Crimes and punishments after Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’

By Andrey Tarnarutskiy

Comedy

The world-famous ‘Old Gizzards’ film-studio signs a contract with a Russian strontium self-made billionaire, oligarch Mikhail Zakharov. This event is shown on many TV channels; it’s covered in tons of newspapers and on multiple Internet sites. A rumor that the recent financial crisis has bankrupted one of the biggest film companies in the world seems to be false. ‘Gizzards’ are going to start shooting together with Russians and with Zakharov’s funding the most expensive screen adaptation of Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’. One of the very famous American directors and one of the founders of ‘Old Gizzards’ – old but still sharp Danny Wooden comes to direct it. He gives an interview about his great vision of this movie. He thanks a grand patron of art, Mikhail Zakharov, and expresses a strong belief that with such an incredible financial support it will be the best ‘Dostoevsky’ ever. He gleams with a lot of confidence because the film is already invited to Cannes festival.

But soon it becomes clear that Mikhail Zakharov is not an art benefactor and philanthropist but a cold-hearted capitalist shark. In his opulent office in Moscow Mikhail is excitedly calculating benefits from this movie with his assistant and adviser Tolya Beiss. Tolya is considered as one of the film producers, but, basically, he is going to be Michael’s eyes and ears throughout the shooting. Their ideas are very simple: first, the signed contract stipulates that each two weeks after the exact start of shooting (which is also defined in the contract) the American director has to send to Michael a next part of the film. The second, Americans have to hire a number of Russians to give them jobs for the film. Although mister Wooden has carefully checked and planned the shooting schedule, and it’s known in advance what part he needs to finish and when, Michael and Tolya have no doubt that Americans are going to fail. And each time when Americans violate the schedule, they’ll have to pay a huge fine! All money transactions from Zakharov are going to stop until Americans pay their fine. Zakharov will have enough people at the key positions to prevent Americans from following the schedule.

The celebratory mood reigns in the office of ‘Old Gizzards’, too. They deliberately stretched out the shooting schedule and exaggerated their expenses so much that it’s practically impossible to fail. They are not afraid with their experienced director to follow the very lenient deadlines in the contract. And a few American crew members were already sent to Russia to supervise the set building.

And the shooting, that is the battle with the schedule, begins. In the first place, Americans find out that they cannot shoot in Moscow in the film pavilion at a big film-studio, as it was planned, because the sets have not been finished on time. Americans, who were sent to Moscow in advance, have not done their jobs. The real reasons are not yet known to Danny Wooden and his people. They don’t know that some of their crew members, who arrived earlier, got the secret extra-payments (greater than their contractual wages) for not doing their jobs, some were threatened and quit, and some simply turned into alcoholics. Danny does not have time to get upset, and he decisively moves to St. Petersburg. He even considers it the blessing in disguise, as the action of the Dostoevsky’s novel took place in this so-called northern capital of Russia.

Though St. Petersburg has a lot of great locations for shooting ‘Crime and punishment’, Tolya takes care of an incessant line of prohibitions from the local authorities for shooting, practically, everywhere. Each time right after Danny starts shooting as all has been arranged with the city council, the police and city officials come to stop shooting as if they are getting complaints and have to save from harm all historical monuments of St. Petersburg. Because of all delays the first fine is paid by Americans to Zakharov, who celebrates it with a real Russian magnitude. It causes some questions from Americans and the first doubts about the true Zakharov’s aspirations pop up in the mind of Danny.

Danny sends his people to search for the shooting locations around St. Petersburg, and, luckily, they quickly find a small neglected town of Pisalevo near the city, that has preserved the look of the 19th century. But the American stars of the film get impatient with all this moving around, and the only hotel in Pisalevo is very substandard. After the major star, who supposed to play Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished St. Petersburg ex-student, decides to get deeper into his character and to experience real Russian food, he gets food poisoning and has to be urgently substituted with a very alike Russian actor, Alexander Lensky, from a local drama theatre. But when the other American stars see their new partner - an unknown Russian guy - they all are ready to quit. Danny Wooden gets on the verge of nervous breakdown. But thanks to a great talent of Lensky, Danny and the rest of the American crew get excited, when he starts rehearsing the first scene. Their joy is short-lived as the local unemployed people, led by Tolya, take over the town council and interrupt their shooting again. This time patience of the American stars comes to the very end. The do quit. And now ‘Gizzards’ have to pay the second fine. Their situation is getting close to catastrophic. They can’t afford to pay more fines. Seeing the actions of Tolya, Danny understands that he and his studio were swindled by Russians, but he cannot prove anything and he has to follow the contract agreements.

And unsinkable Danny Wooden decides to hire the unemployed Russians from Pisalevo for the parts in the movie. That solves the major problems at the moment – they get a lot of support in the community of Pisalevo and from the regular Russian folks, and fill the parts of the resigned American actors.

The scandals from the shooting of ‘Crime and punishment’ get publicized everywhere with the help of Tolya. But Zakharov’s assistant totally miscalculates the consequences of such publicity. First, because of all the gossip and rumors the movie gets a lot of free advertisement and becomes the most expected film of the year. The second, Danny Wooden starts getting a lot of support from the cinematographic community, and, all the more, a lot of requests come to Russian government from the concerned political leaders around the world. It’s becomes much more difficult for Zakharov and Beiss to cause trouble. Zakharov was even called to a very high office to answer some questions.

It doesn’t mean that the rest of shooting becomes a smooth sailing. The most of American equipment - cameras, wires, lamps - do not stand Russian winter weather conditions and the care of Russian technical crew, and Danny decides to shoot in a black-and-white fake documentary style. In one of his last attempts to interrupt the movie shoot, Tolya calls up the police at the time when Danny is shooting the murder scene, when Raskolnikov murders and robs an unpleasant elderly money-lender, Alëna and her half-sister, Lizaveta, who happens to enter the scene of the crime. Tolya reports that Americans probably really killed two local elderly women. There is some blood on the location of the scene shoot, and two local women disappeared. The film material of the murder scene has to be arrested as a proof of it. And this material certainly looks very realistic due to the professionalism and skills of Danny Wooden.

These women were paid a bit of money by Tolya. And the blood was spilled, because Lensky bought a few chickens and was practicing with an axe to get into the killing mood. When the women return, as after some voyage to their relatives, for instance, acting as they are perfectly unaware of what their absence has caused, it will be too late to send the film material to Zakharov and avoid the next fine. But one of the women in hiding gets impatient, as she wants to feed her cow, and tries to sneak back to her animal barn. Obviously, she gets noticed by her neighbors and caught by a local cop.

The battle goes on and on, all way to the end of shooting. Even when Zakharov’s people are not getting in the way of Danny and his team, they themselves and the nature make it difficult to complete everything on time, because it is a movie! And Danny wants to make it a good movie. All in all, nobody is going to make a lot of money on this film but there will be some winners and some losers. And, probably, a genius new adaptation of ‘Crime and punishment’, too …

Contact: Andrey Tarnarutskiy
Тел.: 8-926-670-8877 (Russia), 704-9925720 (USA)
e-mail: andreytarnarutskiy@yandex.ru, tarnarutskiyandrey@yahoo.com

© Copyright: Андрей Тарнаруцкий. Дата опубликования: 22.05.2009.

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