Igenlode Wordsmith’s Reviews > Когда я был Атосом > Status Update

One has to wonder what Boyarsky's proposed but financially frustrated idea for a 'fourth series' was - surely not the bizarre resurrection plot that Khilkevich eventually filmed as "Cardinal Mazarin's Treasure", subsequent to the publication of these memoirs?

The amount of incidental information I have acquired is a amazing; I had not previously heard of Marshal Budyonny until Smekhov ruefully alluded to him in the context of his own lack of horsemanship ("not blessed by old Budyonny")

At one point I put an enormous amount of effort into trying to translate this poem ("Kino-horoscope") into plausible English.
Alas, without going back to my pencilled notes the obscure bits are still obscure!

The fascinating thing is that now, twenty years later, the "Kinopanorama" broadcast in question is actually available to watch on YouTube, and I've seen it (in fact, if it hadn't been for the poem he quotes here I should never have encountered this book!)
So we can compare his memories with what actually happened - e.g. the reason why Starygin was the main butt of teasing was that he had declined to turn up...

It turns out the allusion to Strizhonova was nothing to do with Musketeer hairstyles, but simply the fact that Oleg Strizhonov played Athos in Smekhov's previous film of "20 Years After".
It seems odd that in his introduction of Igor Starygin he never mentions that it was not only not the first time they had worked together, but not the first time they had acted together *in Dumas* - Starygin was Raoul to his Aramis!

The pure hell of trying to shoot the sequels as 'commercial' films in the 1990s compared to the state-funded production (however low-budget) they had been used to :-(
Sponsors, racketeering, endorsements, co-production, constant negotiation with the 'generous and hand-shaking' manufacturers from Budapest or Berlin... the costumes made in Moscow were all stolen in Tallin, and had to be sewn again in the hotel.

Unexpected appearance of Vysotsky as a family friend!

He describes the film as a cross between a musical and a Western, where instead of singing cowboys there were singing musketeers ;-)

(The phrase "s vesternom" - "with a Western" - had me puzzled for some time as I had assumed it was a piece of Russian vocabulary! )

They shot five hours of reunion dinner-party footage, but the vast majority of it was unusable because everybody was talking at once with their mouths full, teasing one another like schoolboys, or reminiscing about in-jokes...
I did think when I watched the programme that I'd never seen so much enthusiastic eating going on in the background of a documentary before - apparently in the foreground as well!

I probably shouldn't read any of this camel stuff (and discussions of how the director wanted to change Dumas' ending) as it is spoilers for the final film that I haven't seen yet and want to watch...