After “The Irony of Fate” and “Ivan Vasilyevich…”, “The Diamond Arm” will be shot again in the new year. They say there will be another blow that will not be worse than the last one. “Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Everything”, in which Kirkorov was urgently replaced by Kologrivoy, drew a full house. Well, that’s what they say…
Maybe he did. It’s something people should watch. God and television are with us. Even the most notorious teleseptics turn on this device for the New Year, because they associate the blue screen with youth, with years full of strength and hope. This is good.
It’s not normal to have nothing to watch on this TV for a long time. Not for the New Year, not at all. In any high-profile television project, almost without exception, there are only reshoots and re-songs. The holiday broadcast is full of Soviet films, occasionally diluted with their remakes. Just as they started in 2007 with the sequel of Bekmambetov’s “The Irony of Fate”, they still cannot stop. They came rushing in: “Office romance. Our time”, “Gentlemen, good luck!”, “Prisoner of the Caucasus!”, “Another Year” (remake of the film “Stay With Your Loved Ones”), “Founder”, “Green Van”, “White Dews”. They even remade “Merry Fellows”!
A separate genre is automatic remake, in which the director remakes or continues his legendary film many years later. Here are Eldar Ryazanov with “Carnival Night”, Alla Surikova with “The Man from Capuchin Avenue” and Yuliy Gusman with “Do not be afraid, I am with you”.
To put it bluntly, the remake renaissance began in the late 1990s, when New Year’s “Old Songs About the Main Thing” appeared. Since then, some channels have been re-airing covers almost every year. After singing Soviet songs ten times, we started singing retro songs. The First has already released songs from the 1990s and 2000s. The first one even had “New Year’s Eve”. 10 years later” – with songs from the 2010s! The public listened. Although the public did not like the hits of those times: it revived a lot of bad memories.
Wikipedia writes that interest in Soviet cinema and its numerous remakes is the result of a crisis of ideas, as well as nostalgia. I’m really skeptical about nostalgia. Soviet films have been shown on television continuously for 30 years. Are there really people left who want to not only watch them over and over again, but also see, for example, the changes that Sarik Andreasyan made? Thinking. People want something new, interesting, quality and capable. They don’t want to look at the old and patched Gaidai and Ryazanov – they need new ones. Equal parts talented, funny and subtle.
But there are no new ones. So they’re not on TV. I can not see. They are sitting somewhere in their apartments and cottages, writing scripts on the table, throwing ideas out the window, writing projects in their sleep. I can’t help but! Approximately 150 million people live in the country. Hasn’t a new Ryazanov been born? Don’t you have a few dozen good screenwriters? Yes, I have! Yes, according to the law of large numbers, we must have such people. There are enough of us in the country to complain about the lack of talent and masters: we have both. But they can’t switch to television.
Sometimes they go to the cinema. We learned how to make blockbusters. Because competition is money. Taking hundreds of millions from the state and giving nothing is shameful, and may even be the subject of a lawsuit. That’s why they try. “Cheburashka”, “Challenge”, all these hit biographies about Soviet athletes – yet their success is guaranteed by some kind of competition. Large teams were hired with the aim of creating a successful project, attracting an audience, recouping investments and making money. This is the market.
What about television? Apparently the calculation there is to stay on top of budgets. This much. Master this job, assign the job to your own employees, attract proven people to do this job as quickly as possible. Let them be boring, mediocre, but do not disappoint. Those who arrive on time will not perform due to money delays, will endure delays, screams, intrigues, as if they will make everything mediocre from the first take. It is easier for casting editors to deal with already famous stars: they know their agents, they are sure to contact them quickly, and the accounting department has ready-made contract forms for familiar actors. Everything is simple and clear. No problem. Predictable.
Why try predictable, convenient, insightful and mediocre? So where will you get a perfect result even if you try? They can also deliver mediocre. Television starts going out because it can’t completely waste the money. And here good old movies and long-sung songs come to the rescue. Is The Diamond Arm’s script bad? Yes, of course, which question? And this is better than anything that the middle peasant squeezed into the first row next to the television channel will produce today.
I am sure that many people in Russia could write a better script than what Maurice Slobodsky, Yakov Kostyukovsky and Leonid Gaidai wrote for The Diamond Arm. They are talented, but who will look for these people? Who will read your scripts? Where will you find so many employees to carry out the election? What about your friends, relatives, and neighbors who hang around your studio because they’re used to you constantly giving them work? Which market, which competition? What if these hidden stars are stubborn? But what if they start playing around with their script on set? What if they want a lot of money? If there are familiar, useful, grateful ones, who needs to contact them?
This is how competition dies. It is not just the censorship or the state that puts pressure on him; sometimes this is done by ordinary people who are too lazy to bother choosing the best.
I recently heard that nearly two hundred TV series were shot in Russia last year. At least more than a hundred. These are just the ones that managed to show up. Of course, we are mainly talking about streaming platforms and online cinemas. There are so many series! This is mind blowing! And is it really true that they hire friends, neighbors, and artists all over the place? This is where you just need to make money. We must first find them, develop them economically and return them profitably. To do this, there needs to be at least some form of competition in the industry.
And just imagine: probably not hundreds, but thousands of screenwriters, directors, producers live and somehow work in a competitive Internet environment, and television is making remakes right now. Since he cannot work in a competitive environment, he has no duty to connect with the best and select the most promising ones. He doesn’t need it, it works according to different rules. As a result, we can get both the third and fifth “Diamond Arm”. We will also see Soviet actors recreated on the screens by a neural network – this is generally a win-win option, comfortable to work with and worth a penny. An ideal option for our television, which today seems to be made according to the same recipe: cheap, cheerful, predictable and completely uncompetitive.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.