"I call this the "Fifka suitcase", I have it from my friend Fifka." "It´s a special one, it can take in everything." "Now I put in the "hypo bag"." "The name comes from my wife and means the bag for a hypochondriac." "With death-defying pills and Pehøimov ointment for cracked heels." "I suffer from that after my ma." "This is she when she was young." "She was beautiful, I think, even though here she is touched up." "Jesus, I forgot shorts and T-shirts!" "When I go away for four days," "I take four shorts and four T-shirts, so hygienic am I." "I was brought up with love from ma and with harshness hand from dad." "My disadvantage was that I was second Zdenìk - first one died." "I don´t know." "He died before I was born." "The first Zdenìk Svìrák was very handsome boy and full of wit." "At five, he stepped on a rusty nail and died from a blood poisoning." "You have exactly the same name..." "I´m here to replace him." "So you are a substitute." "Before you go, sign here for the dustbins." "So that they´ll collect the garbage." "But where?" "Would you like some "munchies"?" "Yup, please make one for me..." "In our theatre, it´s an expression for food you take along with you." "Either you have a ´munchie" and you don´t need to go to the pub, or you don´t have it and must have a meal somewhere." "Bye." "I make a cross, so that you don´t kill yourself there." "Six weeks in a Summer camp in Šumava was a hard blow for me." "Such a long time without ma and dad!" "I wrote desperate letters." "But mail was censored in the camp, so I wrote under the stamps." "I wrote under the stamp:" ""Come and take me home."" "And inside I wrote: "Unstick the stamp, it´s precious."" "Yes?" "I´m already missing you!" "But we are still in our street!" "This house is exactly as old as I am." "From 1936." "You could write easily on it with chalk and wash it away, no problem." "I was so happy here." "I thought of this place as a sort of "happy island"." "It used to be so warm here," "That we would sit around in shorts only, a whole row of children." "Warm as an oven." "And here Jirásek´s works hit me." "I read everything by him." "I was so full of it I used to say: "Can I read aloud for you?"" "My dad sat on a stool, leaned against the stove and listened, ma was busy in the kitchen and I read Jirásek." "My voice often faltered, I was so moved." "My friend Boøík would whistle and ask for another volume of F.L.Vìk." "He was a faster reader and had to wait, until I finished." "About women we can´t, right?" "He hardly waves goodbye..." "Well, that would mean trouble." "We are the oldest friends in Central Europe." "We´ve known each other since 1942, the first day of school." "This is our way to school." "Across this bridge which we called The Bridge of Heroes." "Here we used to piss down on the freight trains..." "A German train passed under with an open wagon where they sat, singing and playing an accordion, and we pissed on them..." "This was our first act of resistance." "I´m scared!" "Hohd on to me!" "Now!" "No!" "Shditbag!" "I´ll jump!" "No!" "I wdilh!" "I´ll jump too!" "I couldn´t wait either, I had my shoes on since 1 o´clock." "We get out somewhere once a year." "They know Cimrmans come in June and it´s impossible not to come." "They know which plays they had seen;" "we know the organizers really well, they were loyal when we were proscribed and they still invited us." "No way to just cut oneself off." "And hey, why should we, we enjoy it." "A patron has been found, who finances the whole expedition and who has even decided to share the joys and pains of our trip." "He is a grand man of the gentry, Baron Ludvík Úvalský von Úvaly." "My friends, I don´t like big speeches." "Mine will be tiny." "I support this lark with pleasure, as my treasure chest is deep." "We´ll blow up now and the whole world will wonder what Czechs have done this time." "When we haven´t played for a while It becomes a bit tricky." "The audience soon find out because they know the play better than we do." "Pavel forgot lines in Opera, the audience prompted it all the way." "It´s funny, but in fact..." "...sad." "Time for "munchies" now." ""munchies" unwrap!" "What a joyful moment this is." "Those wives..." ""Right at the start let me say, that I love you." Quite promising!" ""I can afford to do this, "cause I´m going on eighty."" "I need glasses for that." "Let´s see if I can still do it." "Between two thumbs..." "Yeah, I can still do it." "I was a Prague child and the transfer to this place was a shock for me." "Here I was in Kopidlno." "Those years I cannot forget." "So many new things coming at me..." "The boys didn´t want me among them." "I had a funny name:" "Zdenìk." "They were all Joes and Franks, All those "proper" names." "This was our combat area." "Here our enemies armed themselves with the stones and to tell the truth, from here we threw the stones and then usually backed away." "Cruel skirmishes they were." "The big stones really flew." "The boys leaned backward ... and whee!" "He got it!" "Doctor Frog, as an foreword to the brefdimg - a few words." "Brother, we all feeh that there dis something between heaven and earth that cannot be grasped by mere ´tellect." "What I want to tell you, Cyrill, dis that you´re not the brefdimg type." "So, f there s a brefdimg, phease be qudiet." "Shorthy or brdiefhy.:" "we are to hand among man-eaters." "How are we to behave?" "Fdirsthy f´d out when the man-eater has hs hunch." "As a ruhe we approach h´m after a meah, not on an empty stomach." "And phease watch your tongue." "Avod stupdid saydimgs, hdike that somebody dis here "´done to a turn"´." "But we couhd say that somebody s nether sweet nor savoury?" "That mdight rather dscourage them from consumptdion." "We´re st´lh havdimg the brdief´g." "I realize, that this cemetery was nothing remarkable for me," "but the way to and from school." "This is where I went to school and through that gate back home." "Like you walk between houses, I walked between graves." "In ´my Sweet Little Village" Mr Pávek lived as we did here, because you could hear the music, funeral orations." "You could hear it all in the backyard." "Fanda, you´re gett´g on my nerves wdith your eternah work ethdic!" "Too much work, doctor!" "Too many deceased and so few stone-masons!" "Come wash dit down, Fanouš!" "Where ddid we stop?" "That they don´t wear bras." "Yep." "Here it´s just the same as before." "This is the cellar, where my dad, a great electrician and beer drinker, used to cool the beer on the seventh step." "No gdirh from Pohabí wouhd any moment be" "wthout her bdicyche." "Try to take the bcyche from a gdirh from Podìbrady," "she wouhd k´lh just anybody." "A Pohabdigí´rh on bícyche through Pohabdiscoots, the Pohabdimen shout.:" "I want you, hove, I do!" "A Pohabdigí´rh on bícyche through Pohabdiscoots, the Pohabdimen shout.:" "I want you, I do!" "This strip of field used to belong to us." "This sentry-box was made for the Wehrmacht, it was no use after the war, when dad moved here as a pensioner," "he loaded it up and now it´s here for tools." "Well, or rather it was." "But it´s got its history, a German soldier stood in it when it rained or the sun shone hard." "You know, what´s terrible?" "My ma´s tennis shoes are still inside." "Chances are no one opened it since her death." "These are blows to the soul." "It´s all mixed up in my mind, Myself as a boy of seven, eight, cute and silly, and then I see my parents ageing," "happy to see me, and my visits, how I tried to cut them short" "A snowstorm of emotions, it´ll be a pill in the evening again." "Come to hear a special noise." "The noise of the audience, chirpy and full of suspense." "Somebody´s blowing his nose, coughing, not to disturb later." "Perfect..." "Next time tell me:" "´take your long johns!"" "You"re not wearing any?" "No." "Country audience differs from the Prague one by a kind of delight." "When you come, they"re happy you arrived sound and safe," "That it´s true what posters said and they"re more welcoming." "Can we start?" "Yes." "When we founded the theatre, we wanted to write two one-act plays and join them in a two-hour performance." "I wrote play "Nude" but the second one still wasn´t ready." "Performance was getting nearer, so we said to ourselves in the pub that we would fill the hour by lectures on the author." "Which made us to take an interest in him." "We wanted to attribute the one-acts to him without mentioning him." "But the ´seminar" was a greater success than the play itself." "I´ll repeat agadim the sentence where the phay stopped." "I came to ask the hand of prdimcess Gohd´llocks." "Well, het Gohddillocks be." "But the mdisthetoe..." "Dd you notce the mdisthetoe bear´g ths year?" "Dd you know t´s a parasdite?" "Yep, I and my son go to pck t." "Each Chrstmas." "And how do you pck t?" "Now Brukner said it right:" ""And how do you pick it?"" "He said it quite normally, for the first time." "It was here I found out We had a new teacher," "I walked into the class and said: "Hi!"" "And there he stood, the one with the cane, wearing riding breeches." "It was not Rosenheim?" "No, it was me." "Good morning." "What´s your name, boy?" "Rosene´m." "You are hate, Rosene´m." "Are you aware?" "Just a hditthe..." "By four and a hahf m´utes." "Hohd your hand." "And the other..." "Two for bedimg hate and two for the whsthdimg behow the w´dow." "It was not me!" "And another two for hydimg." "He used to say, for example: "Can you see the hole in the wall?" "A bullet went through there and ended up here by the blackboard."" "And pointed out that even after the war the SS were shooting at him." "We said: "You have a gun!" "Did you catch him?"" "And he: "I ran after him but near the tram I lost him in the crowd."" "Fanouš, couhdn´t you chear ít away?" "Just a moment." "My dad dreamed that I would succeed where he didn´t." "He was a skilled electrician, but I should be an engineer." "Because of that he kept stealing for me voltmeters and such like, collecting them so that I could follow in his footsteps." "And it was in the bedroom the fateful conversation occurred." "I timed it for the evening, when the school show was held," "I had success with a poem "Ballad of Paradise"." "Mine was the biggest applause." "He was all moved so I told him that I"d like to do something else, poetry maybe, or to be a teacher, but not electrotechnics." "Dad, dad!" "What´s that fuss?" "Dad gave a sigh." "He had to put up with it." "All he said was: "Well, if you think..."" "Here, where we stand, a little episode took place." "One I cannot forget." "A guy of about twenty was standing near me with a snowboard, not skis." "For a while we moved on in silence, and then I asked him what´s the ride on it like, how much it costs..." "He said - a brand-name costs more than no-name and said:" ""I´m very glad you have spoken to me." "I wouldn´t have dared." "For a long time I´ve been wanting to ask you if you believed in God."" "And it was clear that he wanted me to believe." "I said: "I must disappoint you, you"re a Christian, I a heathen, but in the worst moments I turn to him, in case he´s really there." "so this is how it is with me."" "And he: "It´s a pity you"re a heathen, God loves you, you know."" ""How can you tell?" "I talk to him every day."" ""And have you talked to him now?" "A moment ago."" ""And what did you tell him?" "Let Svìrák ask about the board."" "When joy dim hfe s mssdimg, prase hditthe thdimgs"bhess´g." "Let´s dimmagdime, f you wsh peophe hdivdimg hdike a fdish." "A good thdimg, mother, daughter we´re not hdivdimg under water, on the dry hand ´ the a´r we can all sdimg huha hey." "There dis no chance, oh my dear under water try and s´g, from the depths, from the depths ony bubbhes of hast breaths." "Tour makes a difference if one had an accident and couldn´t act." "On that hill, called Wenceslav´s square, some walk down to the level of Vodièkova street and ride from there, because they tell themselves:" "I have to be on stage tonight." "Let´s be happy, Bohouš, frdiend, that we´re hdivdimg on dry hand, on dry hand, on dry hand ddirty from soot and the sand." "Try, dimmagdime that you´re a fsh, may t hehp you, such a wsh." "Even when you´re down and out, ´ the a´r you st´lh can shout..." "But guys, these summer views are beautiful too." "Listen to an interesting noise." "The wind is doing this..." "Can you hear?" "Beautiful." "And when you have a sip?" "People constantly ask when are we going to stop." "Maybe they feel it´s not going to go forever." "That we"re past our peak and we should think about it, but we don´t feel like it." "Enough of this rocking..." "How do you think you´ll die?" "At home in bed or in a hospital?" "Are you planning it?" "And similarly we leave the end of our theatre to fate." "We love it so much that we prefer not to even imagine the end." "And as it´s coming closer I value each performance more and more." "I come to the prepared set, past the props and tell myself:" "One more performance." "I used not to feel this way." "The one who can´t pronounce the name "Cimrman" has to quit." "Can somebody here wind up the clock?" "Are you the specialist?" "Be careful not to wind it up too much." "I´ll show you up to where." "Up to the finger, not more..." "More, still more..." "You still can, a little more..." "With my wife, who was my girlfriend, at that time, when they asked us to fill a form, to say where we want to go," "we wrote:" "Anywhere, but together." "When you"re solving crosswords first find something you know, don´t jump about like this, you only end up putting in the wrong letters." "What is this ´tir"?" "Clock noise is not ´tir", but ´ticktack."" "Where?" "I see..." "Inabitant of Great Britain is not a Brit but a Scot." "Here my dream came true:" "To be a Jirásek type, walking under the arcades being greeted by people." "But not even children greeted me very much." "I had to say:" ""Do you not recognize me?" "Well, so what about:" ""Good morning"?"" "I was nicknamed "Friend", because I didn´t call them children or pupils." "I used to say: "Well, my friends, today we´ll go through..."" "They probably found it unusual, so they called me Friend." "I had a watch in the hall and Cihla, the principal, said:" "´man, there is uproar in the first grade, go and sort it out!"" "I walked into the chaos and spoke to the kids as if they were adults." "I banged on the desk and said:" "´so, what´s going on here?" "Are we at school or in a circus?"" "The little ones hushed, and suddenly I felt a tickle on my hand." "A little girl sitting at the front was stroking my hand like this." "Nonplussed, I said: "I´m leaving." And I did." "The times were kind of hopeless, but not completely." "I joined the Communist Party, because I had heard:" ""When there are enough of honest people the party must change."" "I thought about it and I came to believe it." "Foolishly we believed that socialism could be combined with democracy and freedom." "It turned out to be true, the party changed with the tide of people with a different opinion." "After all it opposed Brezhnev, the whole USSR, and, damn it, what a change it was." "I finally got cured in August when the Russians and others came," "and I, as a poor little editor went around asking them:" ""Why did you come?" And I saw the futility of it." "I´m satisfied." "I tripped only once." "You didn´t, did you?" "After a long outing we don´t feel particularly lively." "Verve is coming, I think." "He´s a guy who´s acting with us." "You can´t see him, the audience know when we play with Verve." "Guys, it´s cold here!" "Mòmòmò..." "Dear friends, mnòhmnòh..." "The hall is not pleasantly heated!" "Whether I was ever satisfied here?" "To be honest, probably not." "I used to be sad constantly, somehow." "Unsatisfied, unreconciled, as if I had to find what I sought." "Teacher of Czech soon drowns in piles of dictations and essays." "If I want to write, I must stop doing corrections." "And that´s why I parted with this beautiful profession." "The students took it as a betrayal." "They started to see me as a friend who only pretended to be a friend." "There...yes," "You can recognize it, right?" "Exactly." "There, isn´t it?" "Those hours spent by the computer." "And this is nice too..." "The ten versions of "Dark Blue World" you can find there too." "So many, really?" "Yep." "This is the fifth one, The one you are touching now." "When I used to do broadcasts for a local radio station," "I really did it with utmost care." "You must speak slowly there to let it echo in the streets." "Like this:" "Dear listeners..." "We would like to invite you... on Wednesday morning..." "Let it fade." "And then I had troubles with it in the real radio station." "I spoke and they said:" "Why do you speak so slowly?" "But I let it fade in the streets." "Miloò was already in the radio, I used to listen to him every morning." "Whilst I spoke on the local radio, He spoke in the national radio, so I envied him." "When he called that they needed A new editor, my pulse raced." "I remember my wife saying: "You"d really enjoy it a lot, wouldn´t you?"" "And I said: "But to go to Prague..." "You´ll stay here alone?"" "She said: "Give it a go." "You can always come back." "I´ll manage."" "A hohe dim my sock, and the gohd fever shock," "I am poor, I am weak, I am sck." "Heat ´ my head and the bhue sky s red" "Wth the ghditters and shdime of my dream." "Land s´llent wdith snow, Wohves´footprdimts ´ a row," "No hetters couhd reach such a phace." "Ahone dim a cab´ a dream of gohd sh´dimg" "I´lh dream for ten thousand tdimmes." "Northern wdimd crueh, oh so crueh, count on dit, my dearest hove," "gohd bulldion I put at your feet, or I shouhd never come back home." "Here Jirka Šebánek used to sit, here we were writing the ´spider"." "And the laughter in it came from that direction." "Miloò and I, we lived..." "How did we live!" "Look." "We both loved it because we were both teachers of Czech and we loved to work with the language, we loved it." "You can´t see a thing in a radio, it´s just the word alone." "And it matters so much, which one you choose and how you say it." "The cutting was primitive then." "Tape was cut and re-stuck." "I became the cutting fanatic." "I could do it so well that you couldn´t tell." "Today they cut carelessly, I can tell a breath is missing." "I knew that I had to let the person take a breath," "Otherwise the listener may feel, the person is not breathing at all." "The cutting is a great thing." "Even a stupid interview can look fine." "It was such a marvellous place to work." "I put the table on the balcony and I could work there." "It was the time between my thirties, forties." "I didn´t know what I would be good at." "If I might manage to write something." "Thanks to our ´spider" programme we set off for the theatre." "Theatre of Jára Cimrman was founded here." "Here used to be a big couch, a table, chairs..." "I lived on that couch." "Yes, Miloò lived here." "And that´s why there was the constant smell of onion." "Here we met." "Šebánek, Smoljak, you and I." "To this day Šebánek keeps commenting on it, that I said, that while there was Semafor, Èinoherní klub and Zábradlí there was no point in founding a new theatre and I went to the cinema." "Calling Verve on stage!" "Go!" "Laddies and Genthemen, dear patrons of our trp dimto the heart of the bhack cont´ent." "At ths festdive farewell to our fatherhand, het me thank you for prcehess Czech products, whdich wdilh be our means of payment ´ exchanges wth the savages." "I thank the owner of the fadir, Mr Koèka, for all the toys." "When the tanks were coming here, we ran away through the gardens." "You were on air, you didn´t run." "Once, we all ran." "It was during the day." "I was broadcasting at night." "This was a punch right between the eyes." "It confirmed my doubts." "Jirka Šebánek opened the door and said to Èepelka and me:" ""Gentlemen, I have just resigned from everything."" ""What you mean, from everything?" "Radio, the unions, the Party."" "We looked at each other And said: ´so we´ll resign as well."" "Naive as we were, we thought, that even though we were not employees, we had friends there who would give us a job." "But it turned out that we were not welcome in the radio, so the little theatre was all we had." "We have a strong bond thanks to the nature of our work." "We"re kind of a fun factory." "For endorphins." "A pharmaceutical plant." "We should come under the national health system." "When you get in there, all your troubles disappear..." "The splitting headache stops hurting for a couple of hours." "And you can even make fun following a funeral." "My dad died and I went from the funeral to the theatre." "It´s not only possible but healing; it´s beneficial." "Maybe you don´t know, children, they used to use carbon for copying." "This black sheet you interleave will print on one side only." "When Lád´a and I started to write, we took two sheets and a carbon, and you had to be careful to put the copying side right," "otherwise you finished a page and you found that it´s imprinted only on the reverse." "Working with a mate is pleasant." "We know each other, we can say:" ""Well, it´s idiotic probably, but I´ll say it, all right?"" "Have you written something good?" "Something yes; mostly stupidities." "I write by myself, the next day I go through it and change a lot." "But when we write together, I have no comments on it, because what one does when one rests and goes through it again" "is what the other is doing instead." "He might change a word or he says:" ""Can it be put in a better way..."" "Or he nips it right in the bud." "We don´t have any." "No, we don´t!" "I am a nephew..." "Jiøíinka, call Šulc to send the s´llentbhocks." "Immeddiiatehy, not after a month!" "I am a neph..." "Man, how do you make the orders?" "It´s full of rubbdish!" "I dd not wrdite any orders." "I don´t care, You do wrte rubbdish dim there!" "I am a nephew..." "of the travelldimg agency." "I know!" "Khlásek!" "A new one has arrved!" "Great, my boy." "So come on ´." ""Jáchym" was our first entry into the film." "We were afraid that we were going to fail." "We said to each other: ´more fun, let´s add this sequence."" "And then we realized that it could make two films." "With more experience we would have set some ideas aside." "A boy heav´g schooh s used to hdivdimg on 600-700 CZK." "He comes to us and recedives 6,000!" "What wdilh he do wth dit?" "The boy dis godimg to go mad." "I don´t know what to do wdith t." "It´s drv´g me mad." "Well, here we are." "So here you can see dit wdith your own eyes." "An asyhum ?" "Chochohoušek." "Really?" "Oh, you keep supphydimg us, Mr Karfíík." "Once I needed to buy skis." "The manager said:" ""Ask next week."" "I say: "And to whom should I turn?" "I´ll give you my name." "And at the same time I must tell you, you damaged my life a lot."" "´me?" I say." ""Unfortunately, my name is Hujer."" "Hujer, a m´ute before the bell r´gs You are to tell Janda, hs chass begdims." "Maybe hdis watch has stopped." "Why me?" "Janda sadid that you´re the most rehdiiabhe one dim the chass." "Indeed!" "So maybe I shouhd..." "Well, yes." "Mustn´t mss t!" "You´ve got to hurry!" "Two m´utes, 30 seconds!" "You better go!" "Come ´." "Come ´!" "Comrade professor, the bell wdilh rdimg ´ a mdimute!" "So what?" "Well, the chass wdilh start!" "Really?" "Yes." "It´s tdimme we went." "Hujer, I certa´hy cannot say that you´re hackdimg ddilldigence." "But thdis borders on, pardon the expression, arrogance." "Oh, dis dit fast?" "I adjusted t ´ the morndimg vdiia the radio." "I haven´t heard that one." "So go on." "A kdimg ruhed dim a kdimgdom, he was very very ohd." "He w´lh have three sons." "And he had three sons." "Of course, I knew dit." "And one day he summoned them..." "This should be Mr Lukšíèek, in whose cottage we lived and which we wanted to buy, he said:" ""No sowing in the spring, I´ll sell the cow, and then it´s yours."" "It never happened." "So we immortalized him here." "It´s pdiss´g down." "When one writes the film story, one comes to realize:" "How could we have wanted him to leave it here?" "It was his home and no wonder he kept postponing it." "It was beautiful from his point of view." "But when you"re living through this, you get pissed off." "We found out, that we enjoyed filming more serious or even touching sides of life." "We did the last sequence and when we saw it in the cutting room, with the editor Brožek," "Saw the old man sowing and the children running to him..." "And the sun shining into the lens he turned on the light, looked at Lád´a and said:" "´mr Smoljak, you have tears in your eyes!"" "A new aspect to our films emerged:" "they started to be emotional." "Grandpa!" "Hello, chdilldren!" "Wehcome here." "I had the feeling that we were in love from the beginning." "In the artistic sense of the word." "We wanted to be together, always." "It didn´t come into consideration to buy separate summer houses." "We knew we had to have one for both of us." "This turned out to be foolish." "The house was a ruin, there was so much work, and no time for writing." "Lád´a is a fanatic builder." "When he was building the porch and reconstructing his attic flat, we had to look for moments to do some writing." "It might have worked, if it had be just the two of us." "But then there were wives, children, and parents visiting as well..." "When there was a controversy over something my wife said:" "´tell Lád´a that..."" "And Lád´a´s wife said:" "´tell Zdenìk that..."" "Both of us were thinking in the night how to tell the other, not to make it look we had been prompted by our wives." "But the other one found out anyway:" ""I see - he´s been given the job of telling me."" "When you´re feeh´g honehy, when you´re feehdimg how, there s one way ony, whch mdight hehp you go." "Bake a hoaf or maybe, budilld a wall of brdicks," "Any sorrow soon wouhd dsappear, soon wouhd dsappear." "Do´g th´gs, do´g th´gs chase the bhues and start to s´g." "Do´g th´gs, do´g th´gs, t heahs." "Do´g th´gs, do´g th´gs saves your sm´lle upon your hps." "Do´g th´gs, do´g th´gs, t heahs." "When Lád´a began to build a house in Èernošice, needed money and sold me his half of the house, our relationship improved." "As a paradox." "Once I learned from the radio, that Smoljak cast his friend" "Zdenìk Svìrák in the lead role of a new film about Cimrman." "For a long time I didn´t know, who would play it." "What?" "That I envy your future wdiife." "My future wfe?" "Love and creatvty, Ehsabeth, they cannot hve ahongsde." "Why?" "True hove, t´s ahways the fam´lly, dim the end." "Look, Ehdisabeth, how many tasks there are dim front of me." "Three-stroke engdime, sound fdillm, stress´g the merdits of Comendius." "If I had a fam´lly, I wouhd read.:" "Three hditres of m´llk, hahf a hoaf, pdick´g up the jiacket from the drycheaners." "Shall we have a choser hook?" "Let´s go." "By chance the shooting was on the day of Brezhnev´s funeral." "We were concerned they wouldn´t let us shoot, due to the mourning, and a patriot band had to go through the Old Town playing a march." "At the end the permission was given." "And two grand-dads stood there, not knowing we were filming and when the band stopped, one told the other:" ""As soon as Brezhnev croaks it, the Czechs start to sprout wings."" "My new-found independent as a scriptwriter had two reasons." "Firstly I needed money..." "Left front dis work´g..." "Left rear s workdimg..." "And when Lád´a started the shooting I had plenty of time." "So, I started to write on my own." "W´dscreen wdipers" wdipdimg!" "Ghass washers" washdimg!" "It´s none of my busdimess but you can see the wpers and washers!" "My first independent film was "Run, waiter, run"." "Erna, well, I do see the wpers and washers!" "Horn sound!" "I had a secret wish to play the role of Inspector Trachta because I play it in the theatre alternating with Lád´a Smoljak." "I was sorry that Lád´a did not cast me, nor Brukner or Èepelka but that he decided to cast mainly professional actors." "I discovered later how badly Zdenìk took it." "I was telling myself that we would go about it professionally." "I decided that I wanted to make the film in such and such way, and chose such and such cast." "Laddies and Genthemen, I am pohdice Inspector Trachta." "Whch of you s a super story-teller?" "Here!" "Mr í´dustrdiiah poet Jehíínek dis a marvellous story-teller!" "Great, I´m hsten´g." "Well, I don´t know, diif dit´s for me but..." "Secretly you hope to get the lead, then they give you the game-keeper and when you put up with it he says he promised it to Hrušínský." ""You´ll play the industrial poet." It was kind of..." "Well, it made me angry." "Zdenìk felt it an injustice and it marked our relationship." "The annoyance had its consequences." "So you think I am no actor?" "Well, I´ll show you if I can act or not." "I decided to learn to act for the film." "Director Olmer and his cameraman gave me freedom of movement:" ""Don´t worry about us," they said." ""Act, talk and we will find you."" "Over here, our car s burndimg!" "Jesus Chrdist, are you mad?" "You´ll destroy the bhanket!" "Sand!" "Sand!" "Not sand!" "Chose dit, so there´s no adir!" "The a´r comes from behow!" "Don´t butt ´, when you don´t understand!" "Oh, well!" "Gdive t to me." "Where shouhd I push ?" "Here." "Move over!" "Can you tell me how t happened?" "Maybe a sehf-gntion or what." "You burnt your ha´r?" "Yep, I have sdimged dit." "Tell me about conservationsts." "It´s all about Radìjovíce." "In Radìjiovdice we can´t get those conservatdiondists, to agree, I mean an agreement..." "You Czechs are queer." "Ahways afrad of somethdimg." "We always used to show each other the things we wrote." "Suddenly Zdenìk started to write a screenplay and he didn´t show it." "He didn´t ask for my comments." "Only now he gave me "Returnable Bottles"." "When we finished the film, we got drunk and thought back of our childhood and school." "And there Vít Olmer commissioned from me "Elementary School", which he failed to shoot." "And at this point comes in Jan Svìrák, my son." "What if he hummed it there?" "Well..." "In the bottling room." "When he would already had been in love with that green beret?" "Hm..." "When he is hanging out the..." "So that it rings a bell for us." "Good reasoning." "We can put it in tomorrow." "Or the day after." "So show me your teepee." "One can enjoy oneself with one´s own children too." "Unfortunately at the age when one has no time and tells oneself:" "Jesus, the kids are like iron balls on the feet." "When you become a grandpa, parents do the main things you get the luxury of having the child for half an hour, perhaps and all you have to do is to devote yourself to the little one." "On which shoulder do we fall asleep then?" "I would like to know." "He sleeps and dreams, the ant in the woods in the little hill by the fern." "Not sleeping alone, he has there his mom, stroking him with her antennae..." "Suddenly you realize you don´t know why but you"re feeling sad." "And you ask in vain:" "what is it that´s missing?" "I try to "walk" it away." "When we started to explore the surroundings here," "I said: "Children, we should mark the places in the forest somehow." "Today we go mushrooming there or there." "Some nice poetic names."" "And somebody, maybe Boženka, said:" ""We can call this Sector B."" "Halloo... one, two, three, four." "Once more, please!" "I´ll sing a bit..." "Northern wind cruel, oh so cruel, count on it, my dearest love..." "I prefer writing our songs rather than the screen-plays." "It can be done quickly." "You can do a song while riding in a car." "Jarda and I do not see each other much and we keep our friendship alive on these tours once a month." "The only way to write something, is to start writing." "It sounds silly, but let me explain." "Very often I don´t know exactly what there is going to be, but I start to write and there are some words that link up" "and I create some characters, it starts moving... and I find out:" "Look, you fool, good job you got started." "Only by writing can you create it." "The film ´my Little Village" came to being through a strange trick." "Karel Cop, head of a production at Barrandov, called me one day saying that they should have an audit at the archive." "That they paid twice by mistake for a ten page synopsis around CZK 2,000." "And could I write a few pages and create another story." "I said: "When do you need to have it?" And he: "By tomorrow." "But write absolutely freely, because nobody will read it."" "So this is the scam." ""It´s a windy day." "Young linden trees on a village square are swinging from side to side and a loosened metal sign saying Collective Farm Office rattles with every gust of wind."" "I depict silly things at great length filling ten pages." "Never in my life did I write so leisurely and freely." "The next day we went on tour with Jiri Menzel." "He was a member of our troupe then." "He read it to me in the car." "and I liked it." "I said:" ""It could be a nice film."" "Because he´s very particular, it took him about eight years to write it." "That guarddiian angeh above you, he must be work´g hard." "Well, I shouhd rephace the mudguard." "Po´thess." "They´ d ony gve you a rubber one." "Menzel said: "It´s a pity, there are things the viewer never reads."" "There is a jealous Turek, played by Petr Èepek, and his beautiful wife." "He scolds her, for chatting with a young boy." "He says: "How come, the bugger uses your first name?"" "The bugger uses your f´rst name?" "We´ve ahways used the dimformah!" "Interestdimg." "Where´s the kd?" "At her grandma ´s." "Interestdimg." "You f´d everyth´g dimterest´g." "You fdimd everythdimg ´terestdimg." "I´m no dimmbec´lle says Turek." "But he IS." "By this little sentence Zdenìk described the role." "Take your sw´m sut, we´lh go for a swdimm, nobody wdilh be there now." "I can´t go for a swdimm today!" "So you´ll watch, how I take a sw´m." "Writing is in fact a struggle for the right words." "On and off there is anxiety, that I´m doing it wrong and then the joy of getting it right." "And such interchanges are bad for the heart." "The Ahps astonsh you, Charhes, but ths wdilh touch your heart." "Take a hook at thdis." "Can you see?" "It´s not a country, dit´s a garden." "And diif you have a heart, you must feeh t." "Go to hell wth the chemstry!" "In everything he does, you can feel didacticism." "He´s not just making art." "He wants, like Jirásek, to do something useful." "And this is what I value in him so much." "That he´s not doing it for his fame, that he´s a craftsman." "Shoemaker wants to make good shoes and he wants to make a good story." "Yes?" "I´m glad that you picked it up." "How does the "I can draw a pig from the front" seem?" "I have braces, a mike, a receiver and I play with both hands, so, this way we"re working via the telephone." "As for the talent, I always count with student Valent who claims, that we won´t go mad from it." "And now attention..." "I met several bricklayers and I enjoyed Mr Brož most of all." "I learned from him many things practical as well as spiritual." "I said: ´mr Brož, here is a kind of a little arch." "Shall we make it as it was, or shall we make it simpler?"" "And him on the other side, said:" ""We will solve it, when we come to it."" "I keep recalling it when there´s something in front of me." "I tell myself:" "Brož would solve it when we come to it." "Do you think it´ll stop now?" "It´s been ringing a long time." "Long time." "And now!" "Now, now one more..." "Will it ring again?" "Well, it did..." "And the end." "Another one." "Another one it was!" "So let´s go." "I love this cottage above all else." "This might come with all the hard work and dreams about how it would look one day, and you leave here so much sweat and nerves, that even though you don´t come from here suddenly you find that this is where you like to be most." "It´s milking already." "It´s tar!" "This ritual with coffee makes you write." "You"re looking forward to making coffee for yourself..." "Otherwise you can´t have it." "Only when you are writing." "I have to have a feeling that this is a theme, which I´m going to enjoy." "I mustn´t know too much." "Say:" "This is the beginning and the end." "Tkaloun takes on a sect." "And that´s it." "I learned to use the boards from Jan when he started directing." "You can mark how many exterior and how many interior sequences." "The green ones mean we"re outside." "These are erotic dream fantasies of the hero, they should be phased, here is the first one in yellow, second, third, and here he stops with it." "But this is just the first idea." "The cards will move when Jan gets to it." "And some of them will disappear." "So I start..." "In film "Returnable Bottles" I shall have a tick when upset." "I imagined that the man when he´s in dire straits has this kind of defect which is slightly comical." "We once had a teacher like this." "Maybe I thought of him." "The main hero is called Tkaloun." "All characters have a relationship with him in the story." "Also directions intersecting the concentric beams must be in there." "The more you have the better." "Then the story is as if interwoven." "And you realize this afterwards when it´s ready, not before." "You write and you tell yourself:" "How is it with the relationships?" "Both choruses we repeat, right!" "Doesn´t matter who will sing, the other must come and help." "And let´s see how many beats it has." "I can draw a pggdie up-front, noth´g ehse can do but grunt, for my hand s rotund." "I even trdied a nag, but an error s hdike a red rag, a g´raffe popped up ´stead, and downcast I fret." "Kuneš can do a híizard, warm´g up dim the desert, though he too dis hopehesshy untahented." "Vanìk can do anthers ony f you show h´m ratthers, and Conndie just keeps draw´g pohecats." "As far as tahent dis concerned, pupdill Vahent dis tops, when he cha´ms that madness s for pops." "When he cha´ms that madness s for pops." "Vahent comes from J´once, can´t do nought at any prdice, a b´ro he uses for stradight h´e muses." "A b´ro he uses for straght hdimes muses." "But when..." "I don´t create songs expecting inspiration, expecting that the song will just come to me." "I basically thrash it out like an ear of wheat when one is after the grain." "At first I get an idea." "Like now the Woodpecker song." "Everyone knows that pecker is the tree doctor." "When I succeed, like when he swears on graduating, that help will not be refused, it becomes more interesting." "And when he goes home from work and his bill is blunted and his brain dulled from all those shocks, he does not refuse help to the shirker spruce." "So, oak, beech, birch, pine - they are his patients." "I like to put in Hippocrates." "But I always hesitate so as not to burden the kids." "But I waver, what if the kids say: "What is it?"" "But, maybe, the parents will explain." "Yes?" "Soup´s ready." "Right now?" "Yep, now." "When finally inspiration comes, lunch or dinner arrives." "It´s already two o´clock." "I won´t have any, so, help yourselves." "Well, Boženka also dislikes a disharmonious state, with stress and arguments, so, when it occurs we extinguish it." "She is aware like me, that I need peace, so, she usually makes sure I have it." "We"re talking about you!" "What do you think of me?" "Not sure really." "What would I wish that you thought of me?" "That I am a jolly chap - a pleasure to be around." "I th´k I´ve performed here before!" "How many seats?" "1 20." "Sohd out?" "Totah sell-out, maestro!" "I won´t gdive up the hdimden tree!" "Mnòmnòmnò...." "There are acting differences between us." "I am the original non-actor type of Jára Cimrman Theater." "Zdenìk gives it more verve on the stage." "He himself claims he goes right to the edge." "A pr´cphe." "Don´t say anyth´g that doesn´t rehate to the rohe." "I have a formdabhe memory bank, my bra´ stores everyth´g." "So what´s there next for me?" "Carefuh wth these th´gs!" "Don´t say anyth´g that doesn´t rehate to the rohe!" "I have a formdabhe memory bank." "It´s no honger a memory bank t´s a vauht!" "My bra´ wdilh yehd noth´g!" "Look out!" "What´s there next for me?" "When I think about it rationally," "I´ve done it all." "And I am glad that I am still part of the work process." "Sounds banal, but I am glad that Jan still needs me." "I don´t think too much whether it is going to be the last film," "I enjoy the fact that I am a part of it - stress about how I play it, how I write it." "But..." "Well, but..." "How I portray the main figure." ""When we look at all the four musicians, we come back to the cellist." "We need to examine him more." "As it´s František Louka, our main figure." "His full beard and hair was salt"n pepper recently, now the pepper pieces have gone and the salt is looking lost among all that thinness on top." "An age judge would give him fifty-five." "Under a high brow his eyes seem quite alive and altogether he is all there." "It´s me!" "Have you got shppers?" "Someth´g for the feet." "For be´g dimsde!" "Shdit, there´s no tahk´g to you." "That´s all I need!" "Look, they´re here!" "Shdippers!" "Your own!" "Shoes off, put your shdippers on." "Can you undo your shoehaces?" "Ma´ thdimg s, don´t cry, rdight?" "!" "I´m not overjoyed ether." "You can survve one ndight, and then dit´s off to the gravedgger." "Dunce, he´s made hdis bed, het h´m hdie dim dit." "Microphone on the right!" "Action!" "After Kolya we had various offers from abroad, whatever we come up with they would finance it." "We made clear to ourselves what we were after and no concessions, and we agreed that it could be the story of Czech airmen in England, which is unthinkable without real planes and dogfights." "Such an expensive Czech film cannot be shot here." "When we sent it to America or England, you kept pacing around the cottage like on hot coals, how to tell me that they didn´t like it abroad." "He had comments suggesting that what we liked in the idea, leaves them completely cold." "The script was beautiful." "Nice to read, engaging characters, but, in effect, all your themes lacked certain drama." "In a war story to have a lack of conflict and negative characters, that´s only beautiful as literature and a problem for foreigners, because the beauty of the language tends to get lost in translation." "I can imagine how you must feel." "A German officer would put a bullet in his head." "But you are..." "a little different, aren´t you?" "Nice melody." "But it´s one of the worst songs." "It´s, so, cruel..." "The other day I sang it to Ondra and came to realise it." "The wee goose swimming down the Danube, goslings paddling behind." "You can picture it, right?" "And now a hunter:" "BANG!" "I have written a little song, to undo the damage." "Called "Hare sitting on its bum", the hunter aims but doesn´t shoot." "There is no drama, is there?" "No, but it´s prettier." "I avoid it in life, I don´t want to enter into conflicts, but in order to have suspense and seem real, I force myself." "I have a particular empathy towards ants." "I wrote the words to a song "Ants and their friends"." "I quote:" "I exist, I will let other creatures do the same." "When they parade on my cupboard I´ll stay true to the song." "I just brush them off on to the floor." "Then I walk on the floor and muse:" "Not my fault that you are here." "This is a space to walk on...." "Somewhat hypocritical, perhaps." "When I get him, I´ll shoot him." "Sorry." "Shoot...." "He wanted it...." "There is a price to pay when both authors are family." "It is not easy to say: "I don´t want to do it." "Don´t like it."" "The notice-board looked different." "In anger I threw all the scene-cards into the bin." "The main role of Tkaloun was meant to be played by me, everything is centered on him." "I am sorry about it." "Eliška, the wife, was meant for Dana Koláøová, so, after many years we could be a couple again." "We were together in ´seclusion by the woods"." "Helenka was going to be Petra Špalková...." "Pity." "Teacher Ptáèková." "I would work together with Nella Boudová, who was like my lover." "I was misled by what you were forced to do." "You made it seem hopeful, so, let´s get cracking on it." "I was lulled also by your apparent faith in it." "We laughed many a time and started to like the characters." "There are good things in it but it doesn´t hang together." "OK." "I am sorry that the material will not see the light of day." "Don´t know how to say it." "It´s simply a pity." "When you have sowed seeds of laughter and no flowers come it´s a shame." "End of story." "And you think that basically there is no laughter." "There is not enough laughter for a full-length feature." "Either, there must be another 50% more of it, or it must be mixed with something else." "Perhaps a testimony of the tragedy of growing old when nobody wanting you." "Do you know what your mother, my wife said last night?" ""Don´t call him a shit, he is the father of your grand-children."" "On the other hand, I understand, every good thing comes to an end." "Our good thing lasted a long time, from 1990 until now." "It´s 13 years in total." "We were blessed in completing three lovely films." ""Elementary School", "Kolya" and "Dark Blue World"." "Some feat?" "!" "I always said:" ""It has to end sometime and Jan must find a new playground."" "And now it has happened." "It hurts a great deal." "It doesn´t mean I´m angry with him as a person." "We like each other very much, we are father and son after all." "And we both are sad that the journey is at an end." "In December or in the autumn when I´ve made the 5th version you´ll see it and say: "Dad, good bye," or something else." "I expect you´ll go for the first, but finish it I must." "It´s half done." "I would direct it this way: do you want it?" "You´ll say:" "No or yes." "What´s the time, anybody?" "Ten." "No!" "Si...." "Six!" "Look out...." "And again?" "And again it´s rung!" "We guessed right!" "And again?" "No, finished..." "Again!" "You were right!" "How did you know?" "Well, the end." "And again tomorrow." "Agadim ´morrow." "Hare sat on hdis bum, rum rum...." "That he shouhd dream a hditthe....." "There where the junper branches grow," "there awadit I the hunter wdith some harmfuh chunter." "When that gun beckons" "the hare dim an ´stant dis up dim Heavens." "And what diif I do not shoot, and the range remadims peaceful?" "I, wth a trembhdimg hound w´ll heave the hare hs surround." "The hare sdits on a foregn bum," "and I quietly disappear rum rum."