Thirty-three years have passed this summer since the premiere of the immortal comedy Sun, Hay and a Few Faces, but audiences can’t get enough of it, and especially the final wedding battle is now legendary. Director Zdeněk Troška recalled and added lesser known or completely unknown details of the shooting for eXtra.cz.
Zdeněk Troška and Sun, hay and a few slaps: censorship has been dropped
„They did a series of censorship speeches for me at number one, nobody here at all. When, in March 1988, the director of Barrandova Plachý asked me to shoot something like this Sun, hay, strawberries, because a play had just come out of their drama plan, so I said, ‘You’re going to cut me half again, right? Nothing like that.’ He promised me he wouldn’t do it. That nothing will be cut because we have perestroika (easing of conditions, reconstruction – ed). Then he gave me his hand, and indeed, I didn’t even have to crop an image from film,” remember for eXtra.cz director Zdeněk Troška. At the same time, many scenes had to be removed from the first film. Today they are irretrievably lost.
Then everything went around of the film Sun, hay and some faces like butter. “On July 12, 1988, the first curtain fell and September 1 was the end of filming,” recalls the exact dates.
“Despite the tremendous success of the first film, we didn’t even have faces on set. Only local people and those who acted there came to see the shoot,” he says, adding that the actors weren’t problematic either and that no one is never came to set under the influence.
Disk
“One thing pleased me: it hit theaters on July 1, 1989 and for the six months before the revolutionwhen people stopped going to the cinema, theater, etc., because they rang the keys, it was seen by four million three hundred thousand viewers. Today it is an unimaginable number. It is absolutely unique in the history of Czechoslovakian cinema and an all-time record for such a short period of time,” Troška rightly boasts. At home, of course, nobody is a prophet, and his colleagues have never allowed him to receive an award for his work in front of millions of television viewers.
Just to make a comparison: today a blockbuster film is when it collects half a million spectators. A million is more like a dream.
Hostility
Zdeněk Troška also unknowingly created enmity with his fellow directors.
„The budget for the first film Sun, Hay, Strawberries was two million nine hundred thousand crowns. But I saved up a million crowns and gave it back to Barrandov. When they turned Slap, there was a budget of 3.9 million kroner, but I was returning a million. My fellow filmmakers then got mad at me because they needed the extra money and were now being told in the studio: “How is it that Troška makes films for the public, gives us millions back, and you lack the money?”” added the director amused, recalling the continuation of the comedy about the adventures of Škopková and Konopnicí.
You can look at the picture Wednesday, December 28, 2022 on TV Nova. Starts at 8.20pm.
