Voja Brajovic on Vuisic: Paja Was a Brilliant Intellectual
At the Sombor Film Festival, after receiving the “Ernest” award, Voja Brajovic dismissed the story that Pavle Vuisic was pulled from a bar and revealed how little the “Written Off” cast earned.
Voja Brajovic, moments after being presented the “Ernest” award for his contribution to film art at the Sombor Film Festival, dismissed a claim that has followed Pavle Vuisic for decades. The conversation was hosted by Radio Television of Vojvodina journalist and director Goran Vukcevic, as part of the program “Espresso at 11”.
The actor said the image of Vuisic as a man who was pulled out of a bar has nothing to do with what he actually saw on set. Paja, he said, was a studious actor and a brilliant intellectual, above all because he thought for himself.
Where does the bar story even come from?
Brajovic does not see that label as an isolated case. He put it in the same category as what used to be said about Cica Perovic.
“Unfortunately, we’re often ashamed of our own values. About Cica Perovic they used to say: ‘He was like that because he had a brain tumor,’ and about Paja Vuisic: ‘He’s an alcoholic, they pulled him out of a bar.’ That’s nonsense. We’re ashamed of our own greats, we look for their flaws, and we invent them.”
He also said Vuisic was hard to approach, but that he genuinely enjoyed working with younger colleagues and that the cast joked around on set every single day.
Fifteen takes over one detail
As proof of how exacting Vuisic could be, Brajovic recounted a scene from “The Hat of Professor Kosta Vujic.” In it, he plays the violin while Caci Mihailovic sings. Vuisic made them redo the scene 15 and 16 times.
He was not dissatisfied with their performance. What bothered him was how he heard them in the shot.
Behind that strictness, according to Brajovic, was a reason that had nothing to do with an actor’s vanity. Vuisic told him at the time:
“You know, my wife and I don’t have children, our house is gone. But there are children out there who love me now, who love what I do. I don’t want them to be disappointed when they grow up.”
That, Brajovic added, is a serious degree of responsibility.
How much did the cast actually earn from “The Written Off”?
Less than audiences still assume today. The series turned Brajovic into a star across the former Yugoslavia. Thousands of letters arrived, he never answered a single one, and he kept only one. There was no money in it.
“Gaga and I spent every dinar we had over those two, three years,” Brajovic said.
He also pushed back on a version of events sometimes repeated, that the cast had nothing to eat. That was not true. The problem lay elsewhere.
“Producers often looked for ways to shortchange you, to withhold what you were owed,” the actor said.
He also revealed how the series almost ended very differently. It was originally conceived so that every character would die, one by one. Producers realized audiences would not accept that and let them survive instead, which is how “The Return of the Written Off” came about.
Bricks and stones underfoot
The sequel comes with an anecdote about Bata Zivojinovic. Brajovic says critics and analysts never quite understood what Bata was playing in “The Return of the Written Off,” a lone rebel, a man fighting his own private war.
The line that role is remembered for was not even in the script. Zivojinovic added it himself, on the spot.
“I remember the scene where he was supposed to tell me: ‘Listen here, you powdered…’ That wasn’t in the script. I knew that line would stay tied to me forever. So while we were setting up the shot, I slipped bricks and stones under my feet to be taller than him. He’s about ten centimeters taller than me, but when he said ‘Listen here, you powdered,’ I was looking down at him.”
The lesson from Milivoje Zivanovic
Brajovic also talked about how he guarded himself against fame that came too early. He was a young member of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre when Milivoje Zivanovic walked into the room. Everyone stood up. Zivanovic asked who the young man was; he was told it was their young colleague, Voja Brajovic. He replied: “Never heard of him.”
That, Brajovic says, was the best schooling he ever received, and he has carried it with him for the rest of his career.
Asked which single lesson he would single out from all those years, the actor said you should never assume you are something just because you’re popular, and that an actor has to be an artist above all. Popularity fades, jobs come and go, awards come. What remains is what the person managed to do as an artist.
