[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHANE SMITH: So we're in St. Petersburg with Yvgeni Yufit
at the old Soviet documentary filmmaking house in the
basement surrounded by 40 years of filth.
And we were there to make a film.
YVGENI YUFIT: Shane.
SHANE SMITH: Yeah?
SHANE SMITH: It's really dark.
MALE SPEAKER 1: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN]
MALE SPEAKER 2: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN]
SHANE SMITH: I don't think I want to be an actor,
especially not in necro-realism films that make
me shove shit in my mouth.
I feel like I'm going to puke.
And now they're going to make me take my pants off and run
down the fucking thing.
Maybe the most fucking humiliating thing I've--
[LAUGHS]
MALE SPEAKER 3: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN]
YVGENI YUFIT: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN]
MALE SPEAKER 5: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN]
SHANE SMITH: It's a wrap?
SHANE SMITH: I see ball sacks.
What's amazing about St. Petersburg is you come here,
and they're filming in 35 with old Soviet cameras they have
hand generators, they are saying let's be surrealist
like the 1920s.
I was acting with a guy there who's been 30 years in Soviet
cinema who was eating dirt, before he went out to pull his
pants down, from a ground that hasn't been swept since 1936.
And then you walk into this room, which is a forgotten
room, and you look around and go, this is maybe the most
beautiful sound stage of all time.
And it's totally forgotten.
It's fucking last bastion of real filmmaking.
And I'm drunk.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHANE SMITH: After shooting that film, I
passed out dead drunk.
And the minute I woke up, I got in a car, went to the
airport, and said put me on any plane, the first plane out
of here, because I got sick of drinking 24 hours a day.
I was sick of people asking me for papers every two blocks--
the military, the police.
I got sick of the cold, the grey, the oppression.
But when I got the film from Yvgeni and watched it, I got a
little glimpse into Russia and what parallel cinema is.
Russia is oppressive.
It's hard, and it's hard drinking.
But out of this oppression can come great art.
And I felt very blessed because I don't think this
will be able to happen much longer.
When I was there, the Cold War rhetoric was
really heating up.
Putin is anti-America.
Russia is anti-America.
It's getting to be like the Cold War never ended.
SHANE SMITH: Would you say it's the same political
climate as before with the Soviet Union?
PAVEL LIABAZOV: Is it for TV?
SHANE SMITH: Yeah.
PAVEL LIABAZOV: (DISBELIEVING) I, I don't know [LAUGHS].
OLEG KULIK: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN]
[MUSIC PLAYING]