgakov had with Stalin. He dealt with Bulgakov most scrupulously: he called, corresponded, corrected ... It was the ruler's animal interest in the artist. And current politicians rarely go to theaters. But they manage to supervise water polo, hockey, volleyball. I'm dreaming that someone from the presidential administration would take "bail" of the Theater of Satire. I would go to premieres, and they would show it on all TV channels: the deputy head with his wife and children came to the performance at the Satire Theater, and in general he is a member of their artistic council ... A fairy tale!