Heavyweight - #22 Marchel

Episode Date: December 6, 2018

Russian Ark is a cinematic masterpiece. Dozens of sets, thousands of actors, years of planning. It’s a perfectly executed work of art. Almost. In this episode, Jonathan sets off to find the one guy who ruined it for everyone. Credits Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein. This episode was also produced by Stevie Lane, Peter Bresnan, and Kalila Holt. Editing by Jorge Just, with additional editing by Alex Blumberg. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Sruthi Pinnamaneni, and Chris Neary. The show was mixed by Bobby Lord.  Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, Blue Dot Sessions, Michael Hearst, Bobby Lord, Y La Bamba, Michael Charles Smith, Graham Barton, Hakan Eriksson, Katie Mullins, and Virginia Violet and the Rays. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This is the operator. I have a collect phone call from Jonathan Goldstein for Dr. Jackie Cohen. Do you accept the charges? No, I don't accept the charges. Hey, Jackie, that wasn't even the operator. I know it wasn't the operator, John. That was my assistant, Kalila. Hi, Kalila.

I remember you. How are you? Don't answer. I'm fine. Don't? How are you? I'm in the middle of trying to get the kids to do their homework. I'm in the middle of dinner.

You know, I can't always play. This is just a test. What are you going to do when I'm in trouble someday and a real operator calls? I don't think 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...

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From Gimlet Media Can I go now? Yeah. From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, Marshall. In the late 90s, I was working on an experimental novella, an erotic coming-of-age story told as a series of picaresque vignettes that so defied categorization that, even now, almost 20 years later, the best description I can come up with for it is an erotic coming-of-age story told as a series of picaresque vignettes. To support myself during this prolonged parent's 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 20s 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 Demme'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 Sous la Sable, I wrote nothing of Charlotte Rampling's intense performance. Instead, I complained that the 92-minute film was too bright. It was around this time that I discovered the 99-minute film, Russian Ark. What drew me to this Russian film was its willingness to experiment in the name of art. Directed by Alexander Sakharov, Russian art takes place in St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum, and it depicts 300 years of Russian history.

But here's the thing. It does so in one continuous, unedited, 90-minute-long shot. This means 33 rooms, nearly 2,000 actors, two different orchestras, 50 makeup artists, 65 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 2 minutes and 54 seconds with the opening discotheque scene in Boogie Nights. And Martin Scorsese tipped the scales at just over three minutes with Ray Liotta's entrance into the Copa in Goodfellas. And here came Sakharov, saying, I see your measly little scenes and raise you one entire movie.

Only he probably said it in Russian. If the accomplishment of an uninterrupted shot that spans 90 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. Edi... editing. Ah, screw it.

My... Good looking. Editor Jorge will fix that in post. Though they'd been planning the movie for over two years, Sakharov and his crew had only one day to shoot the entire film, the 23rd of December, 2001. 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 scenes. The Shah's grandson apologizes to Tsar Nicholas I for an attack on the Russian embassy. 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 has virtually no storyline, so the central drama, the thing that keeps you watching, is this simple question. Will the filmmakers actually pull off their crazy stunt? At any instant, an actor could stumble a line, a dancer miss a cue, a boom mic could fall,

a piece of lighting crash, someone could cough. At the 20-minute mark, you think, this is doomed. At 30, you grip the theater armrests. 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 critic's 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 frilly 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 Ark was otherwise so perfect, the spike felt all the more shocking. The film's spell was broken, and I was instantly plopped back into my crummy theater seat in crummy reality, wearing a crummy, malfitting T-shirt,

strangling me at the neck hole. The same year Russian Ark was filmed, I finally completed my novella. There was no book tour, 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 pawn shop shoebox. art, which was based on a photograph I'd found in a pawn shop shoebox. Instead, she directed her attention onto the one part of the book that I'd barely put any thought into at 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, and Alexander Sakharov, 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 finally 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 Boutner? Ja, hello. Tilman Boutner is Russian art cinematographer, the man behind the camera that the heedless violinist had violently spiked into the Marble Mosaic Museum floor that day.

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? Konsti. Konstantin. Okay, great. So, Butner's... My name is not Butner, my name is Tempel.

Konsti Tempel. Konstantin. Okay, Konstantin Temple. The camera Bütner used for Russian Ark was one of the first HD cameras in the world, and it required one terabyte of disk space to save all 90 minutes. Back then, the disk was as big as a giant bag for an astronaut that wants to go to the moon. A giant recorder that a different person had to carry next to him.

A half-dozen technicians followed Boutner around, hauling cable and silently shooing people out of the way. By the end of the shoot, Boutner 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. He didn't give the camera.

I asked him for it, but he wanted to keep it. Lucas wanted to keep it for Star Wars Episode II, 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 urge to bang his sister, Jedi-style. If any Canadian theaters had screened it in French rather than in its original Ewokese, my headline might have read, Attack of the Clones is an attack on decent lighting. Konstantin Konstantin explains his father's emotional state around the time of Russian Ark's filming.

The night before, he couldn't sleep. He 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 100% sure 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. He looks directly into the camera. I'm wondering if you remember that moment. Nicht.

No, not this violinist that you were interested in. He couldn't remember that this happened. 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 Butner 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 errant shadow. I'm speaking, of course, of the film's lighting designer, Bernd Fischer. As my past film reviewing suggests, I've long held a passion for man-made light. As a boy, I'd monkey with the dimmer knob until my fingers were raw.

Sit down and eat your buttered noodles, father would roar. But alas, too much dimness and melancholia would slowly descend, like a Sabbath elevator in a molasses factory. Too little dimness and I felt denuded, shivering like a vampire in the frozen goods aisle. 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. Yes, hello, is this Baron? 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. Is that a radio show? What are you doing? What is that? Or a text? 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, 50 rooms and a ballroom and it all at the same time. 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 lightie. The lighting award named 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. Fischer 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 violinist's cameo. 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 have it here, and I'm just watching the scene as we're walking through the... Are you watching that moment right now? Right now, I'm watching this moment. How do you remember where it is? Well, believe me, I know this 90 minutes very, very well. I was dreaming of this 90 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 tank ship 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. Except it didn't. Throughout my life, I've justifiably been called a fusspot, fussy gus, fuss budget, and, by one high school phys-ed 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 re-watched the movie. And the moment. I re-watch it a couple times. It's even worse than I'd remembered. Seconds before the addled 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. Jens Muir is RussianArc's 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 film's director, Alexander Sakharov, a day to shoot. And once Sakharov explained the plan to film everything in a single take, they offered an additional day. But Sakharov said, no, he doesn't want that day. And I looked at him and said, Sasha, you, what? You don't want that day? And 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. While, yes, it did technically happen, Muir offers no accounting for the twitchy 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? No, 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? Muir 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, Dan, 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 Sakharov would bring it up, was it like something that was kind of like joked about? You've never met Alexander Sakharov, 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, so it's definitely nothing that would ever be joked about. To the question of the redo, Muir says he lives with it. It's just one of those things you have to accept. But what about Sakharov, I wonder?

How could a serious, non-pranking, non-Clooney-esque artist 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? That's an interesting thought. Would he redo this film?

Because he is such a perfectionist. Yeah. I don't know. God knows. Maybe we should reshoot it. Pose that question. That question being, would Sakharov re-rent the costumes,

re-rent the helium balloons, re-hire the actors, musicians, and dancers, buy a brand new tub of garlic hummus for the craft service table, all because a befuddled violinist had a wandering eye and a morbid curiosity about the art of filmmaking. I ask Muir if he can connect me with Sokorov. 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 it 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'd 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 Pole. I wanted to sit opposite Mr. Sakharov, artist to artist, experimental auteur to experimental auteur. I am not flying you to Russia,

says CEO and Gimlet Media founder Alex Bloomberg. But Yen says it's hard to get the great Alexander Sakharov on the phone, I say. Who's Jens, demands Bloomberg, and who is the great Alexander Sakharov? 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 Sakharov, asking if, like children playing broken telephone, like businessmen in a 1940s musical, we can talk on the phone. And a few days later, Sakharov replies. Of course, he writes, it is necessary only to determine the day and the hour. After the break, the day and the hour.

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Sakharov does not speak English, and I, try as hard as I may and yelling 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, to the point of it's hard to talk. So he had to take me with him because I 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 Sakharov, one of the most well-respected, renowned Russian filmmakers. In America, custom ringtone rings for phone owner. In Russia, custom ringtone rings for you. Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello, Mr. Sakharov, hello. Yes, good day, I'm listening to you.

To avoid confusion, I begin with the basics. Do you have podcasts in Russia? Do you have podcasts in Russia? What is a podcast? I don't know. Rather than getting into how there's sound files owned by capitalist dogs

like Alex Bloomberg, I instead proceed straight to the source of all of Sakharov's troubles, his decision to shoot a movie in one long take. Why do it that way? to shoot a movie in one long take.

Why do it that way? I 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 stab of knife into a person's body. 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 Ark would contain a 25-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 turns around and looks directly into the camera. Of course I remember. 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. While I appreciate how philosophical Sakharov's being about the whole thing, there's still that one disadvantage, that fiddling fourth wall-breaking disadvantage, that must haunt his dreams as I knew it would mine. Gingerly, I proceed.

But in that moment, when you were watching him turn around, did you want to strangle him? No, no, no. How can you say that? I love them so much. I'm so grateful to him for agreeing to take part in such a difficult undertaking. agreeing to take part in such a difficult undertaking. Even 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. Sakharov 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 1911. For new listeners, that was years before I was even born. And the differences don't stop there. Do you think you will ever make another movie that is done in one take? I really want to make it happen and I'm going 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,

Sakharov wasn't going to let the stumbling violinist's mistake keep him from making another movie like Russian Ark. I ask him what this new movie will be about. It's a big secret. It's too early to talk about it. 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 next question is going to be? Better not. Better don't. I have to ask. Would you invite this violinist to be in the movie? You do not enter the same river twice. That's a very nice way of putting it.

Mr. Sakharov, I want to thank you so much for talking to me. Hugs, be well, goodbye. Thank you very much. to me. We keep that in mind. Hugs. Be well. Goodbye. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. Спасибо вам большое. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And, yeah. He didn't call me an idiot, did he? 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 he say that to me? Because, yeah, I think he's never been asked so many times 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. Antonin 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 sauce stain on the 90-minute-long, single-take tablecloth everyone's so proud of. In spite of calling myself an artist, I'm no Sakharov. I'm not even a Tillman Buttner. 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 Bernd Fischer, the lighting designer.

It seems like it really bothers you. I'm sorry. But that's, I mean, what can I say? I mean, that's not been a big issue. When I brought it up with Tilman Butner, the cinematographer, and his son, Konsti Konstantin Tempel-Butner. He is really interested why you, Jonathan, are so interested in that one specific violinist. And with Jens Muir, the producer.

You are more bothered by it than I am. I've actually never heard a live audience notice it. Not only was Muir not bothered by it, he actually empathized with the bedeviled violinist. Imagine you're the only person in an ensemble of 4,000 people who fucks up their moment. You know, I wonder, the film's been shown very often in the Hermitage in St. 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, hibachi dinners, Mongolian hot pot dinners, Shabbat dinners. July's 4th, white shirts, white tablecloths,

yards and yards of tablecloths. And with each act of ruination, I've always felt absolutely terrible. Which is why, whenever a moment of forgiveness did come, it felt like a ladleful of soothing warm cherry sauce lovingly ladled over

my head. The beleaguered violinist never got that loving ladleful, and if he's anything like me, he must be feeling awful. I needed to tell the luckless violinist that not only is all forgiven, but that the great Alexander Nikolaevich Sakharov 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 200 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's slack-jawed 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. 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 Marcel 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 Alexander. 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 accursed violinist,

Marcel Besnard. Oh, hello, is this Mr. Besnard? 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 Sakharov. The Russians are polite people. And so, I proceed cautiously. Did anybody give you feedback on your performance in the movie? Smooth as a silky pear of the Tsarina's dainties. No, it wasn't really discussed.

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. I saw the movie many years ago when it came out. And to me, you were the most special thing in it for a specific reason. You were the only person who actually turned and looked directly into the camera.

Really? Really? Yeah, 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 could receive a screenshot 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... Marshal and I attempt to exchange emails. What is it? It's like E. No, it's E. E is for Eva. No, it's Valery, Internet.

Yes, Internet and Valery. No, it's Valery. It's like E. Like E, but without... Ready, sending. No, it says not delivered. 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 notice where everybody else is facing? Yes, I'm not looking there. I'm looking into the camera, really. It was 15 years ago. I was a young and handsome man. Yes, very. Didn't look bad at all, huh?

I attempt to ease into the subject of Sakharov's forgiveness. Do you think that Sakharov 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, Sakharov had liked it. Yes, he thought, let it be. Yes, Sakharov 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 I don't think he could have redone it. They only had one chance. You know, I think that in reality, the question is not whether I 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 it's all one take. Yeah, but you can always cut out a few scenes and put it back together. Nobody would ever notice. No, no, no. The whole point of the movie is that it's 90 minutes of one long shot. 90 minutes of one long shot. Yes, I know. I took 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 I understand, thank God, I'm very happy. While the great Alexander Sakharov 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? The day you were told not to look into the camera? Yes, there was such a thing. It would have been very strange if you were making a film and then people would be looking into the camera.

So then 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 startle easily? No, you know, any person can be startled by anything. 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 can 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? 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. Wall-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 laissez-faire, 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 yells, surprise! It's your birthday. It's your birthday. 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 have a good rest of the day then. Thank you. How is New York? New York's great city. Bustling. Does the movie theater on 21st Street still work?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. In Chelsea. Chelsea, right? Yes. I went there to watch the premiere of Terminator 3. Oh, it was incredible. That's a good movie. Yes, 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 Skynet. 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 flummoxed 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 ice? Is that a word?

That's not a word, is it? Five ice? Vanilla ice. Ice tea. Put some ice on it. Hello? Is this Mrs. Bezniard? What is she saying? It's not Russian. Maybe we have a bad connection. We could call back. I'd asked 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 two wrong. Salaam alaikum. Did she say salaam alaikum? Yeah. Yeah. Alaikum salaam. Yeah.

Alaykum salam. All right, let's hang up. But finally... Hello? Hello? Hello? Yes. Здравствуйте.

Добрый вечер. Good evening. Ah, is this Mrs. Besnard? Это миссис Беженару? Да, да, да. Besnard? Is this Mrs. Besnard? Yes, yes Okay, thank you Marshall's wife's name is Otilia By way of introduction, I explain that After seeing Russian Ark 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 Ark in a long time. And so I ask if I can send something to refresh her memory. So you want to send the moment when my spouse turned into the camera? Yes, you know about that. Do you know about that? Yes, of course, I remember that.

You do? Ah, you remember that? Yes, yes. Yes, one of them. Yes, one of them. He's probably not a poet. Everyone, he cannot just sit still. And why couldn't he sit still?

Marcelle 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 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.

Do you think Marshall gets so taken up in the music that he wouldn't even notice 10 people carrying a huge camera coming by. Yes, I think he just had a job. Music. I don't think he was thinking about anything else. Otilia's known Marcelle since they were 7 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. So every day he played the violin for three hours every day, sometimes even more. When everybody else was playing soccer or hockey, he was practicing. At 12 years old, Marshal went away to study music. He and Otilia didn't see each other for another 25 years.

During this time, Marshal attended the Rimsky-Korsakov St. 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 Otilia 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 Marshal phoned Otilia at her home.

And he said, if I come to you with a proposition, will you listen 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 2 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 2 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. He turned back just like he turned back in the movie. Yes. That's why I'm telling you. Because he has those unexpected moments. unexpected moments. Marshall only had one chance.

Like Sakharov, 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 Otilia. I am not Marshall, and I am not Sakharov. 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 30s, growing up my family was more of a wall-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 shuttered, so I can't reread my review of Russian Ark. But I'm sure the headline read something like, Russian Ark 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. guitar solo guitar solo Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage deposit Take this moment to decide If we meant it, if we tried Or felt around for far too much

From things that accidentally touched Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Stevie Lane, Peter Bresnan, and Kalila Holt. The show is edited by Jorge Just with additional editing by Alex Bloomberg. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Shruthi Panamaneni, Chris Neary, and Jackie Cohen.

Bobby Lord mixed the episode with music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Michael Hurst, and he himself. Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on our website, gimletmedia.com slash heavyweight. Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans,

courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at heavyweight or email us at heavyweight at gimletmedia.com. Our very special season finale is coming up next week.