Vlad Yudin Interview
By: Matt Anaya |
Wednesday September 16, 2009 |
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Writer/Producer/Director of Big Pun: The Legacy |
| Vlad Yudin came to America as a Russian import right before his teenage years and knew right away he wanted to make films. While in high school he met kids with similar interests and together they came up with as many ideas and wrote as many scripts as they could. Yudin was already making independent films as a teen and went to college to study film in NYC to sharpen his skills. Yudin, 26, started writing, directing and producing documentaries and films while in college. Since he had been doing that since his adolescent years and after college getting into the film business was easy for Yudin. He had already worked with a number of his fellow colleagues and together they started the Vladar Company. I got to talk with the up and coming writer/producer/director about his latest documentary Big Pun: The Legacy and what the doc means to him and why Pun’s story needed to be told. Tell me how you got started in film. VY: Pretty much after school I got started with the company and with my colleagues we developed a production company and got started with documentary films. We developed a production company with a couple of partners and focused on documentary films and then we also expanded into feature films. So now I do both feature and documentary. So we’re working further and trying to expand. Tell me about your background. I was born in Russia and I came to New York when I was 12. I was back and forth between Russia and New York when I was younger. I grew up in Moscow so I was influenced by both Russia and US at the same time. When did you realize you wanted to get into film? I always liked films. When I was like 15 or 16 I thought that I definitely wanted to be in film. I started writing different scripts and had various ideas coming up and once when I was in school I met people that were also interested in film and had similar aspirations. I decided then that this was something I wanted to do full time and basically we started doing this independently, doing films on our own, and that’s how the production company came into the business. We started out on our own stuff and now we work with other production companies. Why did you come to America? There is a much better way of life in America and at the time I was 13 and there were a lot of different things going over there (Russia). It wasn’t stable and New York and Jersey were much more stable to go to school and grow up much more safer. I definitely came here to pursue a much more stable life and film came along with it. Did you grow up in NYC? A little New York but mainly New Jersey, that is where I went to high school. Is this your biggest project ever? Yes, this film right here is probably up to now the biggest one and we just finished a film called “The Last Day of Summer” which is a feature film. It will be coming out later, like early 2010. Are you excited about the publicity you are receiving for Big Pun: The Legacy? I am very excited on many different levels. I worked closely with Liza Rios, his widow, and I am happy to see that she is getting publicity as well and that one of the motivations to make the film was, we as a production company felt like he was not getting enough publicity in the media but he had a strong following. It feels great now that after almost ten years after he passed away it is great to see him back in the spotlight and getting respect. It feels great for him and Liza. You were a big fan of Big Pun back in the day? Yes, definitely. The decision was unanimous to make the film because we (the production company) were all fans of him. Can you pinpoint your main influence on making films? I cannot pinpoint one director or one film but there are a bunch of ideas that inspire me. There is not one focus for me, a bunch of things inspire me. Which do you prefer, documentaries or feature films? It really does not matter; I like to see a good film. It does not matter if it is a good documentary or a feature film. There are a lot of documentary films out there that you watch and it grabs you and you don’t notice you are watching a documentary. I watched the trailer to “Big Pun: The Legacy” and noticed it looks like a blend of a feature film and a documentary is that what you were going for? When we are making a film we definitely want to put a lot of production value to it and make it as close to a feature as possible and I think we achieved that. There have been a few other hip-hop films that have come close to that and we tried to compete on their level. Like maybe Tupac: Resurrection? Exactly. I was just thinking about that. Where did you get all the footage of Big Pun? That was the hardest part. We got films from archives of like networks but unfortunately it is hard to get that footage. So we had to get stuff from random people with old footage. Cell phone stuff, local cable shows, friends of his. We meet someone through another person and it turns out he has a whole tape of a camcorder in his basement of Big Pun. So we went through those sources and luckily got some footage nobody else had, some real exclusive stuff. Why does Big Pun’s story need to be told? That’s the question everyone wants to know. Why do it now? Why tell his story? I think Pun is a figure in music, whether you like him or not, he definitely accomplished something. His story was never told on that level and like I said after his death he was never given a proper representation of his life. That’s why it is called Big Pun: The Legacy. That is why he was important, he influenced everybody that gave an interview to and they have something to say. He deserves this film and his story needs to be told. Whose idea was it (to make the documentary)? It was collective, all the guys in our production company, Edwin Majia who was a producer of the film. Me and him started developing the film and then we worked with Liza Rios and she came on board and we developed the idea. Liza is a consultant of the film and it was a collaboration. Do you go over his whole life? We definitely go into detail of him becoming an artist. Going from a regular person to a major artist and accepting the alter ego of Big Punisher. But we definitely talk about him as a person from him growing up to him struggling with a lot of personal issues in his life. And then all the career accomplishments and ultimately his death and the legacy. He went platinum when he was 26 years old and then two years later he passed away. He only put out one album because the second one came out after his death. He put out one album and people still put him as a top artist in the industry. That tells you how much he accomplished in only two years. Do you worry about reviews? I’m pretty confident actually. You are going to have different opinions but so far everybody who saw it liked it a lot. Did you have a favorite interview? I don’t think I had one favorite interview but it was a combination, because in the film we have so many different people. Tell me about the future of Vlad Yudin. I did a film with Nicki Reed, DJ Qualls, and William Sadler it is called Last Day of Summer and that should be coming out first quarter of 2010. And then we have a few other films in production right now. I want to expand the company and make more films, that’s the goal, keep progressing. It is a very exciting time for the film, I am definitely looking forward to the release. It comes out the 15th (of September), next week. The majority of the film is already on demand, so people should check their local listings. People can order the DVD before the actual release date. |
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