Potato – MK

At our plant, all workshops have been modernized. In 1916. Therefore, a film group came to film the era of the revolution in ready-made, so to speak, and free scenery. At the same time, filmmakers decided to save money on actors. The director told Vitok and me that we are the only ones suitable for the shot where two workers eat potatoes during the years of devastation. In general, they don’t have anyone in the studio with such proletarian faces – all the actors either with earrings and tattoos, or, conversely, mow down like plump millionaires.

“Only,” he warned, “you don’t eat anything from evening to night so that the hunger in the frame looks natural.”

We came in the morning, of course, out of habit, our bellies failed. But they endured, I really wanted to go to the cinema. They dressed us up as proletarians, put up spotlights and a huge pot of hot potatoes. How we pounced!

The director says:

– Stop! What did you see like a bucket of black caviar! For you, according to the scenario, during the years of the revolution, potatoes are your usual food, only once a week.

Vitka and I began to chew this familiar potato measuredly, with a sense of dignity.

The director says:

– Stop! Again! Why are you not staring at potatoes, but at the lens all the time! And squint, happy.

We began to look more sadly, exhaustedly at the potatoes.

The director says:

– What do you choose, which ones are smaller. And already sluggish somehow! They must eat in a row, hunger is the same!

Here the head of the shop enters the frame:

Let me show them.

And it smells fresh from him, apparently, a glass has just slammed in the back room. He ate the first potato that came across, and so naturally, so knowingly, that that’s when we understood everything.

We decided to continue. But Vitek suddenly began to stuff another potato into his mouth, but it didn’t fit anymore. While he was being pounded on the back, the foreman came out to show him again.

Well, in general, we finally went on stage. And we undertook to burst this damned potato according to all the rules of 1919. The director stands, does not stop looking.

– Well done, well done, you play well! What you need! Now you can turn on the camera.

Here Vitka and I both choked. He says through a wheeze and a cough:

– Oh, you bastard!

He takes a pot with the remains of a hot potato and puts it on the director’s head. Just the right size.

We then watched this film: two proletarians are sitting at a wooden table, arguing about a brighter future, eating potatoes. Suddenly, in the middle of an argument, one takes a cast-iron and slams it on the other’s head. It was at the studio in Photoshop, instead of the director’s head, they put mine. Very natural, we love it.

And since then, we have not tolerated potatoes at all. At any feast, as we will see, we move the dish to the other side of the table. And we demand black caviar from the owners. She alone saves!

Evgeny Obukhov

MOSCOW-FREE

I came to Moscow to my brother

in very old times

walk along the Arbat

and back forever.

It’s gone forever

to the land of imaginary miracles,

where I live without Arbat,

without Moscow

without,

without,

without …

Evgeny Minin

Heading columnist Dzhanguli Gvilava, e-mail: [email protected]