Speaker 1: No, this is the operator. I have a collect phone
Speaker 1: call from Jonathan Goldstein for doctor Jackie Cohen. Do you
Speaker 1: accept the charges?
Speaker 2: No, I don't accept the pay Jackie. That wasn't even
Speaker 2: the operator. I know it wasn't the operator. That was
Speaker 2: my assistant, Khalila.
Speaker 3: Hi, Khalila, I remember you.
Speaker 1: How are you?
Speaker 2: Don't answer?
Speaker 4: I'm fine, don't I'm in.
Speaker 5: The middle of trying to get the kids do their homework.
Speaker 5: I'm in the middle of dinner.
Speaker 2: I play. This is just a test. What are you
Speaker 2: going to do when I'm in trouble? Someday? In a
Speaker 2: real operator call.
Speaker 3: There are real operators anymore.
Speaker 2: John, wouldn't you say that I'm a real operator?
Speaker 5: Would you say you're a real operator.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think I'd like to think. I
Speaker 2: don't know. Maybe not a big time operator, small time operator.
Speaker 1: Okay, Can I go now?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You can go now? Can I go to Yeah? From
Speaker 2: Gimblet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight today's
Speaker 2: episode Marshall. In the late nineties, I was working on
Speaker 2: an experimental novella, an erotic coming of age story told
Speaker 2: as a series of picuresque vignettes that so defied categorization
Speaker 2: that even now, almost twenty years later, the best description
Speaker 2: I can come up with for it is an erotic
Speaker 2: coming of age story told as a series of picuresque vignettes.
Speaker 2: To support myself during this prolonged parents nightmare, I got
Speaker 2: a job reviewing movies for a local alternative weekly. It
Speaker 2: didn't pay much, but after spending all day working on
Speaker 2: my novella, hating my writing and myself, it felt good
Speaker 2: to direct my critical gaze outward for a while. Because
Speaker 2: for me, nothing was ever quite right food, music, clothing.
Speaker 2: I'd made it into my late twenties only having ever
Speaker 2: found one T shirt that met my strict sartorial standards.
Speaker 2: Material was always too scratchy, neck holes always too tight.
Speaker 2: Reviewing films gave my negativity a place to prance free.
Speaker 2: Some of my headlines from the time include Ted Demi's
Speaker 2: Blow Blows and American Beauty is No Beauty. Because I
Speaker 2: was from Montreal, my editor put me in charge of
Speaker 2: the foreign film reviews, and even though I understood zero French,
Speaker 2: I still found a way to be critical, focusing on
Speaker 2: less plot related criteria like runtime and lighting. Of Suleasaba,
Speaker 2: I wrote nothing of Charlotte Rampling's intense performance. Instead, I
Speaker 2: complained that the ninety two minute film was too bright.
Speaker 2: It was around this time that I discovered the ninety
Speaker 2: nine minute film Russian Arc. What drew me to this
Speaker 2: Russian film was its willingness to experiment in the name
Speaker 2: of art. Directed by Alexander Sokarov, Russian Arc takes place
Speaker 2: in Saint Petersburg's Hermitage Museum, and it depicts three hundred
Speaker 2: years of Russian history. But here's the thing. It does
Speaker 2: so in one continuous, unedited, ninety minute long shot. This
Speaker 2: means thirty three rooms, nearly two thousand actors, two different orchestras,
Speaker 2: fifty makeup artists, sixty five costume designers, three centuries of
Speaker 2: Russian history, all presented in a single seamless take. At
Speaker 2: the time, directors competed with one another to create the
Speaker 2: longest unedited shots they could. Paul Thomas Anderson clocked in
Speaker 2: at two minutes and fifty four seconds with the opening
Speaker 2: discothech scene in Boogie Nights, and Martin Scorsese tipped the
Speaker 2: scales at just over three minutes with Rayliota's entrance into
Speaker 2: the Kopa in Goodfellas and here came Sokarov, saying, I
Speaker 2: see your measley little scenes and raise you one entire
Speaker 2: movie only. He probably said it in Russian. If the
Speaker 2: accomplishment of an uninterrupted shot that spans ninety minutes is
Speaker 2: still lost on you, let me just say, as someone
Speaker 2: who works in the recorded arts, it's really hard to
Speaker 2: make anything good without editing. Without editing editing, I screw it,
Speaker 2: my good looking editor, Jorge, we'll fix that in post.
Speaker 2: Though they'd been planning the movie for over two years,
Speaker 2: Sokarov and his crew had only one day to shoot
Speaker 2: the entire film, the twenty third of December two thousand
Speaker 2: and one, with only three hours of sunlight. It's one
Speaker 2: of the shortest days of the Russian year, which gave
Speaker 2: them just a few hours to pull off a perfect
Speaker 2: work of art, and as I remember it, they succeeded
Speaker 2: almost The film is structured as a series of vignettes.
Speaker 2: The camera drifts from room to room, catching glimpses of
Speaker 2: historic sceness. The Shaw's grandson apologizes to tar Nicholas the
Speaker 2: First for an attack on the Russian embassy.
Speaker 4: That's been better with them.
Speaker 2: The camera lingers as Peter the Great reprimands a courtier.
Speaker 2: The camera moves on, capturing a man as he builds
Speaker 2: a coffin during the Siege of Leningrad. It catches Catherine
Speaker 2: the Great watching a play, then follows her as she
Speaker 2: runs off to find a bathroom. The movie is virtually
Speaker 2: no storyline, so the central drama, the thing that keeps
Speaker 2: you watching, is this simple question wheel the filmmakers actually
Speaker 2: pull off their crazy stunt at any instant. An actor
Speaker 2: could stumble a line, a dancer miss a que, a boom,
Speaker 2: mic could fall, a piece of lighting crash, someone could cough.
Speaker 2: At the twenty minute mark, you think this is doomed.
Speaker 2: At thirty you grip the theater armress. At one hour,
Speaker 2: you can't help but get on board, rooting at every
Speaker 2: turn for the film's success. And when there's only ten
Speaker 2: minutes to go, you realize that, against all odds, they
Speaker 2: might actually pull it off. In the film's last remaining minutes,
Speaker 2: the camera enters upon an elaborate recreation of the last
Speaker 2: Grand Royal Ball before the Bolshevik Revolution. The room, in
Speaker 2: this critics opinion is bright. The orchestra begins playing the Mazurka.
Speaker 2: The camera swirls between white columns dozens of men in
Speaker 2: formal military regalia mill about with women in freely white
Speaker 2: dresses and feathers in their hair. And then it happens.
Speaker 2: As the orchestra plays the final notes, one of the musicians,
Speaker 2: a violinist, puts down his violin and, with the look
Speaker 2: of a startled deer about to become roadkill, turns around
Speaker 2: and stares directly into the camera. When you're watching a movie,
Speaker 2: the real world disappears, but if an actor accidentally looks
Speaker 2: into the camera and breaks the fourth wall, the whole
Speaker 2: illusion is destroyed. It's a screw up so profound that
Speaker 2: it actually has a name, spiking the camera, and because
Speaker 2: Russian Arc was otherwise so perfect, the spike felt all
Speaker 2: the more shocking. The film spell was broken, and I
Speaker 2: was instantly plopped back into my crummy theater scene in
Speaker 2: crummy reality, wearing a crummy malfitting T shirt, strangling me
Speaker 2: at the neck hole. The same year Russian Arc was filmed,
Speaker 2: I finally completed my novella. There was no book to her,
Speaker 2: no advance, but none of that mattered. After a decade
Speaker 2: of writing, my work had been published, and I was
Speaker 2: on top of the world. For all of three weeks
Speaker 2: at which point the first review appeared. The reviewer chose
Speaker 2: not to focus on the unconventional structure, the scatological wordplay,
Speaker 2: nor even the cover art, which was based on a
Speaker 2: photograph I'd found in a pawnshop shoe box. Instead, she
Speaker 2: directed her attention onto the one part of the book
Speaker 2: that I'd barely put any thought into it, all three
Speaker 2: short words printed at the center of the very first page,
Speaker 2: the dedication for my sister. There's something offbeat, the reviewer
Speaker 2: mused about dedicating the weird and lurid memories of a
Speaker 2: sex obsessed Jewish teenage boy to one's sister. Here, I
Speaker 2: was thinking I was all set to be the next
Speaker 2: Luke Reinhardt, but instead I just outed myself as the
Speaker 2: next Luke Skywalker in that first Star Wars movie, the
Speaker 2: one where he totally wants to bang his sister Jedi style.
Speaker 2: All of this to say, I understood the grand experiment
Speaker 2: that ends in failure due to one small blemish. I
Speaker 2: never wrote a novel again. In Alexander Soakroov, a man
Speaker 2: who once said I want to screen real time, I
Speaker 2: don't want to cut it or shrink it, never made
Speaker 2: a single shot movie again. Was it all due to
Speaker 2: the bungling violinist. When my novella was published in America,
Speaker 2: I only got a chance to revisit the dedication. I
Speaker 2: cut it out and moved on. But the filmmakers didn't
Speaker 2: have the luxury of editing out their one mistake, and
Speaker 2: they can't redo that day, can't shut down the second
Speaker 2: largest art museum in the world for another try at
Speaker 2: probably the biggest, most ambitious shoot of any of their careers.
Speaker 2: But what if they could?
Speaker 7: Good morning?
Speaker 2: Hi? Is this Tilman Buttner?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Hello, Tilman Butner is Russian art cinematographer, the man behind
Speaker 2: the camera that the heedless violinist had violently spiked into
Speaker 2: the marble Mosaic museum floor that day. Butner only speaks German,
Speaker 2: so he asked his son to translate our conversation. What
Speaker 2: is your name, konste.
Speaker 7: Constantine?
Speaker 2: Okay, great, so Butner.
Speaker 8: My name is not Buner. My name is Temple, Constant, Temple, Constantine.
Speaker 2: Okay, Constantine Temple. The camera Buttner used for Russian Arc
Speaker 2: was one of the first HD cameras in the world,
Speaker 2: and it required one terabyte of disk space to save
Speaker 2: all ninety minutes.
Speaker 8: Back then, the disc was as big as a giant
Speaker 8: bag for an astronaut that wants to go to the moon,
Speaker 8: a giant recorded that a different person had to carry
Speaker 8: next to him.
Speaker 2: A half dozen technicians followed Buttner around, hauling cable and
Speaker 2: silently shooing people out of the way. By the end
Speaker 2: of the shoot, Butner was left limping. At the time,
Speaker 2: there was only one other HD camera that was lighter,
Speaker 2: but another indie art house director already had DIBs.
Speaker 7: George Lucas. He didn't give the camera. Yeah, we give her.
Speaker 7: They asked him for it, but he wanted to keep it.
Speaker 2: Lucas wanted to keep it for Star Wars episode two,
Speaker 2: Attack of the Clones. Although I've not seen it, I
Speaker 2: assume it's about that same Randy Jedi traveling the Macroverse,
Speaker 2: fighting the Evil Empire and the equally evil urged Abang
Speaker 2: his sister Jedi style. If any Canadian theaters had screened
Speaker 2: it in French rather than in its original Ewokees, my
Speaker 2: headline might have read Attack of the Clones is an
Speaker 2: attack on decent lighting. Constant Constantine explains his father's emotional
Speaker 2: state around the time of Russian Arcs filming.
Speaker 7: The night before he couldn't sleep. It was really focused
Speaker 7: and really not nervous, but in a good way, you know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he knew that it was something really special, and
Speaker 8: he was one hundred percent short that everything would work
Speaker 8: out exactly the way they planned.
Speaker 2: Except it didn't. I saw this movie when it first
Speaker 2: came out, and there was one moment in it that
Speaker 2: stands out to me. There's only a few minutes left.
Speaker 2: I run him through the last few minutes of the film.
Speaker 2: The orchestra, the mazurka, the feckless violinist, the incident looks
Speaker 2: directly into the camera. I'm wondering if you remember that moment.
Speaker 7: No, not this violinist that you were interested in. He
Speaker 7: couldn't remember that this happened.
Speaker 2: I can imagine the casual viewer, distracted by popcorn and
Speaker 2: milk duds, not noticing the conspicuous violinist. But I was
Speaker 2: surprised that one of the filmmakers had missed it. Maybe
Speaker 2: Tillman Buttner was too encumbered by his giant camera to
Speaker 2: see the mistake. So I decided to try another member
Speaker 2: of the crew who was there that day, someone whose
Speaker 2: job it was to keep track of every air in shadow.
Speaker 2: I'm speaking, of course, of the film's lighting designer, Barn Fisher.
Speaker 2: As my past film re viewing suggests, I've long held
Speaker 2: a passion for man made light. As a boy, I'd
Speaker 2: monkey with a dimmer knob until my fingers were raw,
Speaker 2: sit down and eat your buttered Noodle's father would roar,
Speaker 2: but alas too much dimness and melancholia would slowly descend
Speaker 2: like a Sabbath elevator and a molasses factory. Too little dimness,
Speaker 2: and I felt denuded, shivering like a vampire in the
Speaker 2: frozen goods ayle. If only there was something with fewer
Speaker 2: gradations than a knob, I'd lament some means by which
Speaker 2: I could toggle between dimnesses emphatically, on off, on off,
Speaker 2: some kind of light switch, if you will. I was
Speaker 2: eager to speak with Fisher. Uh yes, Hello, is this baron? Yet?
Speaker 7: Hi? Is this baron?
Speaker 2: Once we corrected for the standard European two second time delay,
Speaker 2: I properly introduced myself. Hello, sir, my name is Jonathan Goldstein.
Speaker 2: I'm calling from the podcast in the United States.
Speaker 1: That's the radio show What are you Doing?
Speaker 3: What is that?
Speaker 2: Or a texture? Fisher gets my work about as well
Speaker 2: as I get his I ask him about the day
Speaker 2: of the shoot.
Speaker 3: The quantity of lights is just enormous because we have
Speaker 3: to light I don't know, fifty rooms in a ballroom
Speaker 3: and all at the same time.
Speaker 2: So just aside from the sheer number of lights, there
Speaker 2: was the setting. Most museums don't even let you take
Speaker 2: flash photography, let alone make a movie that's bright enough
Speaker 2: to win a coveted Lighty, the lighting award name for
Speaker 2: Alfred J. Lightman that I've just invented.
Speaker 3: So there was always someone standing next to us telling
Speaker 3: us where to be able to put the light. Not
Speaker 3: too close to the paintings, not too close to the wall.
Speaker 3: They were scared that you would destroy things.
Speaker 2: Fisher ended up using giant helium balloons to float his
Speaker 2: lights just below the ceiling. And if the risk of
Speaker 2: destroying priceless artwork during the shoot scared him, the possibility
Speaker 2: of a slowly deflating balloon sinking into view of the
Speaker 2: camera absolutely terrified him.
Speaker 3: There was only one chance, so there was such a pressure.
Speaker 3: Everyone's so concentrated and you know you're not supposed to fail.
Speaker 3: So I know when the whole thing was done, everyone
Speaker 3: was so happy. A lot of people were crying.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to hear about tears of joy. I
Speaker 2: wanted to hear about the sad kind, the bitter kind
Speaker 2: that get caught in your throat like tiny clumps of
Speaker 2: rye bread. So I brought up the bumbling violinists cameo, like,
Speaker 2: do you know the moment I'm talking about?
Speaker 3: You know what I actually did. I just put the
Speaker 3: film on my computer because I it here and I'm
Speaker 3: just watching the scene as we're walking through the.
Speaker 2: Hell are you are you watching that moment right now?
Speaker 3: Right now? I'm watching this moment.
Speaker 2: How do you remember where it is?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm believing I know this ninety minutes, very very well.
Speaker 3: I was dreaming of this nineteen minutes, walking it over
Speaker 3: and over again. But there was no way to change
Speaker 3: it anyway, you know, because it was like a ship,
Speaker 3: you know, like a tangship which cannot break. Once we started,
Speaker 3: there was no way to stop it. I think that
Speaker 3: we were just happy that it worked. Hey, it worked, unbelievable,
Speaker 3: it worked.
Speaker 2: Except it didn't. Throughout my life, I've justifiably been called
Speaker 2: a fuss pot, fussy, gus, fuss budget and by one
Speaker 2: high school physed instructor who I believe might have been
Speaker 2: an anti semite, A little miss fussy pants had my
Speaker 2: fussiness finally gone too far. That night I rewatched the movie,
Speaker 2: and the moment I rewatch it a couple times, it's
Speaker 2: even worse than I'd remembered. Seconds before the adult violinist
Speaker 2: turns back to the camera, we see him in a
Speaker 2: long shot, seated among his fellow violinists, swiveling his head around.
Speaker 2: It's as if he's searching for the camera, like he's
Speaker 2: scanning a restaurant looking for a tardy dinner companion, except
Speaker 2: in this case, his dinner companion is an elephantine camera
Speaker 2: being hauled around by a crew of six to eight people.
Speaker 4: We would be allowed to take over the museum for
Speaker 4: a whole day.
Speaker 2: Yen's mirror is Russian arcs producer. Perhaps he can produce
Speaker 2: some answers for me. He explains that, aside from holidays,
Speaker 2: the Hermitage Museum has not been closed since the Second
Speaker 2: World War, but in spite of that, they agreed to
Speaker 2: give the films director Alexander Sokarov a day to shoot,
Speaker 2: and once Sokorov explained the plan to film everything in
Speaker 2: a single take, they offered an additional day.
Speaker 4: But Sikorov said, no, it doesn't want that day. And
Speaker 4: I looked at him and said, Sasha, you what you
Speaker 4: don't want a day? He said, no, that would be
Speaker 4: tempting Fate. It would be tempting God. It must be
Speaker 4: done in the one shot, in the single day. And
Speaker 4: that's what happened.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, it did technically happen. MRR offers no accounting
Speaker 2: for the twitchy violinist, but his beautiful accent intimidates me.
Speaker 2: So like Barishnikov on an icy sidewalk, a tippy toe carefully,
Speaker 2: and it's an incredible accomplishment. And yet, and I know
Speaker 2: I'm going to sound sort of like nitpicky, but there's
Speaker 2: this moment at the end where this violinist turns towards
Speaker 2: the camera. And do you know the moment that I'm
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 7: Now?
Speaker 4: Of course, I mean you are nitpicking, but it's peculiar.
Speaker 4: I mean, you look at this film that there's only
Speaker 4: one such moment in the whole film. There isn't another
Speaker 4: one that is peculiar. Why is there only one?
Speaker 2: Mirror tells me that they explicitly instructed all the performers
Speaker 2: not to look into the camera and only one person
Speaker 2: paid the instructions. Absolutely, no mind. He just has a
Speaker 2: very kind of hapless look about him.
Speaker 4: Well, don't you imagine that at that moment he must
Speaker 4: have caught himself thinking, Damn, that's the one thing I
Speaker 4: swore to myself I wouldn't be doing look into the camera.
Speaker 4: We talked about it back then because of course it's
Speaker 4: an imperfection.
Speaker 2: So the basic tone of it when Tuckerov would bring
Speaker 2: it up, was it like something that was kind of
Speaker 2: like joked about.
Speaker 4: You've never met Alexander Takorov. Obviously there's never much joking.
Speaker 2: He's not like a prankster on the set like George
Speaker 2: Clooney or something.
Speaker 4: No, Alexander worked on every single image of this film,
Speaker 4: and so it's definitely nothing that would ever be joked about.
Speaker 2: To the question of the redo, Mirror says he lives
Speaker 2: with it. It's just one of those things you have
Speaker 2: to accept. What about Soakarov, I wonder how could a serious,
Speaker 2: non pranking, non clooney asque artists like him deal with imperfection?
Speaker 2: And so do you think if I put the question
Speaker 2: to him, you know, would you redo this movie if
Speaker 2: you had a chance? He would do it.
Speaker 4: Huh, that's an interesting thought.
Speaker 2: Would he redo this film because he is such a perfectionist.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know, God knows, you know, maybe we
Speaker 4: should reshoot it.
Speaker 2: Pose that question, that question being with Sokarov. Re rent
Speaker 2: the costumes, re rent the helium balloons, rehire the actors,
Speaker 2: musicians and dancers by a brand new tub of garlic
Speaker 2: homas for the craft's service table, all because of a
Speaker 2: fuddled violinist had a wandering eye and a morbid curiosity
Speaker 2: about the art of filmmaking. I ask Mirror if he
Speaker 2: can connect me with Sokarov.
Speaker 4: I could try and put you in touch. He is
Speaker 4: not an easy person to arrange for.
Speaker 2: I imagine a large Russian bear of a man, a
Speaker 2: beard so pointy it could stab your flesh, and so
Speaker 2: long that, once inside, you were to have a camera
Speaker 2: mounted at its tip, could in one long, uninterrupted take
Speaker 2: film all of your inner demons and then screen them
Speaker 2: at the Berlin Film Festival and win an award. You
Speaker 2: try to get a ticket and a plus one to
Speaker 2: go see the movie about how gross you are on
Speaker 2: the inside, because why not. But you'd never be able
Speaker 2: to reach him, as he'd be filming a new project
Speaker 2: at the North Pool. I wanted to sit opposite mister Sokarov,
Speaker 2: artist to artist, experimental outeur to experimental outeur. I am
Speaker 2: not flying you to Russia, says CEO and Gimblet Media
Speaker 2: founder Alex Bloomberg. But Yen says it's hard to get
Speaker 2: the great Alexander Sokarov on the phone. I say, who's Yen's,
Speaker 2: demands Bloomberg, and who is the great Alexander Sokarov. He's
Speaker 2: Russian and he gets me. I say, maybe it's our
Speaker 2: shared Russian blood. Family lore has it that great great
Speaker 2: Grandpa Goldstein had a beard so wispy and delicate it
Speaker 2: was spun into dainties for the Tsar's wife. Alex says
Speaker 2: that a good old fashioned telephone call will accomplish everything
Speaker 2: I need, and so I email Sokarov asking if, like
Speaker 2: children playing broken telephone like businessmen in a nineteen forties musical,
Speaker 2: we can talk on the phone. And a few days
Speaker 2: later Sokarov replies, of course, He writes, it is necessary
Speaker 2: only to determine the day and the hour after the
Speaker 2: break the day and the hour. Thank you for coming in.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Sokarov does not speak English, and I try as hard
Speaker 2: as I may and yelling at as loud as I
Speaker 2: can prove incapable of speaking Russian. We would need a translator,
Speaker 2: and so I've hired Sasha, who has been translating in
Speaker 2: one form or another since she was a kid.
Speaker 1: Well, when I was younger, my uncle loved to go
Speaker 1: shopping to the open market and get stuff when he
Speaker 1: was super drunk, like to the point of like it's
Speaker 1: hard to talk. So he had to take me with
Speaker 1: him because this would be three kilograms of tomatoes, which
Speaker 1: I could understand but nobody else could. So I was like,
Speaker 1: I get you. I know what you're trying to do.
Speaker 2: Once we get set up in the studio, Sasha tells
Speaker 2: me she's excited to be translating for Alexander Sukarov, one
Speaker 2: of the most well respected renowned Russian filmmakers in America.
Speaker 2: Custom ring tone rings for phone owner in Russia, custom
Speaker 2: ring tone rings for you that hello, mister sokarof Hello,
Speaker 2: good day, I'm listening to you. To avoid confusion, I
Speaker 2: begin with the basics. Do you have podcasts?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 1: What is a podcast?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Rather than getting into how their sound
Speaker 2: files owned by capitalist dogs like alex Bloomberg. I instead
Speaker 2: proceed straight to the source of all of Sokarov's troubles,
Speaker 2: his decision to shoot a movie in one long take.
Speaker 2: Why do it that way?
Speaker 1: Had a really important desire to remove editing. It was
Speaker 1: very important for me. When you're shooting it with a
Speaker 1: single shot, it's an honest work, and the viewer trusts us. Today,
Speaker 1: editing is like a shot or a step of knife
Speaker 1: into a person's body.
Speaker 2: Were much because we're tricking our viewer. Of course, it's
Speaker 2: a trick, a dirty, rotten trick. And when I go
Speaker 2: home after a long day of stabbing you people with
Speaker 2: a knife, I take a long, hot shower, feeling absolutely
Speaker 2: sick about it. But consider what art would be like
Speaker 2: without editing. Raiders of the Lost Arc would contain a
Speaker 2: twenty five minute scene of Indiana Jones eating an egg
Speaker 2: salad sandwich in the cafeteria at the Fairfield, New York
Speaker 2: Archaeological Society, And this podcast would contain an additional two
Speaker 2: minutes of my trying to pronounce the word archaeological. But
Speaker 2: all of this was just semantics. What I really wanted
Speaker 2: to talk about was the incident one of the violinists
Speaker 2: watching turns around and looks directly into the camera.
Speaker 1: Of course, I remember, of course I remember.
Speaker 2: If you had the chance to redo the whole movie,
Speaker 2: to undo that one moment, that one imperfection, would.
Speaker 1: You I wouldn't have wanted to change anything. That's the
Speaker 1: value of the film. That's the value of works of art,
Speaker 1: because it is not repeatable in its advantages and disadvantages.
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate how philosophical sokkerovs being about the whole thing.
Speaker 2: There's still that one disadvantage, that fiddling forth wall breaking
Speaker 2: disadvantage that must haunt his dreams. As I knew it
Speaker 2: would mine gingerly. I proceed. But in that moment when
Speaker 2: when you were watching him turn around, did you want
Speaker 2: to strangle him?
Speaker 7: Was? No?
Speaker 1: No, no, How can you say that?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 1: I love them so much. I'm so grateful to him
Speaker 1: for agreeing to take part in such a difficult undertaking.
Speaker 1: If he stood on his head and stopped playing the violin,
Speaker 1: I would have said, thank you, my friend, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you for that.
Speaker 2: Accidents happen, It happens. Soccarov and I are really nothing alike.
Speaker 2: He's talking about accidents happening like he's horsing around in
Speaker 2: a commercial for Laundry Detergent, while I, on the other hand,
Speaker 2: can't let anything go. Why I'm still kicking myself for
Speaker 2: not investing in IBM when it went public in nineteen
Speaker 2: eleven for new listeners, that was years before I was
Speaker 2: even born. And the difference is, don't stop there. Do
Speaker 2: you think you will ever make another movie that is
Speaker 2: is done in one take?
Speaker 1: I really want to make it happen, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to be trying to make it happen, whereas I never
Speaker 1: wrote and never will write another novella.
Speaker 2: Sokarov wasn't going to let the stumbling violinists mistake keep
Speaker 2: him from making another movie like Russian Arc. I asked
Speaker 2: him what this new movie will be about.
Speaker 1: It's a big secret. It's too early to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Will will there be musicians in it?
Speaker 1: It's too early to talk about it. It's too early.
Speaker 2: If there were going to be musicians in it? Do
Speaker 2: you know what My question? My next question is.
Speaker 1: Going to be, I take a questions.
Speaker 2: Better, not would you better?
Speaker 3: I have to ask.
Speaker 2: Would you would you invite this violinist to be in
Speaker 2: the movie. It does.
Speaker 3: Afford it.
Speaker 1: You do not enter the same river twice.
Speaker 2: That's a very nice way of putting it, mister Sakarov.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you so much for talking to me.
Speaker 2: Be well, goodbye, Oh, thank you, thank you very much,
Speaker 2: thank you very much, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: And yeah, he.
Speaker 9: Didn't he didn't call me an idiot today, No, but
Speaker 9: he asked, Okay, I was going to tell you, so
Speaker 9: he asked me.
Speaker 1: He's like, don't translate that, but what's up with this
Speaker 1: obsession with one little thing?
Speaker 2: Well, why wouldn't you say that to me?
Speaker 1: Because yeah, I think he's never been asked so many
Speaker 1: time about something, and you can see him being more
Speaker 1: aggravated with it, but in a very polite way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was trying to be polite.
Speaker 2: Anton In Chekhov, a Russian, once said good breeding does
Speaker 2: not mean you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but
Speaker 2: that you won't notice when someone else does. And here
Speaker 2: I am an impolite dinner guest pointing out a saucetain
Speaker 2: on the ninety minute long single take tablecloth. Everyone so
Speaker 2: proud of. In spite of calling myself an artist, I'm
Speaker 2: no soker of. I'm not even a tilman. Butner I
Speaker 2: am the violinist This is hardly the first time I've
Speaker 2: been confronted with proof of who I am. There was
Speaker 2: the moment I brought up the confused Violinist with Baron Fisher,
Speaker 2: the lighting designer.
Speaker 3: It seems like really bad as you have stories, but
Speaker 3: that's I mean, what can I say? I mean, that's
Speaker 3: not been the issue.
Speaker 2: When I brought it up with Hilman Butner, the cinematographer
Speaker 2: and his son Knstey Constantine Temple Butner, he is really interested.
Speaker 8: Why you, Jonathan, are so interested in that one specific violinist.
Speaker 2: And with Jen's Mirror, the producer.
Speaker 4: You are more bothered by it than I am. I've
Speaker 4: actually never heard a live audience notice it.
Speaker 2: Not only was Mirror not bothered by it, he actually
Speaker 2: empathized with the bedeviled violinist.
Speaker 4: Imagine you're the only person in an ensemble of four
Speaker 4: thousand people who fox up that moment.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 4: I wonder the film has been shown very often in
Speaker 4: the hermitage in Saint Petersburg. He must have seen himself.
Speaker 4: Look at the camera. He's probably kicking himself, or he's
Speaker 4: being teased by his colleagues, or maybe that's the person
Speaker 4: you should track down.
Speaker 2: In my life, I've ruined a lot of stuff, water fights,
Speaker 2: flash mobs, sing alongs Abatchie dinner, Mongolian hot pot dinners,
Speaker 2: Shabbat dinners, July's fourth, white shirts, white tablecloths, yards and
Speaker 2: yards of tablecloths. And with each act of runation, I've
Speaker 2: always felt absolutely terrible, which is why whenever a moment
Speaker 2: of forgiveness did come, it felt like a ladle full
Speaker 2: of soothing, warm cherry sauce, lovingly ladled over my head.
Speaker 2: The beleaguered violinists never got that loving ladle, fool and
Speaker 2: if he's anything like me, he must be feeling awful.
Speaker 2: I needed to tell the luckless violinists that not only
Speaker 2: is all forgiven, but that the great Alexander Nikolaievich Sakarov
Speaker 2: even thanks him after the break a crown of cherry sauce.
Speaker 2: Even though Russia was probably lousy, with violinists fiddling on
Speaker 2: the roof of every major edifice in the country, it
Speaker 2: would prove hard to find this particular one. While the
Speaker 2: film's credits thank the orchestra, they do not single out
Speaker 2: individual musicians, so all I know is that the orchestra
Speaker 2: playing in the film's final scene is the Marinsky, one
Speaker 2: of the oldest orchestras in Russia, dating back more than
Speaker 2: two hundred years. Not knowing what else to do, I
Speaker 2: freeze frame the moment the unfortunate violinist stares into the camera,
Speaker 2: and I take a screenshot. I then crop the image
Speaker 2: and blow it up so that the woeful violinist slack
Speaker 2: jowed stare fills the frame. I then attach the grainy
Speaker 2: image to an email that I then send to the
Speaker 2: Marinsky Orchestra press office. I wondered if you might know
Speaker 2: his name. My email reads, I'm not sure if he
Speaker 2: even plays with the orchestra anymore, but any help you're
Speaker 2: able to offer is much appreciated. A day later, I
Speaker 2: receive a message. The violinist on the photo attached the
Speaker 2: email reads is Marshall Besnard. At my request, the press
Speaker 2: office sets up an interview. I don't tell them what
Speaker 2: it's for. I've been planting the seeds for a voyage
Speaker 2: to sweet Mother Russia for days now, reading Pinsky around
Speaker 2: the office and referring to Alex as Alex Sandair. It
Speaker 2: was getting me nowhere, and so I assumed my power stance,
Speaker 2: hunched over and squeezing the chewing gum in the front
Speaker 2: pockets of my American blue jeans. I confront Alex at
Speaker 2: his desk. I must insist you sail me to Russia.
Speaker 2: I say, I must insist you get out of my office,
Speaker 2: Alex says, laughing. He extends his hand for a high five, which,
Speaker 2: hating myself for afterwards, I dutifully spank, and so I
Speaker 2: get Sasha back in the studio to translate my phone
Speaker 2: call with the cursed violinist Marshall Besnard. Oh, hello is
Speaker 2: this mister Beard. Hello, good day, and good day to you.
Speaker 2: After exchanging pleasantries, we talk about the day of the shoot,
Speaker 2: everything leading up to his moment on film.
Speaker 1: It was a very ambitious project because the camera was
Speaker 1: not shut off, and all people are supposed to be
Speaker 1: extremely organized, extremely organized. I think I watched it twice,
Speaker 1: and my mother called me and said, I saw you.
Speaker 1: I saw you in the picture. I saw you in
Speaker 1: a shot.
Speaker 2: Aside from his mother's rave review, I wondered how his
Speaker 2: friends and co workers had reacted, whether there had been
Speaker 2: ribbing the painful kind. But I'd learned my lesson with Soccerov.
Speaker 2: The Russians are polite people, and so I proceed cautiously.
Speaker 2: Did anybody give give you feedback on your performance in
Speaker 2: the movie Smooth.
Speaker 9: As a silky pair of the Serena's dainties. No, it
Speaker 9: wasn't really discussed. But the thing is, I'm not a
Speaker 9: main character, thank god. I'm just one person that was
Speaker 9: on the screen for just one second. Nothing special.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the funny thing is that I saw the
Speaker 2: movie many years ago when it came out, and to me,
Speaker 2: you were the most special thing for a specific reason.
Speaker 2: But watching specific you were the only person who actually
Speaker 2: turned and looked directly into the camera. Really, yeah, did
Speaker 2: you did you?
Speaker 1: Did you not know that? No, honestly, I did not.
Speaker 1: It's the first time that I'm hearing this.
Speaker 2: You're not in front of a computer right now, or
Speaker 2: it could could receive a screen shots from the movie
Speaker 2: so you could see.
Speaker 1: Yes, I can do that. I have a computer. I
Speaker 1: can look.
Speaker 2: It wasn't that I wanted to make Marshall feel bad.
Speaker 2: It was just that I needed to make him feel
Speaker 2: bad in order to make him feel good. If you
Speaker 2: send me your email, I can send you. Marcelle and
Speaker 2: I attempt to exchange emails.
Speaker 1: At Valieri Internet ready sending. No it says undeliverable.
Speaker 2: Don't look into the camera send me your email address.
Speaker 2: All his life, this poor man has been hobbled by
Speaker 2: an inability to follow simple instructions. But finally the email arrives.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, it's already during the bows.
Speaker 2: So do you do you notice where everybody else is facing?
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm not looking there, I'm looking into the camera. Really,
Speaker 1: it was fifteen years ago. I was a young and
Speaker 1: handsome man. Yes, very didn't look bad at all.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 2: I attempt to ease into the subject of Sokarov's forgiveness.
Speaker 2: Do you think that Sokoro ever noticed you? Specifically?
Speaker 1: I know that he didn't talk to me about this,
Speaker 1: So there are two options. He either didn't notice, or
Speaker 1: he liked it and thought let it be.
Speaker 2: Yes, Sokarov had liked it, Yes, he thought let it be.
Speaker 2: But the presumptuous violinist had no way of knowing any
Speaker 2: of this. And why do you think that maybe he
Speaker 2: would have liked it.
Speaker 1: If he noticed, they would have had to redo it, God.
Speaker 2: Forbid, But but he couldn't. I don't think he could
Speaker 2: have redone it, and you can they only had one chance.
Speaker 1: I think that in reality, the question is not whether
Speaker 1: it looked into the camera. The question is the people
Speaker 1: that later on edited it, why did they keep the moment?
Speaker 2: They had no choice because because it's all one take, but.
Speaker 1: You can always cut out a few scenes and put
Speaker 1: it back together. Nobody would ever know.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, The whole point of the movie is
Speaker 2: that it's nines of one long.
Speaker 1: I know it's part in this. I know.
Speaker 2: More than being the kind of guy who'd stare into
Speaker 2: a camera, Marshall was the kind of guy who might
Speaker 2: very well stare into the sun during a solar eclipse.
Speaker 2: This is to say that Marshall was completely oblivious.
Speaker 1: I think it came to be beneficial for the film,
Speaker 1: right as Anderson, thank god, I'm very happy.
Speaker 2: Well, the great Alexander Sokarov might have found working with
Speaker 2: Marshall a blessing. I personally wasn't finding it such a treat.
Speaker 2: Clearly Marshall was not looking for or in need of
Speaker 2: any forgiveness. Do you remember being told on that day
Speaker 2: not to look into the camera.
Speaker 1: It would have been very strange if you were making
Speaker 1: a film and then people would be looking into the camera.
Speaker 2: So then why why did you Why did you look
Speaker 2: into the camera, and why did he. I proceed to
Speaker 2: audition a series of theories. Maybe he's jumpy and when
Speaker 2: the camera came by, he was caught unawares. Do you
Speaker 2: starttle easily?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 1: You know, any person can be startled by anything. The
Speaker 1: person can be startled from the fact that your close
Speaker 1: relative is sick with some incurable disease, or a person
Speaker 1: can be startled when driving.
Speaker 2: And sometimes you could be startled by a camera, a
Speaker 2: very big camera.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not one of these people.
Speaker 2: Maybe he's a bad listener or just forgetful. Are you married?
Speaker 1: Is nothing?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 3: Of course.
Speaker 2: Does your wife ever say, oh, Marshall, you're not listening
Speaker 2: to my instructions.
Speaker 1: She always says that, like any wife would, it's normal.
Speaker 2: I offer more theories while eyes shifty disposition, restless leg syndrome,
Speaker 2: and thanks to the miracle of editing, you find people
Speaker 2: don't have to sit through any of it. In a
Speaker 2: last ditch effort, I ask if he's just sort of
Speaker 2: let's a fair the kind of guy who shows up
Speaker 2: late to a surprise birthday party in Russia? Do you
Speaker 2: have something called surprise parties? Surprise birthday parties?
Speaker 4: How is that?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I don't understand.
Speaker 2: Where the person doesn't know they're going to be having
Speaker 2: a surprise and all their friends show up in advance
Speaker 2: of their arriving, and everyone yelse it's your birthday, would like.
Speaker 1: No, because you know, Russia is a very conservative country.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, finally I just give up. I don't understand Marshall,
Speaker 2: and I'm not even sure Marshall understands Marshall. Maybe something
Speaker 2: was just being lost in the translation. Okay, well you
Speaker 2: you have a good rest of the Then.
Speaker 1: York, thank you.
Speaker 2: How is New York new York's great great city?
Speaker 3: Is there?
Speaker 1: Does the movie theater on twenty first Streets still work?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: In Chelsea, Chelsea, I went to see The term Year
Speaker 1: of Terminator three. Oh it was incredible.
Speaker 2: That's a good movie. Nobody looks in the camera.
Speaker 1: Except for the Terminator.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, so you're like the Terminator In the movie
Speaker 2: The Terminator, the titular Terminator is sent back in time
Speaker 2: by Skynet to kill Sarah Connor before she can give
Speaker 2: birth to her son, John, who grows up to be
Speaker 2: a threat to Skynett. If Marshall was the Terminator, he
Speaker 2: would go back in time, find Sarah Connor, and rather
Speaker 2: than try to kill her, be all like give birth
Speaker 2: to your son all over again, lady, because I think
Speaker 2: he came to be very beneficial for the Terminator film
Speaker 2: franchise right as I understand. Thank God, I'm very happy
Speaker 2: Marshall isn't revisiting the past to fix an imperfect present.
Speaker 2: He may have looked into the camera, but he's no Terminator.
Speaker 2: Marshall had completely flow mixed me. I'd never met anyone
Speaker 2: so unburdened by past mistakes. For me, the past is
Speaker 2: a magical, spiritual place where regrets are born. For Marshall,
Speaker 2: it's just a place where one is young and handsome.
Speaker 2: The way I see it, there's only one person who
Speaker 2: can both share in my frustration with Marshall and also
Speaker 2: explain him to me. What makes Marshall the one person
Speaker 2: out of thousands of performers there that day to have
Speaker 2: looked into the camera, and what makes him so free
Speaker 2: of remorse? And the person who can answer those questions
Speaker 2: Marshall's wife after the break, rolling up my pant legs
Speaker 2: and entering the same river. Thrice, Actually at this point
Speaker 2: it's more than thrice, No four rice? Is that a
Speaker 2: word that's not a word.
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 2: Five?
Speaker 5: Ice?
Speaker 2: Vanilla ice iced tea? Put some ice on it? Hello?
Speaker 2: Is is this a miss Ah? Miss Hammond?
Speaker 3: What is she saying?
Speaker 9: It's not Russia?
Speaker 2: Maybe you have a bad connection. We could call back.
Speaker 2: I'd ask Marshall to send me his wife's phone number.
Speaker 2: Considering how poorly he follows instructions, I can't say I
Speaker 2: was too surprised to find he might have gotten a
Speaker 2: digit or too wrong.
Speaker 6: Did you say, Solomon lam? Yeah, yeah, alakum salaam, All right,
Speaker 6: let's hang out.
Speaker 2: But finally Hello, Hello, yes ah? Is this missus Besnard?
Speaker 1: Yes? Yes, okay, thank you.
Speaker 2: Marshall's wife's name is Otilia. By way of introduction, I
Speaker 2: explained that after seeing Russian ARC almost two decades ago
Speaker 2: and becoming obsessed with her husband's three second performance, I
Speaker 2: spent countless hours tracking him down to speak to him
Speaker 2: about it, and now I wish to speak with her.
Speaker 2: In response, she says she hasn't seen Russian ARC in
Speaker 2: a long time, and so I ask if I can
Speaker 2: send something to refresh her memory.
Speaker 1: So you want to listend the moment when my spouse
Speaker 1: turned into the camera.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know about that?
Speaker 1: Of course I remember that you do, yes, yes, yes, everyone.
Speaker 1: He is just he cannot just sit still?
Speaker 2: And why couldn't he sit still? Marshall had no answer
Speaker 2: to that question, but Utilia does.
Speaker 1: When he plays the violin, he doesn't notice anything around himself.
Speaker 1: When you're playing the music that you like, your thoughts
Speaker 1: and your soul go into the music. He wasn't even
Speaker 1: thinking about what was happening around him.
Speaker 9: Mmm.
Speaker 2: Do you think Marshall gets so taken up in the
Speaker 2: music music that he wouldn't even notice at ten people
Speaker 2: carrying a huge camera coming by.
Speaker 1: I think he just had a job music. I don't
Speaker 1: think he was thinking about anything else.
Speaker 2: Ottilia has known Marshall since they were seven years old.
Speaker 2: She says music has always been the thing he's most
Speaker 2: focused on. How when he's immersed in his music, everything
Speaker 2: else falls away.
Speaker 1: He differed from all the other boys because he already
Speaker 1: had a goal, because he's been playing the violin since
Speaker 1: he was five. Uh huh, Cardiginian official teachers, I agree
Speaker 1: on the screen. So every day he played the violin
Speaker 1: for three hours every day, sometimes even more football when
Speaker 1: everybody else was playing soccer or hockey. He was practicing at.
Speaker 2: Twelve years old, Marshall went away to study music. He
Speaker 2: and Ottilia didn't see each other for another twenty five years.
Speaker 2: During this time, Marshall attended the Rimsky Corsicov Saint Petersburg
Speaker 2: State Conservatory and then got a position at the Marinsky Orchestra.
Speaker 2: It was while he was back home for a vacation
Speaker 2: that he reconnected with Ottilia and asked her out on
Speaker 2: a date.
Speaker 1: We walked almost until the morning. It was around midnight,
Speaker 1: and we went to our school and we walked around
Speaker 1: the school and we remembered, we remembered about our childhood.
Speaker 2: After their first date, Otilia says they were inseparable for
Speaker 2: two weeks straight. They talked every day, went for long
Speaker 2: walks which lasted early into the morning. It was after
Speaker 2: one of these long walks, after they'd said goodbye at
Speaker 2: two in the morning, that Marshall phoned Otilia at her home.
Speaker 1: If I come to you with a proposition. Well, you
Speaker 1: listened to me and I said yes, of course. So
Speaker 1: he came to my balcony and I looked out and
Speaker 1: he asked me whether I would marry him, And from
Speaker 1: the height of the second floor, I thought that he
Speaker 1: was just joking. At two a m. And I asked him,
Speaker 1: where are your flowers? So he came and picked a
Speaker 1: flower out of the lawn, and I came to the
Speaker 1: first floor and agreed to marry him. We were laughing
Speaker 1: because at two a m. It was very unexpected, because
Speaker 1: he dropped me off and then he went back home,
Speaker 1: and in those few moments he decided to get married.
Speaker 2: He turned back.
Speaker 1: He came back.
Speaker 2: Of course, he turned back, just like he turned back
Speaker 2: in the movie.
Speaker 1: You know, yes, yeah, yeah, That's what I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: Because he has those unexpected moments.
Speaker 2: Marshall only had one chance. Like Sokarov, he wouldn't have
Speaker 2: wanted an extra day, so he turned back, not to contemplate,
Speaker 2: edit or fix the past, but to throw himself with
Speaker 2: passion into his future with Ottilia. I am not Marshall
Speaker 2: and I am not Sokarov. Neither of them is interested
Speaker 2: in redoing the past in art or in life. If
Speaker 2: you've ever seen a Persian carpet, which I only did
Speaker 2: once I was in my late thirties. Growing up, my
Speaker 2: family was more of a wal to wall shag operation,
Speaker 2: you'll know that it's some pretty impressive stuff. They say
Speaker 2: that as they're being made, though the weavers make sure
Speaker 2: to leave in one small mistake on purpose as a
Speaker 2: gesture of humility, because they say only God is perfect
Speaker 2: and has the right to create works of perfection. Humans
Speaker 2: are imperfect, and we find other humans to love us
Speaker 2: for our imperfections. It's a lot more rewarding than criticizing stuff.
Speaker 2: The Canadian Weekly I used to write film reviews for
Speaker 2: has since shuddered, so I can't reread my review of
Speaker 2: Russian Arc, but I'm sure the headline read something like
Speaker 2: Russian Arc sinks to the bottom of my memory because,
Speaker 2: in truth, in spite of its scope and ambition and artistry,
Speaker 2: other than Marshall's moment, I didn't remember much about it.
Speaker 2: So in the end, Marshall's mistake brought value to the film,
Speaker 2: right as I understand. Thank God, I'm very happy.
Speaker 5: Be now that the fern ures returning to its goodwill home,
Speaker 5: now that the last month's rent is scheming with.
Speaker 2: The damage to possible, take this moment to dissolve.
Speaker 7: If we meant it, if we tried.
Speaker 2: We felt around for far too from the last accident leaves.
Speaker 2: Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein along
Speaker 2: with Stevie Lane. Peter Bresnan and Khalila Holt. The show
Speaker 2: is edited by Jorge Just, with additional editing by Alex Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Emily Condon, Shruthy Pennaminini, Chris Neary, and
Speaker 2: Jackie Cohen. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with music by
Speaker 2: Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Michael Hurst, and he himself
Speaker 2: Bop Up Up, Up, Up Up Up Bobby Lord. Additional
Speaker 2: music credits can be found on our website Gimbletmedia dot
Speaker 2: com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by the Weaker
Speaker 2: Than's courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is
Speaker 2: by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or
Speaker 2: email us at Heavyweight at gimbletmedia dot com. Our very
Speaker 2: special season finale is coming up next week