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Vsevolod Shilovsky:
“Today I’m ahead of the young — they can’t do what I can”
INTERVIEW · ARTEL MAGAZINE
Actor and director Vsevolod Shilovsky on the “old” Moscow Art Theater, his friendship with Leonid Yengibarov, and why talent needs to be cut by hand.
Interview by Kira Magid
Actor and director Vsevolod Shilovsky on the “old” Moscow Art Theater, his friendship with Leonid Yengibarov, and why talent needs to be cut by hand.
Interview by Kira Magid
He was lucky enough to act at the “old” Moscow Art Theater (MKhAT) alongside the great Angelina Stepanova and Pavel Massalsky, Viktor Stanitsyn and Alexei Gribov. His work as an actor, director and screenwriter caused a stir in the films and plays Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man after A.N. Ostrovsky, Quenching of Thirst after Yuri Trifonov’s novel, Volokolamsk Highway after Alexander Bek’s novel, and Pyotr Todorovsky’s Wartime Romance. Today he teaches acting to the young generation. Together with his students he founded the Vsevolod Shilovsky Theater Studio in the spirit of the classic MKhAT traditions.
As a member of the older generation, what can you offer young people?
I don’t understand the word “age”, because if you are — to put it crudely — out of date and out of touch with the times, that is the real sign of old age. I can tell them something new and useful.
When people criticize the young, it makes me angry. I say: just a second, who is bringing them up? You and the state — what you grew is what has grown. Children have been watching that box called television since early childhood. Modern TV offers no choice, nothing to compare with. The worst is called the best. And if I were given power for even five days, I would sift out the people who run TV.
Take three or four programs that gather famous people, and whose hosts are paid huge money for them. They air during working hours — but who watches them? Who are they explaining anything to? Pensioners don’t influence the life of the country the way the young do. So all that colossal public money goes up in smoke.
What is youth?
It’s distrust and rejection: if you pretend, they’ll send you packing — and they’ll be right — saying, why are you messing with my head? But I manage to connect with young people. I lead them, they trust me and try to achieve results and repeat what I show them. I understand that today I’m ahead of them: they can’t do what I can as a director and actor. I’ll soon be 85, after all. When I teach for four hours without a break, they say they’re tired, and I ask: what, can’t keep up? That’s what having no age means. The only thing is that walking is sometimes hard now. And I’m a former athlete, after all.
What sport did you do?
I was a scrawny kid. First swimming, then skating, then wrestling. My classmates called me “a pocket-sized Ivan Poddubny”. I used to break the big guys. They’d say, come on, Sevka — and I’d grab one by the arm, sweep his leg, and he’d be on the floor.
Is the way today’s students treat you similar to how you treated the “old-timers” in your youth?
It seemed to us that people didn’t live that long; to us they were ancient geniuses. When I came to MKhAT in the late 1950s, the old-timers were just over 50. Later I buried them all. I acted with Gribov in The Lower Depths. Old as he was, he played full out — you couldn’t tear your eyes away. They told astonishing stories about life and about themselves. My teacher, Viktor Yakovlevich Stanitsyn, told me about his friendship with Bulgakov, who had nothing to eat. Stanitsyn cast Bulgakov as the Judge in Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Club. Mikhail Afanasievich played him so well that the chandeliers shook from Stanislavsky’s laughter.
You were friends with Leonid Yengibarov. What is a clown?
This profession is given only to the chosen few, because you need a tremendous human culture of intuition to feel the audience. Lenya could present his act and feel every gesture so deeply that he held the audience for hours, moving them now to tears, now to laughter.
In life he was a man with such an open heart that it burned him out. Once he went to see the Minister of Culture, who asked him: you earn such money, where does it go? Lenya replied: I pay the actors in our troupe — it’s a non-state organization, after all. He gave five, six, seven performances a day. We were introduced by my friend Oleg Strizhenov. That’s an interesting story too.
Tell us.
Our dormitory was opposite MKhAT. One day Oleg Strizhenov runs into our room and says: Seva, come on, I’ll introduce you to someone. Oleg and I head to the little Artistik café — it was cheap back then; now you can’t get in. We walk up and there’s a strange crowd, and next to it a car about six meters long, painted all over with pictures of women. Oleg pushes through the crowd, and on the pavement by the car, near the entrance, lies a man with shaggy black hair in a leotard. The man notices Oleg, jumps up, and they hug. Strizhenov says: Seva, this is Lenechka Yengibarov. He and Oleg had arranged it specially — for Lenya to put on a show to surprise me.
That’s unusual too — a talented man who didn’t care where he brought people joy. Unlike today’s idiots who flaunt their supposedly famous faces to get attention. A true artist pays no attention to fame. Today’s so-called celebrities have no inner culture. Suddenly they start talking loudly, shouting. I say: is something wrong with your vocal cords?
But Strizhenov, Avdyushko and Yengibarov had naturalness, true nature, a calling. They understood that people love you because you are worth something and strive for something — that’s when you get applause and letters.
As a member of the older generation, what can you offer young people?
I don’t understand the word “age”, because if you are — to put it crudely — out of date and out of touch with the times, that is the real sign of old age. I can tell them something new and useful.
When people criticize the young, it makes me angry. I say: just a second, who is bringing them up? You and the state — what you grew is what has grown. Children have been watching that box called television since early childhood. Modern TV offers no choice, nothing to compare with. The worst is called the best. And if I were given power for even five days, I would sift out the people who run TV.
Take three or four programs that gather famous people, and whose hosts are paid huge money for them. They air during working hours — but who watches them? Who are they explaining anything to? Pensioners don’t influence the life of the country the way the young do. So all that colossal public money goes up in smoke.
What is youth?
It’s distrust and rejection: if you pretend, they’ll send you packing — and they’ll be right — saying, why are you messing with my head? But I manage to connect with young people. I lead them, they trust me and try to achieve results and repeat what I show them. I understand that today I’m ahead of them: they can’t do what I can as a director and actor. I’ll soon be 85, after all. When I teach for four hours without a break, they say they’re tired, and I ask: what, can’t keep up? That’s what having no age means. The only thing is that walking is sometimes hard now. And I’m a former athlete, after all.
What sport did you do?
I was a scrawny kid. First swimming, then skating, then wrestling. My classmates called me “a pocket-sized Ivan Poddubny”. I used to break the big guys. They’d say, come on, Sevka — and I’d grab one by the arm, sweep his leg, and he’d be on the floor.
Is the way today’s students treat you similar to how you treated the “old-timers” in your youth?
It seemed to us that people didn’t live that long; to us they were ancient geniuses. When I came to MKhAT in the late 1950s, the old-timers were just over 50. Later I buried them all. I acted with Gribov in The Lower Depths. Old as he was, he played full out — you couldn’t tear your eyes away. They told astonishing stories about life and about themselves. My teacher, Viktor Yakovlevich Stanitsyn, told me about his friendship with Bulgakov, who had nothing to eat. Stanitsyn cast Bulgakov as the Judge in Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Club. Mikhail Afanasievich played him so well that the chandeliers shook from Stanislavsky’s laughter.
You were friends with Leonid Yengibarov. What is a clown?
This profession is given only to the chosen few, because you need a tremendous human culture of intuition to feel the audience. Lenya could present his act and feel every gesture so deeply that he held the audience for hours, moving them now to tears, now to laughter.
In life he was a man with such an open heart that it burned him out. Once he went to see the Minister of Culture, who asked him: you earn such money, where does it go? Lenya replied: I pay the actors in our troupe — it’s a non-state organization, after all. He gave five, six, seven performances a day. We were introduced by my friend Oleg Strizhenov. That’s an interesting story too.
Tell us.
Our dormitory was opposite MKhAT. One day Oleg Strizhenov runs into our room and says: Seva, come on, I’ll introduce you to someone. Oleg and I head to the little Artistik café — it was cheap back then; now you can’t get in. We walk up and there’s a strange crowd, and next to it a car about six meters long, painted all over with pictures of women. Oleg pushes through the crowd, and on the pavement by the car, near the entrance, lies a man with shaggy black hair in a leotard. The man notices Oleg, jumps up, and they hug. Strizhenov says: Seva, this is Lenechka Yengibarov. He and Oleg had arranged it specially — for Lenya to put on a show to surprise me.
That’s unusual too — a talented man who didn’t care where he brought people joy. Unlike today’s idiots who flaunt their supposedly famous faces to get attention. A true artist pays no attention to fame. Today’s so-called celebrities have no inner culture. Suddenly they start talking loudly, shouting. I say: is something wrong with your vocal cords?
But Strizhenov, Avdyushko and Yengibarov had naturalness, true nature, a calling. They understood that people love you because you are worth something and strive for something — that’s when you get applause and letters.
“
A true artist pays no attention to fame.
What is a sense of humor? Do you have one?
If I didn’t have a sense of humor, I wouldn’t stage plays. Or act in them.
Is it a special way of seeing the world?
I don’t know. It puts me on my guard if a person doesn’t have one; I’m wary of dealing with them.
What should be done so that the “silver generation” is in demand in cinema?
We need a film industry. In Soviet times 300–400 films were released a year, and six or seven of them were breakthroughs — that’s how you get a Cheburashka, which had an unheard-of 22 million viewers. Talented filmmakers came along who saw which little hearts to touch and how, and back then people went to the cinema as families. I acted for brilliant directors of different generations. Now there are masses of studios churning out junk. I made A Million in a Marriage Basket in 21 days, and 35 million people watched it. Now cinema has been merged with culture. These are completely different departments.
Isn’t cinema culture?
I repeat: cinema should be run by people specially trained for it. A Minister of Culture, whoever they may be, doesn’t understand the specifics of film. This industry runs on its own laws. Vadim Abdrashitov passed away recently. For how many years he sat without money and shot nothing — going around asking was unacceptable to him.
We need a Union of Cinematographers, a Goskino, a system of management. Art is a simple thing, sent down from heaven; you can’t touch it with your hands. For years and decades it was cultivated in people and by people at VGIK, at the MKhAT school, at the Shchukin and the Shchepkin schools. But when an education costs two million, as it does now, talents pass it by. Do you know how many acting schools there are in Moscow now? Where untalented teachers are paid colossal money and, without any responsibility, turn out dozens of unhappy people nobody needs at all. They’re a dime a dozen, but talent is one of a kind; it needs a special approach and cutting by hand.
If I didn’t have a sense of humor, I wouldn’t stage plays. Or act in them.
Is it a special way of seeing the world?
I don’t know. It puts me on my guard if a person doesn’t have one; I’m wary of dealing with them.
What should be done so that the “silver generation” is in demand in cinema?
We need a film industry. In Soviet times 300–400 films were released a year, and six or seven of them were breakthroughs — that’s how you get a Cheburashka, which had an unheard-of 22 million viewers. Talented filmmakers came along who saw which little hearts to touch and how, and back then people went to the cinema as families. I acted for brilliant directors of different generations. Now there are masses of studios churning out junk. I made A Million in a Marriage Basket in 21 days, and 35 million people watched it. Now cinema has been merged with culture. These are completely different departments.
Isn’t cinema culture?
I repeat: cinema should be run by people specially trained for it. A Minister of Culture, whoever they may be, doesn’t understand the specifics of film. This industry runs on its own laws. Vadim Abdrashitov passed away recently. For how many years he sat without money and shot nothing — going around asking was unacceptable to him.
We need a Union of Cinematographers, a Goskino, a system of management. Art is a simple thing, sent down from heaven; you can’t touch it with your hands. For years and decades it was cultivated in people and by people at VGIK, at the MKhAT school, at the Shchukin and the Shchepkin schools. But when an education costs two million, as it does now, talents pass it by. Do you know how many acting schools there are in Moscow now? Where untalented teachers are paid colossal money and, without any responsibility, turn out dozens of unhappy people nobody needs at all. They’re a dime a dozen, but talent is one of a kind; it needs a special approach and cutting by hand.