Russians at Marienplatz

11 hrs. 33 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Vladimir Kunin

Narrator Vyacheslav Gerasimov

Description

… God! How tired I am of movies! How fed up I am with writing screenplays!.. How unbearable is this endless construction—rearranging and shifting known plot patterns—and complete helplessness when you see that your script, which you considered clever, ironic, and layered, literally falls apart at the seams and takes on a vile screen expression.
That’s what I told myself twenty-seven times in my life, and then I stupidly sat down to write a new screenplay.
Only five out of thirty-two films made from my scripts didn’t immediately make me want to throw everything to hell, smash my head against the wall at once, and—if God keeps me alive afterward—take up some completely different trade.
Sometimes I managed to print a screenplay in some shabby magazine or almanac with a tiny print run. I bought hundreds of copies and handed them out to taxi drivers, plumbers, road police officers, neighbors in my building, and small officials—people whose little, immediate well-being depended on me. And of course to all my friends, from whom I expected just one phrase: “The screenplay is much better than the film!..”
But one day something unbelievable happened to me—something rare in our system.