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