Pops is Elena Nikolaeva’s most recent feature film, following SexStory (SekSkazka, 1991), a perestroika film based on Vladimir Nabokov’s “Story” (“Skazka”), and The Aborigine (Aborigen, 1988), not to mention her documentary films. In her interview with Kinotime, Nikolaeva explains that Iurii Korotkov, the talented scriptwriter who had written the script for her first film, wrote the screenplay for Pops for a different director and a different production company six years before Nikolaeva’s film came out. The leading role had been scripted for the Russian pop-star Alla Pugacheva as the protagonist Larissa Ivanovna, but the pop-star declined the offer and the director never made the film. Nikolaeva liked the script and decided to make a film about the price people pay for success in the tough world of show business.[...]
Natal'ia Rulyova, kinokultura.com
