Jan Hřebejk: I made pure comedy for the first time – Novinky

Have you ever been personally affected by fake news and misinformation?

I can only think of the event of November 17, 1989. I recently listened to a podcast with Jana Šmídová, daughter of former Czechoslovak Radio international life editor Milan Weiner, prototype of the character from the movie Waves.

She told about her son Martin Šmíd, the news about his alleged death on Národní třída became a destroyer at the time. At the same time, the family knew very well that he was alive and well, because he was at home at that time.

In this particular case, widespread misinformation led to a good end. I was also there at the time and I can confirm how easily we believed the news that someone had died. The place was closed from both sides, many were injured.

Fake news will become increasingly difficult to distinguish, and with the advent of artificial intelligence, it will become even worse. We laugh at them for now, because they will be published very soon. But when it comes to important information, you have to be skeptical. The second danger lies in the fact that doubt is one of the aims of disinfection. The goal is to organize the public so that people don’t trust anything.

A state of emergency is therefore a current and very important topic. However, my desire was to make it fun from start to finish. I haven’t done pure comedy yet. At the same time, it is a studio film, so there was no pressure to find money as for a special film or, on the other hand, problems with permission.

Like your Forbidden Liberation from the pen of Petr Koleček, the State of Emergency was created immediately after the theatrical version. Isn’t the stage design limited for the film format?

I also took over the theater design for the movie Garbage City Death. The team and I kept the platform concept for the previous two titles to a certain extent. We acknowledged her and sent the films after her. Exception setting is a different matter, it’s a cinematic narrative from A to Z. I had to find the key to it, and it mostly lies in the pace. It’s our fastest film so to speak.

In the cinema of the world, he was a creator who made many times on film plays as independent films. It was Mike Nichols, who did, among other things, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? His drama Na dotek is also based on the play, but it doesn’t make any sense of theater at all. And that was a reason for us too.

You filmed Exceptional State, among other things, on the premises of the Czech Radio in Vinohrady in Prague. Did you influence the broadcast?

No, we weren’t allowed. We filmed there on Sundays, when the main newsroom is the quietest, of course, unless there’s an emergency.

The film was shot for a fortnight, and we only spent a day and a half inside the radio and in front of the Vinohrady building. Fortunately, the radio station was suitable, there is no other radio with its capabilities and news credibility in our country.

Did his producers want to keep an eye on the script?

Yes, but we welcomed the cooperation. Milan Tesař consulted the plot with real foreign correspondents. For example, we wanted to know in detail the equipment that Ondřej Vetchý has with him as a correspondent in the Middle East.

How did Jakub Szántó, former ČT foreign correspondent in the Middle East, mentioned in the headlines, get involved?

He told us what was and wasn’t possible or where to shoot the frame. Kambur, where the beginning of the film takes place, is a false country, but at the same time we didn’t want it to look somehow strange and unbelievable.

Filmed in Amman, Jordan. I was not there due to time constraints. I directed one of the actors, Jordan Haj, who came up with great little things for the script. He expressed, for example, the main character’s jealousy towards his partner, played by Tána Dyková.

You met Milan Tesař at the beginning of the nineties at the birth of Česká soda. Do you agree with this type of humor?

Czech soda was invented directly by Milan Tesař and Fero Fenič. At that time, I was invited to the show as the main director. There was a dispute as to whether he should be more satirical or Dadaist. I especially advocated the Dadaist humor of Petr Čtvrtníček, who became the main creator of the image of Česká soda under my leadership.

At that time, Milan led the culture section of Reflex magazine and became the co-creator of the comic strip Zelený Raoul, which, in my opinion, was an amazing phenomenon for a quarter of a century. We have always understood each other, liked each other, and luckily even a movie together did not change our friendship.

In mid-October, you staged the play Narozeniny by Bořek Slezáček at the Mír Theater in Ostrava. How did the collaboration come about?

In the nineties, I considered Bořek a man from the boulevard who goes out with mannequins and makes music that is not for me. So we didn’t meet then. We met during the filming of the Ostrava Crime Scene series and hit it off immediately. We are the same age and have a similar sense of humor. I was amazed at how clever and creative he is as a person and how he managed to break free from his reputation as an alcoholic.

A Birthday is something between a short story, a play and a screenplay. As I was reading the dialogues, I could feel sympathy between the characters, which I enjoyed. It should be like laughing through tears.

I believe that if the game is played with all the seriousness, the fun will be that people will say to themselves: this is exactly what we experience at home, when relatives come to visit us, or at work with colleagues. It is a picture of a divided society.

We first offered the project to Czech Television, but in the end it was rejected by the network. The game is local in the best sense, it is located in the Beskydy Mountains. The characters talk about this area and I think it works well. So I am happy that it will be performed in Ostrava in the successful Mir Theater.

How is the historical drama film Ice in the Heart, which you are preparing with screenwriter Petr Koleček, shaping up?

Czech Television showed great interest in them, but they did not receive grant support. Now we think, with the subject, that a miniseries would be suitable for him in terms of format. The first part was very successful for Peter.

We are inspired by the tragedy of Czechoslovak hockey players who were arrested and sentenced in 1950 when they went to London for the World Championship. The case is in a fog to this day, it is not known what exactly caused a certain part of the team to be arrested.

It is an ambitious project, a challenge. We also have several projects with Petr Jarchovský and our former producer Ondřej Trojan.