As long as you have your glasses
Between a good person and a good professional, I will choose a good person. Being a good person is much more than a job. You see, with age, the vital optics become clearer. As the years go by, you take your glasses out more and more often, and while you take them out, you have time to think. It’s like a rosary for an oriental: while we sort, we reflect, we weigh. I understood a simple truth: much in life depends on circumstances. In the current circumstances, many words have changed their meaning.
Age? Sometimes it’s hard to accept, sometimes not. Sometimes I like my age. I get sentimental, sometimes I want to cry. What is a good age? You can help someone. You don’t begin to understand the phrase “When the trees were tall” until you grow up. No other way. With age you can tell – you already have experience.
Between a good person and a good professional, I will choose a good person. It’s much more difficult
I also found a time when people lined up at the Lensoviet theater box office at night to buy a ticket for a show where Alisa Brunovna Freindlikh was performing. I saw it with my own eyes. But I also saw the withering away of this theater: when Alisa Brunovna left it, its director and her ex-husband Igor Vladimirov unconsciously looked for a new Alice among the artists. And she wasn’t and won’t be.
… We often hear the word “mentality”. They just don’t match! For me, the mentality, according to Chekhov, is when every day you drop a slave out of you. You crystallize, you become a complex person, but interesting for yourself. Therefore, you do not lose interest in life. And if you’re settled and fixed, what’s the point? It should be noted that these “slave drops” grow larger over the years and it becomes easier to extract them from oneself.
chronic cross
There was a time in my life when I was a gamer, I didn’t have a family and I tried to gain prominence through gambling. And that’s a disease! Serious and chronic illness. I can’t even say out loud how much money I spent at the casino. I even played American Las Vegas.
What are the fears of addictions such as alcoholism, drug addiction and gambling? You lose an objective assessment of yourself, you lose the realities of life. You let people in that you can’t get near. I knew all this, I felt it in my subconscious and I suffered a lot from it, and my mother also suffered a lot from it. Polina, my wife, said to me one day: “If you love me, stop playing, please.” I haven’t played for a month, she says to me: “Vitya, what do you want?” I said “computer”. Bought. I haven’t played since.
But that doesn’t mean I’m completely free from addiction. All your life you carry the heavy cross of chronic illness and all your life you walk through a minefield.
Talent needs help
You can’t even imagine how many talented actors live in the province! No one will recognize them further than this very province. I didn’t understand the phrase “talent needs help” before. And as I got older, I realized I needed help.
But director Alexander Vladimirovich Rogozhkin found me. All my life I’ve been grateful for the opportunity that helped me correct my thirty-two composition mistakes when I entered institute. When Rogozhkin offered me to play Kuzmich, he was dissuaded. They said: “Bychkov is so stubborn, he is such a tribune, he strives for everything on the barricades.” And he wrote the role of Kuzmich especially for me. After the painting “Peculiarities of national hunting” I did not wake up famous. It was Lesha Buldakov who woke up famous. They didn’t even recognize me. Recognition after the “hunt” came gradually, somehow smoothly.
According to other laws
There was a period when I often traveled from St. Petersburg to Moscow and back on the “Red Arrow”, then there were no high-speed “Peregrine Falcons” yet. I was paid per diem, and I could go to a restaurant with them: take away a hundred grams of vodka, hodgepodge, coleslaw and a slice of black bread. That’s what I did.
After arriving – all the seats are occupied, I hear a young man calling me: “Viktor Nikolaevich, sit at my table. There is a place here.” I sat down, thanked him and placed my traditional order. They brought it to him earlier, he poured it for me and immediately said: “Well, Vitek, let’s have a drink …” Then they brought it to me, I poured it for him. He told me everything “you” yes “you”. I finished my meal, paid and ordered another carafe of vodka. They brought it, I put it in front of him and I said, “And this is for you.” And went. He changed his face and immediately said: “Viktor Nikolaevich, where are you going?” There are people who test you with such prison laws.
… I just remembered the movie “Cuckoo”. How did it appear? Once in Finland, I said to actor Ville Haapasalo: “Let’s write a play about people under pressure. We talked but didn’t write anything. Time passed, we came to Alexander Vladimirovich Rogozhkin and told him about our idea. We drank, talked well, and three days later Rogozhkin wrote the script. This is how the “Cuckoo” image began. And he invited Ville and me to act in this film. Rogozhkin never betrayed, he is a very holistic person. I played, and he said to me: “Vit, it’s near Kuzmich…”, and I slowed down.
Actors – they are like children, sometimes we do brilliantly what they explain to us correctly. Alexander Vladimirovitch gave Ville and I the opportunity to perform each scene in one take. Badly played – in the basket. It was very hard. By the way, I noticed: the drinker gets a bright paint, but one. And a non-drinker has a whole palette of colors.
About friendship
My City Haapasalo? We were introduced by Rogozhkin, we got along very well with him at work. I thought it was friendship. After all, when you’re fascinated by a person, you don’t notice much. For ten years he spent the night in my apartment, I gave him my bed and slept on the floor. That’s the kind of relationship we had with him.
But when my wife Polina had a stroke, he didn’t even call. I said that so that you understand, and not to offend you.
I considered this a moment of betrayal and walked away from him. When we parted ways with him, I said I think friendship is when everything is split in two, but it wasn’t. Polina explained to me later that my City is an image that I invent for myself. That’s all.
I am grateful to Pauline for everything. For love, to be alive. When she left, I wasted my life. It was only thanks to Polina that I became a different person. It was she who opened the door to me, the other. For three years, I live in completely different circumstances, my wife is in a wheelchair after a stroke, and I think more about her than about me.
About Belarus and mother
Belarus for me is the Pesnyary team, I played with them at the same concert, on the same stage. Belarus is an amazing guide who showed me around Brest Fortress. I don’t remember his name, but I remember the tour. It was to the point of shaking, in very real shock. Belarusians are open, beautiful and intelligent people. Belarusians have several cultures merged very harmoniously. There is the intelligentsia in the highest sense of the word. .
My mother, Raisa Andreevna Bychkova… I can boast of something good on her grave. About not very good, I try to explain to him. Sometimes it seems to me that she is sitting there, in her distant place, on a bench, in a handkerchief. If all goes well for me, then she’s proud of me. If something is not very well with me, she is sad. I never forget that and try to make it less sad for me in the other world.
Visit card
Viktor Bychkov – actor, laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation. Born in 1954 in Leningrad. He played the leading role in a pioneer camp. Fame came to the artist after the role of the hunter Kuzmich in the films “Peculiarities of national hunting” and “Peculiarities of national fishing”. He starred in 96 films, performed dozens of roles on the theater stage. Married with a third marriage. Father of four children.
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