A rare bright spot amid the nightmare Putin’s Russia unleashed on the world last week has been the steady, fearless, and subtly wry leadership of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky’s ascension as a global icon brought about an unexpected bonus to those tuning in for the first time: the discovery of his pre-election showbiz biography, which includes such hallmarks as voicing Paddington, producing and winning the local version of Dancing With the Stars, and playing the lead in a handful of raunchy Russian and Ukrainian comedy titles.
The surprises, however, don’t end there. A closer look reveals that several of Zelensky’s movies, including his latest and likely last romcom foray—2018’s Me You He She—were helmed by an American director, David Dodson, who counts himself among Volodya’s close friends. I caught up with Dodson, who lives in Los Angeles when not making films in Ukraine.
You and I are both American directors who ended up in post-Soviet countries making Russian-language films. At least I was born around there—what’s your story?
I’ve been a film editor for a couple of decades. In 2007, I met [Russian-American director] Marius Vaysberg, who needed an editor on a low-budget film he had just finished in LA. When he went to Moscow to make Hitler Kaput [a deranged 2008 comedy in which, among many other things, socialite and Putin’s rumored goddaughter Ksenia Sobchak plays Eva Braun], he called me and said “hey, do you want to come over to do this movie?” So I spent six months in Moscow working on Hitler Kaput. Marius’s next one — Love in the City, which they shot in New York—was Volodya’s first feature film. That’s where I met Volodya for the first time.
What was your first impression?
Well, he was so much younger then, but his production company, Kvartal 95, were already very popular, so his transition to feature films was pretty effortless. He was then, as he is now, just buoyant: so pleasant and so effortlessly personable. He had a way of making you feel like what you have to give is of great value. On Me You He She, whenever he’d come to set, he made me feel like Steven Spielberg, because he gave you that kind of trust. He would just say in that gravelly voice of his, “Whatever you want to do, David. I’m yours.“ And so you began to work together knowing that you were on the same team and he believed in you.
All of that while producing and writing, too. So was he more of a comedy mogul who also acted, or a comic actor who happened to write his own material?
When he was in front of the camera, he was 100 percent in. He has a completely effortless comic sensibility. I always called him Chaplin, because he has that Chaplinesque ability to communicate with just his physicality, that deadpan face. At the same time, he was busy building one of the biggest media companies in Eastern Europe, with a whole slate of TV shows and live concerts around the world. How he managed to do all that and still seem so effortlessly personable, I have no idea. It’s who he is, and he seems to enjoy it.
You directed him in Eight First Dates in Russia, and Me You He She in Ukraine. Seems like the two industries were quite connected back then—you could shoot something in Kyiv or in Moscow and it wasn’t a big deal.
That’s exactly correct. There was no sense of any hostility or antagonism, that’s for sure. People need to realize that Volodya’s movies were very big in Russia. Most of his market was in Russia. He’s always been a popular comedy star in Russia. There was no perception of him as an enemy.
And now they have private military companies roaming Ukraine trying to assassinate him.
And that’s the great disconnect between Putin’s dictatorship and the actual everyday people who are trapped in his world. There was always a cultural connection that was almost seamless up until 2014, when [Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor] Yanukovich abandoned the EU association agreement.
Not only were you there at the outset of Zelensky’s political career, he was literally running for president while you were shooting Me You He She. How did that work?
Yes, we went into production while he was actively planning his campaign. When we got there, it was an open secret inside of the Kvartal 95 offices that he was going to run. But nobody talked about it and, in fact, it was discouraged. He didn’t want it to be a part of any conversation in the production offices. If you went up to his office for a meeting and there was a pile of twenty cell phones on top of his assistant’s desk and a bunch of strange cars parked outside, then you knew he was having a meeting about the campaign.
In Ukraine, the campaigns are very short—three or four months, and then they vote. So it was ever present, but it was never talked about.
Was it ever seen as a kind of liability that he was running for president with a romcom about to come out? Or was it part of the brand?
In my view, it’s all about what kind of energy you want to send out into the world. And he was so positive, and people related to him so strongly, that the romantic comedies were just another [facet]. Of course, he also had Servant of the People, the TV show [starring Zelensky as a humble school teacher who becomes president], which was sort of a media vehicle for his political ambitions.
That was my next question, because that show had been on air since 2015. Was it set up as a way to test the waters, or was his real-life political ambition something that followed the success of the show?
I think only four or five people actually know whether or not that show was designed as a lever into a political career.
Zelensky is credited as a co-director on Me You He She. The director of photography on that film, and many others of his, is from the U.S. as well—Bruce Alan Greene, whom I know a little. Was there ever a question of what he’s doing with all these Americans around? I mean, once we print this, I can easily see some maniacs out there saying you are his CIA handlers.
Honestly, I’ve been accused of that by Russian commenters.
I’m sure you have!
Here’s what I can tell you about this. Cultural chauvinism in Russia is so much more powerful than cultural chauvinism in Ukraine. In Ukraine, all of the American colleagues were treated as family, without any sense of “what are you doing here” or “why are you taking Ukrainian jobs.” And that’s an essential part of the Ukrainian character. They are, in many ways, much more European than Russia. Everyone who says otherwise, clearly has not spent time in both countries. In Russia, the camera operators and the crew were generally very nice, but you got a distinct feeling you were suspect.
What language did you even use on the set? Do you speak Russian or Ukrainian?
No, I don’t. And I’ve edited 15 Russian-language movies and directed three.
Holy cow.
You know a good take. You can see when an actor is being emotionally honest in any language. And, of course, my wife speaks four languages, including Russian, and she is my script supervisor.
I agree that Ukrainians are more chill in dealing with other cultures. At the same time, both Russian and Ukrainian mainstream humor is—how do I put it delicately? Not exactly woke.
(Laughing) Yes. There’s no denying that so much of the humor there, especially in sketch comedy, is what we would call Borscht Belt humor.
Literally, because they invented borscht.
Exactly. And that’s something to work on. There’s a great deal of homophobia and racism in both places. But with the way Ukraine has been determined to look Westward, you can see palpable progress in the culture on some of these issues. It’s all there, no question about it. But in Ukraine, you feel like they have a way forward to get past it.
Do you feel like Zelensky’s brand of comedy was part of that Westward movement?
Yes and no. The Kvartal 95 comedy shows were very much in that vein of Borscht Belt, mother-in-law humor. But the movies—regardless of what one may think of them as works of cinema—had a much more Western model. Marius, who directed many of them, went to the USC film school, lived in LA for 15 years. His dad produced Tarkovsky’s movies! He’s a cosmopolitan, worldly Russian who embraces the West. So those Hollywood romantic comedies that he idolized were the models for the movies he made with Volodya.
Did Zelensky ever make an attempt to do something that could cross over here? Looking at the movies, it doesn’t seem like it was ever on the table.
It doesn’t seem like it. I pitched Kvartal 95 three English-language movies that I wanted to shoot in Ukraine that they would produce. They didn’t want to do any of them.
Where were you when you found out he won? I was at a festival in Slovakia with my own movie, The Humorist, and they were showing Me You He She as well. I remember everyone going nuts because now they had a movie with an actual president of a country in the program.
I was in Los Angeles with my wife, watching. And knowing Volodya as we do, for a long time it seemed incomprehensible that he would win, because [former president Petro] Poroshenko was doing a good job. That said, when we were shooting in Kyiv and Lviv, he was mobbed. People adored him. We would have to stop shooting just so that he would take pictures and sign autographs, and he did that completely guilelessly. He never turned anyone away for a photo. If we were in the middle of a shot, he would just politely ask them to wait a few minutes. He had that kind of relationship with the people. People need to understand that for Ukraine, Zelensky is more of a Tom Hanks.
That’s a great analogy. So what was your take on him as the president before the war? I know we’re under a kind of moral obligation to close ranks now, but just two days before the invasion, even the editor of Kyiv Independent was grumbling about him in the New York Times. So I think it’s okay to speak freely about that.
I agree. Like anybody who’s put into this situation, and certainly someone like Volodya, who didn’t have any previous political experience, his execution of the office was going to be a mixed bag. And I had huge disagreements with much of his policy. As you know, Ukraine has always been in a fierce battle with its oligarchic heritage, which is still a part of it. And to whatever degree he was able to, or even had the will to, actually chip away at corruption—I can’t say how much success he had.
But it’s clear that, in a time of crisis, he’s done more than anybody would have ever expected. He could easily be running the operation from Switzerland or Austria or Poland, but he’s not. He’s under the bombs, staying with his people. Isn’t that what a powerful leader is supposed to be?
What do you think about his street videos? That “We’re still here” video—I’m kind of amazed by it even as a little piece of filmmaking.
If you know the Ukrainian people, then what Volodya is doing, both in the context of this war and in the way he relates to his people, is of absolutely no surprise. This is a fundamental part of the Ukrainian character. And him being out on the street and showing people that he’s there, giving them hope and lifting them up, being with them, is not just about him but about who Ukrainian people are.
Are you involved with the Ukraine aid efforts?
We’re coordinating services related to children—finding therapists around the world to talk to children in the war zone, helping them deal with bombings, trauma, fear. We got this request from a teacher friend of ours in Kyiv. We’re also coordinating the assembly of aid packages. There’s a Ukrainian shipping company in L.A., Meest, that ships everything from diapers to non-perishable foods to the Polish-Ukrainian border. And then there’s the messaging and petitioning governments around the world. That’s what we spend our days doing.
Over the last week, we’ve seen Zelensky become a globally admired figure. If this ends well for him and Ukraine, do you see him ever using that capital in creative ways, not just political?
My gut feeling would be, no. But many things we’ve taken for granted about how the world works are now upside down. So who can say what could happen in a Ukraine that has survived and is rebuilding.
I’m anxious to find out.
Aren’t we all.