Trivia / Vladimir Vysotsky

• Ability over Appearance: He was chosen to play the black main character in How Czar Peter the Great Married Off His Moor. Even though the director had the permission to go abroad in search of a black actor if necessary, he decided that Vysotsky was the only one perfect for the part. Judging by the response to the film, the critics and viewers agree.
• Referenced by...: His song "Fastidious Horses (White Nights)" is played in the final scene of Atomic Blonde.
• What Could Have Been: He was going to voice Wolf in the animated series "Nu, Pogodi!", but he was not approved, and the role was given to Anatoly Papanov. However, one of Vysotsky's more famous songs, "Pesnya o Drugye" ("The Song About A Friend"), does appear in one of the first episodes, presumably as a holdover.
• Write What You Know: Generally averted. He never was in prison, never participated in the WWII (as he was born in 1938) and was not an alpinist. Still his songs about WWII, The Gulag and the mountain climbing were utterly convincing also for people who were immediately familiar with these subjects. So much that they thought that he fought in the war or served a term. In fact he was a child grown in the center of Moscow in a middle-class family. It still implied that he was at least partly brought-up on the street and was by no means a hikikomori. So he could tackle very masculine topics (including those which he did not know from his own experience) in his songs even though he was an intellectual born and raised in the capital.

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