Evgeny Ermakov: “Tabakov stepped on my work”

October 9 marks the 60th anniversary of actor, director, musician and playwright Yevgeny Ermakov. Once he worked as a journalist at Express Gazeta, and out of old friendship we asked him for an interview.

– Eugene, you must have had a lot of encounters with interesting people. And which is the most memorable?

– With Georgy Zhzhenov, our great actor. For eight hours I talked to him at his home, they talked about his life in the camp.

He has had four marriages. And for the first time he was arrested when, with his first wife Zhenya, still a young girl, he was returning home from a night walk during the white nights in his native St. Petersburg. The caretaker warned him not to enter the apartment: the NKVD was there waiting for him, but they went anyway. “I was ripped off by my wife, they put me in a car and took me to an empty city, and then I took the stage,” said Zhzhenov.

It had article 58 – espionage for the United States. Sat outside a couple of times. In 1937, while he was shooting the film “Komsomolsk”, he was traveling on a train and met an American. What Zhzhenov “Marlboro” treated. And, apparently, there was surveillance of a foreigner, and special services recorded contact with the actor.

Zhzhenov’s brother Boris also ended badly. In 1934, when Kirov was buried, the frost was terrible. He didn’t have warm shoes, so he refused to go to the funeral. As a result, he was given seven years and he died in prison.

And Georgy Stepanovich went through an inhuman forging in the dungeons. They beat me several times a day. It was called the “transport line”: the investigators changed and continued to extract confessions from him. And it lasted a week.

When, after his release, he was forbidden to live in big cities, including the capital, Zhzhenov once came to Moscow anyway and came illegally to Mosfilm. And to meet him – the same detective who beat him up. “Damn,” he asks, “did you break free or did you run away?” Many of the Ministry of the Interior, after a stormy service, found their “shelter” at the film studio. As in the Writers’ Union, there was a translation department, where former illegal intelligence agents “survived”.

Imagine how Zhzhenov then wanted to spit in this cheeky detective’s face and blow his teeth out … But what would he get? They would imprison him again and he would go back to the same hell. And so he lived in Norilsk, worked there in the theater until he was rehabilitated in the 1950s.

“The profession in the face”

– You look so bright you might think, as if you were once connected to the criminal world.

– Well, yeah, the kind of bandit. And I’m very happy with them. My friends always told me: “You were born with a profession on your face”. I play scum, kickbacks, bad cops, nationalists. For modern cinema, these characters are important. And in life I am a positive person. Although in the 90s some of Mosfilm became banned, in all kinds of brigades. And others earned on construction sites or traded clothes in markets. Unfortunately, America and Yeltsin then destroyed our culture. I knew bandos and cops. But he has always made money from creativity: as a photographer on television, as a correspondent in various publications, including Express Newspaper and, of course, acting.

– Therefore, in the 1990s, even the venerable Oleg Tabakov said he had to humble himself for the sake of the Tabakerka theater to get funding.

– It’s a common thing. Everyone then asked, especially those with a sonorous name. As for Oleg Pavlovich himself, he did not love me. I wrote the play “Three Women and a Man by Mikhail Bulgakov” and gave it to Andrey Smolyakov to read. I wanted him to play the lead role in the play. Andrei showed the game to Tabakov, and snapped: “This is secondary.” According to Smolyakov, the master leafed through a few pages, threw away the manuscript and began to trample it. When I found out, I drank a glass of vodka with playwright Volodya Gurkin. He once he wrote Love and Doves. And he consoled me: “Well, since Tabakov criticizes, it’s definitely good!” Once upon a time, Oleg Pavlovich called Love and Pigeons anti-theatrical, and millions of people have seen Vladimir Menshov’s film, and this comedy is still staged on stage … Now I have an excellent, patriotic script, but there was no money for it, and no.

Blacklist

– What did you study?

– Director, I work as an actor for money, to keep my family afloat. I don’t like making faces, there were old brilliant actors, you can’t play them better. My university teacher advised me: “If you want to be a director, kill the actor in yourself. And vice versa. “And I’m both an athlete and a singer in the chanson genre. I come from Altai, like Shukshin, Zolotukhin, Mikhail Evdokimov.

– What are your favorite movie roles?

There are many, but they are all small. You starred in the TV series NEXT with Alexander Abdulov. I was surprised that he always knew the text of the role perfectly, he worked intelligently from the first take. I also had the chance to meet Gosha Kutsenko in Antikiller. He has a brilliant brain, like Abdulov. I came to the site and quickly learned the song. I also starred in the movie “Thanks for being alive” on Vysotsky. Director Pyotr Buslov wanted me to sing the guitar of the great bard in my role as a nurse. I was told that before Vysotsky was not allowed into decent houses, but he was a genius of the 20th century. Many hated him during his life and after his death they suddenly became “friends” with him.

– And who did you not contact on set with?

– I acted with Mikhail Levitin, the ex-husband of Olga Ostroumova, in the film “Miracles in Reshetov”. He convinced me instead of a stuntman to do a trick: jump off the balcony. But I refused, remembering that the same actor asked to jump the same way, but the mats opened and hit the corner of the cardboard box hard. There are stuntmen for that. And more than that, so to speak, the director didn’t call me to him. Yes, I don’t need it. In general, I have a whole blacklist that I wouldn’t shake hands with. Someone didn’t pay for the job: he took the script, changed it slightly and appropriated it. Someone applied for a loan and has completely disappeared. God is their judge. You give as much as it is not a shame to lose … Oh, I remembered another interesting story!

– Tell me.

– After the release of the series “Landing Batya” about the legendary creator and commander of the airborne forces Vasily Filippovich Margelov, a high-ranking officer called me and ordered: “Zhenya, come and see you, I will give you a certificate that you beat Margelov just for the role. Otherwise, the guys will not understand and on the day of the airborne forces, August 2, they will kill you. But, thank God, everything worked, although that day, when I took the subway, glittering of mine recognizable gold teeth, healthy paratroopers tried to approach me, but recognized and held back.

– Are you the father of many children??

– I have five children, two of them – boys – from my first marriage. After the divorce, I took the boys to me. I am responsible and I understand Arabs who do not leave their children to anyone. And with the second wife – the artist Evgenia – they gave birth to two more sons and a daughter. We met her on television in 1990, where Zhenya then practiced. Since then, together, I have raised both my children and common ones. The eldest, Vladimir, is 36 years old, he is a programmer. His Maximilian is 14 years old. So far, this is my only grandson. Sammist Yury is 34 years old. Ida is 30, she is a make-up artist, she took her name from her grandmother. Eduard, 27, is a psychologist and the youngest, Alexander, is a schoolboy, he is 16 years old.