Seasons on the Move

Moscow – March 29

After the early morning and late night of the day before, Fab and I were exhausted. Despite being dead tired, I dragged my ass down to Fed Ex to try and courier the film back to Vancouver. Craig and I had decided that we would store the film in his freezer until both of us returned to Canada. Perhaps not the best idea, but with all the film I was due to shoot in the next couple of months, I could get a better deal on the processing and transfer with more rolls.

Unfortunately, things in Russia seem to open and close on a whim. Even though we were told the day before that the office would be open from 9am to 3pm, when we arrive just past noon, the office was closed. This meant that I had to try to take the film out of the country with me, something I had wanted to avoid. Nothing had been easy on this film.

Craig left the apartment in the evening and checked into the Marriot downtown. He wanted to be close to the action and, with Fab and I feeling the way we did, we weren´t going to provide him with any excitement. I didn´t want him to leave, but I understood that he was only in Moscow for a week and wanted to have some fun. Besides, Fab and I needed to get up at 5am to catch our flight to Madrid in the morning. We said farewell to Craig, wished him luck in Budapest and vowed to make our next visit in less than four years.

Moscow – March 28

Craig, Fab and I tried to stay up all night until 5am. Fab bailed around three, Craig and I, a half hour later. I slept for about forty five minutes before the phone ran. It was Katya. She was tired and didn´t want to shoot. She said the red wine from the night before was still in her head. I convinced her to take a taxi over to the apartment. When I looked out the window, I saw that it had snowed. There was no way I was going to cancel the shoot. Besides, I only had two days left in Moscow and didn´t want to wait any longer to finish the film.

I made some coffee and got Fab and Craig ready to go. Around 5:30, Katya showed up. Within ten minutes we outside shooting on the deserted streets of suburban Moscow. A thin, silty layer of snow covered the ground and glistened in the morning sun. We spent two hours filming the final scene in the cold, our hands freezing, battling the camera (also cold) and making movie magic.

I needed a morning like this. A couple of days before I had found out that Mike had landed an interview with the CFC. The news was bittersweet. Sweet in that my talented friend and creative partner had gotten an interview at the prestigious school, but bitter in that I was going to be unable to share it with him. The shoot had taken out some of the sting and I was feeling positive again. I mean, what could I complain about? Here I was in Moscow, at six in the morning, shooting a film on super8mm with my wife, good friend and a talented actress.

We returned to the apartment after we wrapped, shared some hugs and some handshakes and then drank some coffee. Katya made the most insane cup I have every seen: five heaping teaspoons of coffee grounds into an oversized cup (no filter for her, “makes it weak”, she said) followed by ten cubes of sugar. It made my teeth hurt just looking at it.

Later in the day, after a brief nap, Craig and I went to Fed Ex to try and send the film. Fed Ex was closed, but on the way back, we saw a trio of soldiers, still in their uniforms, in front of the metro station playing Russian rock songs on a Casio keyboard, bass guitar and accordion. There was also an old woman selling beach towels with naked women on them. To get back from the metro station, we stuck out our hand, trying to hail a cab, and got picked up by a random man in his car. This was not so unusual, lots of people had given us rides in their cars for cash (they undercut the cab fares), but this guy drove at around 130km through the suburban streets back to the apartment, all the while blasting Beyonce over his distorted sound system. In Russia, the hits keep coming.

We went for a farewell dinner at night with Pavel and Katya. The next day they would be busy and we wanted to celebrate our last night in style. There must have been trouble in the hen house because Katya cursed him out in Russian throughout most of the meal. We figured it must have had something to do with Katya #2. When we picked them up at the apartment, Pavel was watching a film on the floor with his arm around Katya #2 while the other Katya worked on the artwork for the comic book. I got the feeling that the second Katya was kind of like a house guest that wouldn´t go away. Nevertheless, we had a good time with our Russian friends. Their generosity had made our stay a memorable, if peculiar, time.  

Moscow – March 27

We spent most of the day at the apartment. Since we were in Russia, Fab and I watched Warren Beatty´s “Reds” and snacked on pomello. I didn´t know that John Reed was the only American comrade to be buried in the Kremlin, although I can´t say I’m surprised. Craig watched “Das Boot” in the other room.

At 5pm, “magic hour”, Katya came by to shoot some interior scenes in the kitchen, a room that had big, bay windows looking out on to monolithic apartment buildings across the way. The light was soft, Katya was spot on and we finished shooting in less than an hour. The only thing that took some time was getting the camera movements down and a couple of macro shots.

At night, we went downtown to have dinner with Pavel and Katya at an Italian restaurant near the office. We had a grand time stuffing ourselves with pasta, salads, cured meats, coffee, teas, cakes, and red wine. Pavel got worked up about cinema and why it’s not a bad thing to tell simple stories in a traditional way. He went on about why he loves sentimentality in American films and how, as a young child growing up on the other side of the Ural Mountains, Hollywood films provided him joy and escape he could not find in Russia. Craig talked about how “The Conformist” is Bertolucci’s only worthwhile film while Pavel lambasted him for saying so. By the end of the night, we were all full of good cheer. Too bad we had made plans to shoot at five in the morning the following day.

Moscow – March 26

We went down to the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in the morning to check out the Anton Corbijn photo exhibition. The exhibition consisted of celebrity portraits he had taken over the years, spanning from the late 1970’s the early 2000’s. I liked the Bowie, Kylie Minouge and Brian Eno photos. I didn’t realize that he had taken the U2 “Joshua Tree” photos. The collection also included some self portraits that recreated iconic photographs of his favourite artists. The Bob Marley “soccer ball” photo and the John Lennon “shades, hat and New York City t-shirt” photographs were uncanny, but the Zappa portrait missed the mark.

After finishing at the gallery, we walked down to Red Square to shoot some city scenes on super8. I wanted to use the footage to establish the international theme of the film right of the bat seeing that the Russian portion came first. We waited until “magic hour” when the sun was about to set and the light turned a soft, golden yellow. From there, we would be able to transition into the night time club scene with relative ease. Craig and I ran up and down Red Square and the surrounding area trying to capture as much as we could on film before we lost the light. Once we had our shots of the city, all we needed to do was pick up the beginning and the end of the film, both parts that required little more than the right amount of light, some clever photography and a solid performance.

Moscow – March 25

We woke up and realized that we had no idea where we were or how to get anywhere. For all we knew, we could have been miles from a metro station. We were effectively trapped, having not yet registered our visas with the authorities. It was like being in the Gulag, aside from the beatings, torture and forced labour.

Katya showed up around noon and set about taking care of our visa registration. Since it was Russia, the founders of redundant bureaucracy, things were not simple. Katya made dozens of phone calls before she could get a straight answer from anybody. The problem was that we were now staying at her apartment. If we would have been staying at a hotel, the whole process would have been easy. Well, maybe not easy, but merely hard instead of frustratingly difficult.

Katya ended up figuring it out, but by that time it too late to do anything. Craig tried to twist our arms to go out to a club, but Fab and I were happy just to stay in and watch films. Pavel´s apartment was lined with VHS tapes and dvds. I tried to estimate how many there were and gave up after a thousand. And he had everything. I mean everything. From Chaplin to Spielberg, Fassbinder to Godard, Ken Loach to Spike Lee, Howard Hawks to FW Murnau, Richard Kern, Stan Brakhage, Nick Zedd… I mean everything. Experimental, Classic Hollywood, Italian Neo-Realism, obscure American independent, German Expressionism. In the end, we decided on “Peeping Tom”, a British film directed by Michael Powell from 1960.

Moscow – March 24

Craig slept at the office and woke up in the morning sucked in between two bean bag chairs and covered in a pool of his own sweat. We left the office soon after in search of some food. We ended up eating at a crepe place near the metro. The restaurant had a strange variety of fillings including red caviar and something that looked like fish. The place also sold half litre bottles of vodka and beer. Since the menu was entirely in Cyrillic and the Mongolian hostess spoke only Russian, we just pointed at the menu and hoped for the best. Craig and I got cold ground beef and cheese, Fab got sweet ham and spinach.

After forcing down the crepes, we entered the metro station. We wanted to go to Red Square. What we should have done was study the Cyrillic alphabet before attempting the navigate the underground because we had no idea what anything said. I imagine being severely dyslexic would be similar to being a person familiar with the Roman alphabet trying to read Cyrillic: you can kind of make out what things say, but have to rely on guesswork and bluffing.

The Moscow metro stations are the most amazing public transit stops I have ever scene. Every one was like a museum. Large, opulent chandeliers hung from the ceilings, the walls were adorned with white marble reliefs and bronze statues glorifying the proletariat were positioned around every corner. Too bad that most of the stops were constructed during Stalin´s reign of blood. I guess even Hitler built the Autobahn.

We arrived in the former heart of the Soviet beast after some serious confusion underground. The area in front of Red Square was filled with tourists, hustlers and hawkers selling Soviet paraphernalia. There was a monkey in a tracksuit handing out peanuts and a man dressed in a white, soiled bunny costume smoking a cigarette, his large moulded head propped under one arm and a half empty bottle of beer by his feet. Filling out the scene were Russian women draped in fur with knee high boots covering their pant legs, like an army of equestrian ice queens in a land where PETA is something you wrap around a piece of spiced meat.

We walked though the arched gateway and onto the paving stones of Red Square. To the right was Lenin´s mausoleum and directly in front at the far end of the square was St. Basil´s cathedral, perhaps the most iconic site in all of Russia. Behind Lenin´s tomb was the Kremlin, protected by a high, caramel coloured wall and numerous guards in their winter hats. I was struck by the size of the square, it was not quite as large as I had imagined it to be. I think Tienanmen Square in China was bigger. At least it seemed that way. We took some obligatory photos, hung out for a while, people watched and then returned to the office when the sun started to set.

When we got back to the office, we were swept away by one of Pavel´s drivers (he had many odd people working for him) in a car with blacked out windows, the steering wheel on the right side and the interior lined with black lights. Pavel needed to edit and wanted peace and quiet, so we were going to relocate to the apartment he shared with Katya #1. Craig didn´t mind because he didn´t want to spend another night in a sweaty bean bag chair and Fab and I could have cared less. We were just happy not to be sleeping in a hotel.

The drive to the apartment took over an hour. We were driven out to the middle of nowhere by a driver who didn’t speak any English, a turtlish man with three days worth of whiskers. When we arrived at the apartment, the driver took us up to the tenth floor, opened the door, saluted us and left with saying a word. Fab, Craig and I looked around the apartment. Apparently neither Pavel or Katya spent much time there, as evidenced by the rotting food we emptied out of the fridge.

We kicked back for a while, took in some of Katya’s stellar paintings and then across the street to the CYΠEPMAPKET to buy some groceries. Craig picked up some vegetables from the slim and slightly sad produce section as well as some olive oil and pasta. However, we were not in want for meat or booze, two things that occupied their own individual aisles in a store only eight aisle wide.

Moscow – March 23

Fab and I slept on a futon in one of the rooms in the office surrounded by Katya´s artwork. She was primarily a painter, but was currently illustrating a comic book in collaboration with Pavel. Early in the morning, Fab saw Pavel walk by on his way to the bathroom. All he had on was a t-shirt. A different Katya than the one who picked us up had shown up late the night before. She had spent the night in the edit suite with Pavel working on her “debut album”. In addition to editing, directing and penning comic books, Pavel apparently recorded music as well.

As I sat at the table in the kitchen, eating left over pizza for breakfast, Katya #2 skipped into the room wearing a purple unitard and no underwear. She washed a single fork and then sat down across from me. She studied me intensely for a moment and then said, “I think Pavel is fabulous”. She then stood up, skipped her way back down the hall, plopped herself in a bean bag chair, picked up a Russian magazine and started singing.

Pavel stumbled into the kitchen a little while later. He had been up all night editing, working on Katya #2´s music and, I gathered, more than that. After downing a coffee, Pavel began ranting and raving and gesticulating about the genius of John Cassavettes, the passion of David Lean and why the purpose of Russians was to suffer and examine the soul. He also told me about his latest creation, “Naked Cinema”. Taking inspiration from the Danish film movement “DOGME”, Naked Cinema was designed to be shot in a single location, using few actors and a heavily improvised script. The end result was the completion of a feature film in less than 48hrs. In 2007 alone, Pavel had made six feature films. In two weeks time, we was due to be in St. Petersburg for a Naked Cinema retrospective.

Katya #1 showed up in the afternoon with some lights Theodore had given us for the shoot at the club. Craig got there soon after, returning from the comfort and sanity of the Marriot, so we tested the lights, went over the script and made some revisions. Since we were shooting 200asa film, I would need to shoot tighter than I would normally like. I prefer to shoot fairly wide to give a sense of space and movement of the body. Oh well, at least I got the club scene I wanted.

The shoot at the club went well. We were in short supply of light, but were rewarded numerous times with a strobe light positioned on the stage. When the strobe was off, we got enough kick back from the club lights to compliment the light we were using in the tight shots. Katya´s performance was wild and according to Craig, she looked striking on camera.

After the band stopped playing, the club allowed us to roam around under the mirror balls and pick up some additional shots. However, the most interesting part of the night was seeing Pavel make out with both Katyas at the club. Not only that, both Katyas didn´t seem to mind and even played around with each other. Weird scenes inside the goldmine. Back at the office, I was beginning to think that we were stationed at the Russian equivalent of Andy Warhol´s Factory.

London to Moscow – March 22

We arrived in Moscow, our flight typically delayed, and were greeted by a stone faced Russian woman, who apparently hadn´t seen the sun in years, who cleared us through customs with nary a smile or acknowledgement of our presence. We grabbed our bags off the baggage carousel where there was a sign that warned us, ¨do not trust the taxi drivers¨. Luckily, my friend Pavel, a filmmaker that I had met at a film festival in Tucson in 2004, had sent his ¨girl¨ Katya to pick us up at the airport.

We wheeled or bags through the ¨green line¨, having nothing to declare, and found a petite woman with strawberry blonde hair and translucent skin, wearing a knee length black overcoat, holding a large sign with ¨Jeffrey¨ scrawled across the front in black magic marker. Katya. Fab and I introduced ourselves and after withdrawing some roubles, were out the front door and into the brisk spring air of Russia.

On the way into town, Katya, in heavily accented English, apologized for Pavel saying that he had just finished shooting his latest feature film and was attending to some last minute details. He would meet us later at the production office where Fab and I would be spending the night. Katya also told us that Craig Trudeau, my friend and director of photography, had arrived in town the night before and would also try to meet up with us later at the office. On this cue, I told Katya about the film I wanted to make in Moscow. She replied, ¨Pavel has told me about it. I am actress. We will make your film together.¨ She also told me that her and Pavel were going to take us to see a Russian post-rock band at a club the following night. This was all great news because the film I wanted to shoot took place partly in a club and I was worried that I may have to re-write the script to accomodate the lack of a location.

We got to the office, a modernist space with red and black cupboards and peeling vinyl wallpaper, an hour later and made ourselves comfortable in the kitchen. Katya made us some coffee and we talked at length about the film. Craig got in touch with us soon after. Katya gave him directions to the apartment and informed the cab driver how to get there. I hadn´t seen Craig in almost four years. The last time I spoke with him was in Egypt when he saved my ass by sending me a new camera. He was currently stationed in Budapest where he was shooting his first feature film. Since it was a short flight from Hungary, Craig had decided to visit us in Moscow and help us make the film.  

Craig arrived a dozen phone calls later. The cab driver had no idea where he was going and had gotten lost continously. Katya explained that this was a problem is Moscow because most of the taxi drivers were from the provinces and didn´t know their way around the city. Craig barrelled into the apartment, gave Fab and I a big hug and told us about the adventures he had had in Moscow over the past twenty four hours. Upon arriving, he had hopped on a bus to avoid the onslaught of taxi men whereupon he realized that he had no idea which direction the bus was going. He tried to ask the bus driver, but being that it was Russia and few people speak English, he got no useful information. The Cyrillic signage didn´t help either. An old lady seated behind him, who spoke only a few words of English, took him under his wing and guided him downtown. Once he arrived in the city centre, the woman dragged him to a cafe and made him wait until her daughter, who apparently spoke more English, could arrive and help him find a hotel. Before long, the woman´s entire family was at the cafe trying to show off their language skills. After three hours, Craig finally escaped and checked into a hotel.

Pavel, a tall, scrawny man with a scraggly beard, got to the office after midnight and let out a deep baritone laugh when he saw Craig and I sitting in the kitchen. Pavel ambled down the hall from the front entrance, his limbs shooting out at odd angles like a praying mantis, and gave us a hug and a handshake. Before long we were deep into conversation about filmmaking and the possibility of shooting at the club the next night. Craig was concerned about the amount of light so Pavel called his cameraman, Theodore, to see what he could do. Moments later, Theodore was in the kitchen talking light with Craig. He told us that he could get up a rudimentary, battery powered lighting kit to use in the club. When Craig asked him if it would be possible, given that the next day was Easter Sunday, Theodore replied, ¨This is Russia. Anything is possible.¨