"Terrible sweater! It is necessary to act in it": how the films "Brother" and "Brother 2" were created

In the 90s, the state was full of more important concerns than cinema. Therefore, the projects that were still approved received ridiculous funding. For the filming of the movie "Brother" Alexey Balabanov was allocated only one hundred thousand dollars. Nevertheless, the movie turned out to be excellent, and Danila Bagrov, looking for justice in a world ruled by bandits, instantly became a hero of the time. They decided to shoot the sequel after Sergei Bodrov received a letter in which a woman asked him how to deal with bandits.

Director Balabanov noticed a young Sergei Bodrov in 1996 at the Kinotavr Film Festival. They became friends and decided to make a movie about a man who was not used to going with the flow. Bodrov said about his hero: "I have a strange attitude towards him in general. He looks like me and doesn't look like me. And simpler than something, and more mature like… In general, really a brother!"

With a painting budget of one hundred thousand dollars, it was necessary to save literally on everything. In fact, the money was spent only on film and filming equipment. The actors' fees were minimal, they rented from each other in apartments and cottages, clothes were picked up mostly from their own wardrobes. The famous stretched sweater, in which the main character flaunts, was bought in a second-hand store for 35 rubles.

"I came in my jeans, Seryozha Bodrov in his shoes," recalls Svetlana Pismichenko, who played the tram driver Sveta. — Do you remember the sweater in which my heroine goes to the Nautilus concert? I brought it from Finland. When Lesha Balabanov saw him, he said: "Terrible sweater! It is necessary to act in it"".

By the way, about the Nautilus concert. It was a real concert, but not by Butusov, but by the group "Chizh & Co" in the Gorbunov Recreation Center in Moscow. The audience was used as extras, and Bodrov and Pismichenko squeezed into the crowd and filmed without duplicates.

"We jumped into the first row, we were immediately squeezed," Svetlana recalled. - The cameraman was running around the stage, and I had a feeling that they were going to crush me to death. Then the band took everything off and left, and we were left in a crowd of drunk and stoned fans. It was really scary. Seryozha decided to break through and actually pulled me out in his arms. Then he sat for an hour and smoked nervously, repeating: "Light, our profession is dangerous.""

Balabanov generally strove for maximum realism in everything. Yuri Kuznetsov, for example, was filmed surrounded by real homeless people. And they believed that Kuznetsov was one of them.

A year after the premiere, Bodrov received a letter from a woman from the province. "Her youngest son is serving in Chechnya—" the actor said. - He writes that he will be back soon, and all the time he asks how his favorite motorcycle is. And now a woman writes that a motorcycle was stolen — crooks got in, and they also stole money. "What to do? —What is it?" she asks. - It's useless to go to the police… You did such a great job in the movies with these bandits, my son and I watched the tape together, and now he's coming back, I don't even know whether to tell him or not..." And then I realized that our film means a lot to people… In general, we decided to shoot "Brother-2"."

Initially, Balabanov wanted to shoot two new parts - about the adventures of Danila Bagrov in Moscow and Chicago. But he quickly changed his mind and decided to combine them into one film. The budget has grown significantly and exceeded a million dollars.

In the autumn of 1999, when they were filming "Brother 2", there was a very tense situation in Moscow after a series of explosions of residential buildings. The entire militia was on its feet: they were looking for terrorists, checking every second car. The van in which the props from Mosfilm were being transported was also stopped. And there are several bags full of weapons. Hardly justified.

After this incident, the actors who starred in the battle scenes no longer had to portray extreme concern and alertness — the feelings were genuine. All the shooting scenes were prepared with the utmost care in order to shoot in one take.

It was not at all easy to find a free cell in prison, where the plot turns out to be the hero of Bodrov. The current ones were overcrowded, the monkey houses in the police were not suitable. The administrators got off their feet, but they didn't find anything suitable. Then the producer Sergey Selyanov remembered the former guardhouse of the Moscow commandant's office, where he himself once sat. And before him - Beria before the execution and Trotsky. They took it off there.

"In America, we landed like conquistadors on the shore," Bodrov recalled—"The main place was Chicago — the old criminal capital of America. We lived and worked there for almost a month and a half. I must say, there are places in American cities where even the police try not to appear, not to mention ordinary white citizens. Filming started from just such a place."

The Americans almost refused to cooperate with the Russians when they found out that they were not only going to shoot without stuntmen, but also expected to use real policemen in the film. This is prohibited in the USA. But the producers managed to get together with the cops from a small town in Long Island, and they allowed them to film themselves, official cars, and also, in violation of all instructions, opened cameras where prostitutes, some crumpled homeless people and drug addicts stuck out.

Another interesting case occurred when it was necessary to make a self-made gun, from which Danila shoots blacks. The American prop was asked to find something similar, but he just spread his hands. Then the cameraman Sergey Astakhov took a Swiss knife, pliers and made this self-made in an hour. The American flatly refused to guarantee safety during the filming of this episode.

At the box office, "Brother 2" did not pay for itself. Cinemas collected a little more than six hundred thousand dollars. But at the end of 2000, the film took first place in the number of copies sold on VHS cassettes, beating several expensive American blockbusters.