Q: I've seen it spelled Cikatilo and Chikatilo, which is correct?
A: It is actually Cikatilo.
Q: Malcolm said he read the script years ago. How long had you been trying to get the film made?
A: I wrote the first draft of the script in 1997. But I have not been trying to do the film the whole time. I have been working on many other things in the meantime. I was very fatalistic about this project. I knew that this film was almost impossible to make.
Q: The locations felt very authentic with the right age. Did you scout them yourself and how long did it take to find them?
A: I personally chose every single location. It was just so easy to find them. Kiev and Ukraine are still like how Soviet Union was.
Q: Where they all filmed in the same area? The aquarium, Evilenko's building, the barracks?
A: I never went more than 50 miles outside Kiev. The Aquarium I built in the old, almost abandoned Studios Dovzenko, in Kiev.
Q: Malcolm seems to delight in giving you a hard time - jokingly. Was he like that on the set?
A: Malcolm was always making jokes. He says it helps him to stay concentrated and I agree with him. It is an amazing method and it works.
Q: Were you able to play any jokes on Malcolm while you were filming?
A: Malcolm and I always play jokes on each other. He was always buying old watches, which is his addiction, and every time I gave him some evidence that they were fake.
Q: How did you become aware of Marton Csokas?
A: A professional casting agent in Los Angeles, Mindy Marin, told me he could be the right one for the part. Then I learned that Malcolm already met him by coincidence and immediately he said it was a good idea.
Q: We are introduced to Evilenko as a teacher. What exactly did he teach?
A: He was teaching Russian literature. He was the main teacher of that age of children.
Q: When the ball lands in Evilenko's lap, everything stops. When he stands there is a shot of him that almost mirrors the bust behind him. Everyone seems scared of him. Is it because he is an authority figure or do they already know he is a bit sinister?
A: Yes. I made this shot to let the audience understand that everyone is scared of him. He reads the official communist newspaper, the Pravda, all alone. And he stops children's game just because he has been interrupted.
Q: Did you not include Cikatio's children to make the story easier?
A: No. I did it for many other reasons. Because I could not put them in the reality, because they actually never lived with their father except when they were very little. Also a lot of ignorant people all over the world think that if you had children you can not be impotent. I decided when writing the book not to deal with his children because I would never be able to describe his wife's complicity. It is a reality that goes beyond my understanding, I still can't understand it, can't believe it. In 1996 when his son was found to be a serial killer, I was even more astonished. I tried to meet him, but he was killed in a Moscow jail (so they say...). Often reality is just too weird. I am happy with it and I will never do a sequel.
Q: Was Cikatilo really impotent?
A: Yes. That was his problem. Actually, his sexuality was very confused. When he was a young boy at school people said he was a homosexual. Then he married Fenja and he managed to have two children. But those were just accidents. He was often going with prostitutes and failing.
Q: What does the name Evilenko mean? Does 'enko' mean something?
A: It's very simple and very cheap. Evil+enko, which the traditional final part of Ukranian names, like Shevcenko, Cernienko, etc.
Q: Was the reason you changed Cikatio to Evilenko to prevent the backlash from the Russian people - so you could say it was "fiction"?
A: Yes. I wanted to be free from the specific Cikatilo case. I wanted to tell through his story the drama of the loss of identity of all the communist.
Q: For the confrontation scene in the aquarium, why did you choose to go all the way and have the men nude - to make it more powerful?
A: Aquarium (water) and nudity like symbols of truth finally revealed. Truth is always powerful.
Q: How did you film the scene where the train almost hits the girl? Did you get permission for the railroad? And was it a crane shot? It's a great shot going up and over the train.
A: I had permission and the train was at my disposal. The train was higher than what I had asked, so we had problems with the crane, but we finally got it. Thank you, Bill. This is the kind of shot you dream about, but then when you do film it is never what you expect. I am quite happy with it.
Q: Why did Evilenko try to kill himself after he thought the girl got hit by the train? He said it was his fault, but he would've killed her anyway. Was he schizophrenic?
A: Yes, I think he was schizophrenic. I made that scene for a simple reason - he sees a girl killed by someone else (a train) and he suddenly realizes what death is. I thought this was an interesting point of view. Also he does not know that the girl survives.
Q: Did Evilenko really hypnotize Vadim? It seemed like he was just going along with Evilenko to trick him. Or is it the case of not being able to hypnotize someone of strong will?
A: I don't know and I don't want to know. You can think that he really hypnotized him or that it was just a trick from Vadim. It's up to the audience. I love that.
Q: What is the name of the town where Cikatilo was supposedly killed?
A: Novocerkassk. It's the place where he lived, a little place, not even a real village near Rostov.
Q: Why do they call the areas 'Wood strip #'?
A: They call those areas "Wood Strips" because they could not manage,
for many reasons, to build anything there. Russia was basically an enormous
woods. So they left all these strips and they made a huge effort to give a number
to all of them to localize everyone.
Q: Was Dr. Richter based on anyone in real life?
A: No, Richter is totally invented.
Q: Why did you add Dr. Richter then, since he wasn't based on reality?
A: Because Richter has the knowledge of mental illness and represents a sort of bridge between Evilenko and Vadim.
Q: When confronting Evilenko why did Richter say he was his father? He doesn't look older than him and you've established before his father was killed.
A: It is not a matter of age. Richter knows from the files he read and from the interrogation he heard that Evilenko has a big problem with the father he never met. The psychoanalyst knows that this could be a key to reach the child that lies in Evilenko's heart and brain.
Q: A friend in Russia said the most popular theory is that Cikatilo's body was sold for experiments. Also that the public became really loud and worried, so they arrested a known child molester, and put all the murders on him to calm down the crowds. Have you heard those?
A: The theory that Cikatilo was sold is the main one today, I think also because of my novel and of my film. The other theory is very old now. It represents what the people thought during the trial. People just couldn't understand how he could have been able to commit all those murders and the popular knowledge that everything is always tricky in that country, made this version grow at that time, but not anymore.
Q: Reviews of Evilenko at a film festival in St. Petersburg February 2005 said most of the reviewers didn't agree with the way the political side of the issue, but almost everyone noticed MM's acting.
A: I have not seen any Russian reviews, but I am not surprised. They can't agree with the political side of the movie because I am saying that every Soviet has been affected my some kind of mental illness.
Q: What happened to the scene in the script where Evilenko sees the boy pull the cats tail?
A: I cut it. It was not interesting after I shot it.
Q: How was Evilenko able to kill the boy on the train and not get blood all over his clothes?
A: He has this kind of black plastic overcoat he could easily wash instead.
Q: You said that Chikatilo was the absolute symbol of the fall of communism. Did you mean that because he self destructed when communism did?
A: Yes, you are essentially right.
Q: Why do you think more isn't known about Chikatilo? All the big US serial
killers have become sort of pop culture anti-heroes and whole groups of people
are fascinated with them.
A: Because the Russians are basically ashamed by him and his story rather than attracted. Also because information is still not valued in the former Soviet Union. They were not informed yesterday and they are not informed today. They are just used to not being informed about anything.
Q: There was a striking image of Evilenko walking under a large billboard of a pointing finger with a man on a podium on the finger. What does it represent?
A: All the typical images of the Soviet culture were menacing, blaming,
pointing at some abstract duty. This was the mood of communism.
Q: Was Evilenko's diary of drawings based on a real one or was it from your
imagination?
A: No. The drawings were my invention. There was no diary. I invented that
because I considered the character of Evilenko like a kind of weird, perverse
tortured child.
Q: Who was the artist?
A: The artist was a young Russian assistant of the production design I found in Kiev.
Q: You said you were afraid to bring the film to Russia. What kind of reaction are you afraid of getting? Too sympathetic to the real killer?
A: Only a few Russians would understand a film like this. After 70 years of communism, and even now during the Putin 'monarchy', the Russians have no sense of history. They still don't understand what happened to them. They are used to having no information at all or just propaganda. I was afraid they would tell me that I am not Russian, I don't speak Russian and because of this I am not allowed to tell the story in this way and they would be right. But believe me, I know about the Soviet Union more than the most of the Russians do. I realized this every day in Kiev while shooting the movie. All of the local people were asking me every day, "How do you know this? I hadn't even heard about it? How do you remember things that I barely heard about?"
Q: If you were invited to show the film in Russia would you go?
A: I am a little bit concerned about it, but I would go.
Q: While watching the film I was struck by the solid camera angles. I especially liked the almost voyeuristic approach, especially when the woman from the carnival was leading Evilenko to the barracks. It reminded me of Lindsay Anderson, then at the end you dedicated the film to the great man, I thought that was a nice touch. Was there a conscious emulation of Lindsay's style?
A: When you love cinema, you always emulate what you love the best. Lindsay Anderson was, more than a friend, but one of my favorite directors. One can't be aware of emulation, otherwise it's gonna be crap. It's just an unconscious process that every director has.
Q: The one thing I didn't like was there was no part of the trial that went into why he did what he did. Why is that?
A: Because I felt that the film was over. I told the story in quite an intimate way. The trial would be like a completely different movie. Also the real trial was just boring. It was very short, basically just a classification of corpses. They have never been interested on why he did what he did, considering him perfectly sane, which is unbelievable. Malcolm playing the part was far more sane than the real Cikatilo at first sight.
Q: In the trial did Cikatilo explain why he did it? Did anyone ever ask him?
A: He tried many times to explain, but the judge always immediately stopped him. This is why after a few days, he decided not to talk anymore.
Q: In making the film did you have a goal in mind like for the Russian government to open their files or reveal what you feel is the true story of what happened to Cikatilo?
A: Yes. I realize it now that you are asking me. Who knows? Maybe one day we'll know the truth.
Q: This isn't a typical movie where you go to be entertained. What do you want people to take away from it when they go home?
A: I like genre films, Bill. But I also like films that mean really something. I am happy to see that generally the audience of Evilenko all over the world, is concentrated, absorbed, in anguish. This is not entertainment, but I love to generate that kind of tension. I had some of the strongest emotions of my life watching Bergman movies when I was very young. That was absolutely not entertaining, but those films are still in my life experience. The most of the entertaining films I saw have vanished. If Evilenko will remain somewhere in the memory of the audience, this will be a great privilege for me. And if someone will learn something about communism, about the Soviet Union, about individual diseases and mental illness from this film, I think I will have done my job.
Q: How was your overall experience at the Philadelphia Film Festival?
A: Beautiful. It is a very cultivated and gentle city. It is one of the few American places where, as a European, I could live. I felt the feedback from the audience was very good. I spent a lot of time talking to some of them. I know that there is always someone who does not like the film, but I am happy with it. I don't want to make films that everybody can agree with. I am not Walt Disney.
Q: In the tradition of Lindsay Anderson to Malcolm. Write another film for you and Malcolm to do!
A: I just wrote another film for Malcolm and I hope to shoot it
at the end of summer
in Casablanca. But don't ask me to tell you about it because I am very
superstitious. I
will know if I am going to do it in the next few weeks.
This page © 2005-08 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net