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Marek Epstein studied screenwriting and dramaturgy at FAMU, but for a long time he was not clear on what he actually wanted to do. “I wasn’t the kid who knew at ten years old that he was going to be a doctor and went for it.”

The trauma of acting and the proverbial happiness

Thanks to his parents, he played a lot of sports. His domain was running, but the racing times did not suggest that he could make a living at it. “Suddenly I reached the end of my graduation and had to move on again. In addition to jogging, I also enjoyed going to the cinema. So I went to ask FAMU what and how, but at that time they didn’t take eighteen-year-olds, rather older ones. I was supposed to come in three years. So I aged three years at acting school. Private because acting was a trauma for me. I wouldn’t be able to go on stage every night. But it was definitely a great experience for me. Until then, I didn’t even know anything about the theater.”

He considers the advantage of acting school to be that whatever he writes, he immediately tries to say it out loud. “I can evaluate how it sounds, if it’s believable, and that’s valuable to me. If necessary, I will rewrite it a bit, edit it.’

After three years, he tried FAMU and got there the first time. “It was luck. If I hadn’t been taken, I certainly wouldn’t have tried again.”

Before the first flap is the fight phase

He collaborated with the directors Jiří Strach, Jiří Vejdělek and the Polish director Agnieszka Hollandová. “That was also luck. We had a text on Charlatan and just tried to send it to her. The probability that she would respond was small, because she was currently filming in America. But in just 14 days, the answer came that she liked it and that she wanted to film it.”

Before filming, the director meets with the screenwriter and they discuss the text. “Before the first curtain, there is a phase of struggle, tug-of-war and haggling, when the director comes up with a new vision or his own way of directing it. He will mostly bring new ideas to it, which means changes in the text. And not all the changes have to be liked by the screenwriter. So before the shooting starts, there is such a friction between what the director will assert and what the screenwriter will defend.”

According to him, a good director can sense where the boundaries are when the text starts to spoil. And a good screenwriter will sense when a director brings good ideas and swallows his vanity. “I think an experienced person is willing to accept the other person’s good ideas.”

Together with Jiří Strach, they wrote the script for the film Angel of the Lord 2. “He approached me and I was very worried. But my children are to blame. When Mikuláš came to us with the devil, it was an impulse and I started to get ideas.”

How do you write a script in two? What does the author feel when his story suddenly comes to life? Did writing the screenplay for Brothers give him an answer to the question of whether the Machines are heroes or murderers? Why is the planned children’s book called Toothless? Listen to Alex and guest on the show.

Democrat Walz clearly had a harder time in the vice presidential debate broadcast by CBS. It was obvious from the beginning. Media coverage of the debate has been dominated by comments about how nervous the Minnesota governor appeared.

Video of CBS News vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz | Full Video

The very first question on the current escalation of violence in the Middle East showed this – and it is a lesson learned, according to which governors like Walz have a handicap in presidential elections in the form of minimal experience with foreign policy, which was immediately apparent in Walz’s case.

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Walz’s worst moment was a question about his visit to China in 1989, at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Walz has indicated in past interviews that he was in Hong Kong at the time, but it appears he was not actually there until several weeks later.

When the CBS presenters put it to him, he decided not to deny it and that he was “exaggerating” in the vernacular. This may be a smart tactic in the long run, but right in the debate, his response was flimsy to the point of being awkward.

In contrast, Vance, a Republican, is the type of politician who thrives on debate. That’s not to say he doesn’t have his media issues. However, if in the last two months he ironed out very sharp statements in interviews several times, he entered the debate much more conciliatory.

“Servant” concord

To some extent this was true for both. The leitmotif of the entire debate was the constant “gentlemanly” repetition of both Vance and Walz that they actually agree with each other, but that they are not sure if the same can be said about their fellow candidates Trump and Harris.

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Even Vance had a very weak moment in the debate, which American television stations will now surely remind him to hallelujah. It didn’t come until the very end, when Walz directly asked him if he accepted that Trump had lost the 2020 election.

Vance was unable to do so, and for all the gentlemanly goodwill that mostly reigned among the vice presidential candidates, he reminded the United States of the radical chaos that Trump’s Republican politics represent.

That was a smart move by Walz. Vance is many things, but he is certainly not a stupid person. He certainly realizes that it would be more politically tactful to acknowledge that Trump lost the last election and focus on the future. But Trump would never forgive him for that.

Matěj Schneider|photo: Tereza Kunderová, Czech Radio

Despite this, Vance came out of the debate as the more sovereign candidate. For Walz, it can only be a consolation that the debates of the vice presidential candidates usually do not change the electoral outlook.

Just so that it would be no different in a year when there probably won’t be another public debate between Trump and Harris, and when his co-candidate doesn’t even give many interviews.

The author works on the voxpot.cz server

He recently turned 40. “So I thought about myself and realized that I was ‘just’ an actor. I thought what else could I do, but I feel good this way,” he assures. How far do his ancestral genes go? Could he be a politician? How does it relate to firearms? What does he think is the problem with actors? What is his relationship to the countryside and Šumava? And what did he reveal about The Curious Case of the Dog?

“We actors play all our lives and we are nothing. At a certain stage in life it catches up with you and you feel like you should really be something. And you’re looking. So the desire to do something real probably originates there somewhere,” explains Štěpán Benoni about his childhood dream of joining the active reserves.

Art won. Maybe also because his dad is a cameraman. “Thanks to him, I understood that the camera is an integral part of acting. I say that three people make a role in a film: the actor, the director and the cameraman. This is the triumvirate from which the character will be created,” explains the actor, known from the TV series Cuckoos or, most recently, Ghost.

Night Connections is a brand new theater production in which he plays. “It’s a light comedy and a play about how we’re all a little crazy. For me, it is very original in the way it is written and conceived. I really like it, even if I shouldn’t say it,” smiles actor Štěpán Benoni in Close Encounters.

He has been a member of TV Party for several years, but he does not consider himself an entertainer. “I don’t take that label pejoratively, because making people laugh is one of the most difficult fields of acting.” Who taught him at DAMU? When and how did he get to the Theater in Vinohrady? Who coined the nickname “actor bonsai”? What did he reveal about the role of Ivan Jonák in the Nineties? Was filming Tobruk a turning point for him? And do his children have acting ambitions?

After leaving the Theater in Vinohrady, he received an invitation to the TV show Partička. “I’ve learned over the years not to disturb them. We listen to each other in the foursome and pass each other. The part is not for everyone, but improvisation is very liberating for actors. It is a priceless school and preparation even for classical drama.”

“Making sure people have fun is a lot of work. Sometimes it looks like something easy, but sometimes it’s not true,” laughs Michal Novotný.

“Many people do not believe that Partička is not prepared in advance. And she really isn’t! I’ve been doing it for seven years and I still enjoy it. I enjoy challenges,” concludes Michal Novotný at Radiocafé Vinohradská 12.

Almost every radio person has had a dream of being a presenter. Does Eliška Soukupová have them too? “Yes, sometimes I even tame the dragon in them. My biggest nightmare is that I come to the studio, not knowing that I have an interview and not being prepared for it. Or I come to the theater and have a performance, which I haven’t even read.“

It was only on the radio that I found out what I couldn’t do

On Radio Wave, she hosted the series After the Footsteps of Days. “It’s about dreams, sleep, human dreaming and, from a historical perspective, about collective dreaming. I conduct interviews with experts or people with interesting personalities.” Eliška Soukupová’s other program is the hotcast Pot. It is broadcast only after 10 p.m. “It’s about intimacy, sexuality and relationships.”

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Eliška Soukupová hosted for the first time at the age of 19. “I thought what a presenter I am. I can pronounce, breathe properly and I’m nice. Then I came to the Czech Radio’s elementary school program. I found out what I still have to learn, find out how research is done, how to prepare, write an article for the website, edit a show. I’m still learning.”

Too expressive and not enough subtle?

Eliška Soukupová graduated from the acting conservatory, but was not accepted at DAMU. And the reason? They say it is too expressive and not very subtle. “So we made our own file called Turkey Meat. We’ve had him for eight years.’

She shot Hello, Welcome at the International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary. “We had to do everything during the festival, because of us it would not be extended by three days. The film contains our experiences and fragments from Vary, when we were there with another film. We bet a lot on the festival atmosphere, and it paid off.”