U.S.-Danish-Russian Group to Begin Film on Moscow Coup

Jumbled barricades, tank crews showered with food, a wobbly junta and hordes of defiant Russians--the drama of this August’s Moscow coup attempt is already on its inevitable way to the big screen.

A feature film titled “Three Days,” focusing on a Moscow family caught up in the furor of the short-lived putsch, is scheduled to begin shooting in three weeks and be ready for international release this spring as an American-Danish-Russian co-production, its makers announced Monday.

Just Betzer, the Danish-born producer best known for his Academy Award-winning “Babette’s Feast,” told a news conference that he wanted the movie to “let the world know how courageously the Russian people acted and how powerfully they defended their parliament and their democracy.”

“Three Days” is meant to be about “people giving from the heart,” Betzer said. “The Russian people acted from what was in their heart.”

Betzer and his partners, the Soviet company Sokrat and Denmark’s Panorama Film International, have already won agreement from Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s adminstration to help with the film and secured Gen. Maj. Victor Samoylov, who helped organize the Russian government building’s defense during the attempted coup, as a technical consultant.

At Samoylov’s request, some of the men who helped guard the building have agreed to participate, along with thousands of Moscow extras, Betzer said. The film is tentatively budgeted at $14 million.

Betzer said he is also trying to persuade Yeltsin to play himself in the movie, but has yet to meet with the Russian president, who is vacationing on the Black Sea.

Racing against the onset of Russian winter, the makers of “Three Days” plan to quickly rebuild part of the barricades that protected the Russian headquarters and say they are also arranging the return of the tanks that were stationed so ominously outside the building.

Samoylov said he is not worried that Muscovites will be frightened when they see barricades being rebuilt and armor on the streets. “You journalists can help explain that it’s not a second coup,” he said.

The script, a joint creation by Danish and Soviet screenwriters, revolves around a handsome young Moscow man, son of a conservative army general, who falls in love with a Lithuanian woman and is then swept up in what Soviets now call “the August events.”

Casting formally begins today, but Betzer said that Oleg Vidov, the emigrant Soviet actor who appeared in “Red Heat” and “Wild Orchid,” has agreed to return to his homeland to play a part.

The trees in Moscow are already littering the streets, forcing Betzer to avoid panoramic shots of the Russian government building, known as the White House.

But “so long as we don’t have any snow, we’ll be OK,” he said. “The Russians have told me the first snow will fall Nov. 7. So we’re all in such a hurry. . . .”

There is another reason to hurry: to beat out other production companies also attracted to the natural drama of the people’s resistance to the August coup.