Trivia / The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed

• Executive Meddling:
  • The film was to be titled The Age of Charity, but comrade Lapin, the minister of TV and Radio, said that the title must be changed, because "Charity is a priest-ish word". Thus film was titled The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed and Lapin's phrase was given to Gleb Zheglov and became a meme.
  • Also, Sharapov's girlfriend was granted a reprieve (she was supposed to die, but aforementioned Lapin thought it would be too much for the viewers who would have to see the deaths of both Levchenko and Varya and go to work the next day).
• Wag the Director: In a good way. Vladimir Vysotsky reportedly specifically campaigned to get the role of Zheglov, feeling that no one could do it better, and had a lot of input on the film's direction. He set and designed a lot of details and scenes (the lisping pickpocket Kostya Saprykin being, probably, his most enduring invention) and in the end got so heavily involved in the movie that Govorukhin explicitly left him in charge during his frequent absences, so he even ended up directing several episodes in the movie.
• Write What You Know: Both authors had a lot of relevant experience before turning to the mystery genre — Georgy Wainer was a crime reporter, while his brother Arkady was a MUR (Moscow Criminal Investigations Department) detective, so they often used Real Life cases as a basis for their plots, including this time.

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