Srbija - nacionalna revija - broj 54 - engleski - niska rezolucija

up. We loved to celebrate forbidden holidays
with carbide in building lobbies, initiating
huge detonations, tie two neighboring
doors with a rope and then stick
toothpicks in both doorbells, run away
from school together when “Zvezda” was
the guest team and to wriggle through
the thin opening for selling tickets on
the northern stand... And we were always
unified and united, there were no
snitches, although gloomy Kosta, as an
older and more experienced man, always
claimed that the yield of spies in our land
was always high.
“Better than potato and beans together”,
he liked to say.
But we were united – until The Written
Off appeared. They shook our unity,
with a few broken noses. The stumbling
block was Prle. Tihi, whom we considered
our Bjelopavlić, was not. Finally,
and it has been so until this very day, my
best man Ratko became Prle, the best of
all of us, fighter against the kleptomaniac
privatization, who is still, in a Don Quixote
manner, persistently trying to defend
the remains not eaten by the Šojićs, as Dr.
Pavle P., the best internist in Nikšić, calls
the wasteland behind us.
The time of wonderful memories
is merged in one Man – Dragan Gaga
Nikolić. The story about Gaga Nikolić is
a story of a time, which is, with a few remaining
masters of life, slowly fading into
the amnesic-transformational category
called History.
IF I HADN’T ENROLLED
IN ACTING SCHOOL...
With his masterful roles, Gaga not
only became a pop icon of the time, as
the press keeps stating these days, but
much more than that. He was a rare phenomenon
in his field: a magnificent actor,
a modest and unimposing man, with
a complete absence of self-marketing and
narcissism (inseparable from his vocation),
a great gentleman with a big heart
and always open wallet, a refined bohemian,
an emotional knight easily touched
by the suffering of others, Zvezda fan, a
boy from Crveni Krst, Belgradian, Serb
and patriot. Gaga was an exemplar, one
that doesn’t exist anymore. He mostly
played the roles of urban, tough guys, heroes
of Belgrade streets, but, essentially, as
a man, he was completely different.
In his private life, he was nothing like
Prle, Jimmy Barka, Floyd, Popeye, Urke,
Steve... The unique feature of Gaga’s acting
transformation, as well as the mark
of his essential being, was the fact that
he managed to breathe soul into all those
marginal guys, to refine and enlighten
them by giving them a part of himself,
thus creating characters of righteous rebels
or proud rascals from the margins of
life. As a fighter, who was engaged in boxing
for a short time, he tasted the charms
of the streets, however without delinquency
periods, and took the best from
everyone. The street had its own rules at
the time – laws, principles, hierarchy...
stronger and more effective than many
contemporary institutions, today, unfortunately,
deformed by the unspoken, but
dominant side of transition.
“I was lucky to play in the movies everything
I’d been deprived of in life. I had
family and civil upbringing, but I felt the
scents of the street and early challenges. If
I hadn’t enrolled in acting school, I would
have gone to Paris and who knows what
would have happened with me. I played
the roles of urban types, desperadoes with
a soul, yet antiheroes, except perhaps Prle,
who could have been a bodyguard to some
politician ater the war...” – remembered
Gaga, making an analogy that every time
has its heroes:
“Even now I get goose bumps when I
remember Joca Jovanović’s film ‘Young,
Handsome as a Rose’, the first to speak
about the conjunction of the police with
criminals, when I, as a criminal, say at the
end of the movie: ‘I’m your future’.”
The character of this most charming
Belgradian is illustrated by his life motto,
written in the credits of the first movie
he played in – for new generations, for
the actual moment, probably absurd, only
confirming his strong personality and
postulates he had been brought up on:
“Even when I’m dead and gone, I’d still
like to be some kind of a light.”
Urban and modern, he was deeply
traditional, following the motto of his ancestors,
who lived for judgment day, not
to disgrace their predecessors and not to
dishonor their descendants, proven by
another one of his attitudes towards life:
SERBIA • N O 54 • 2016
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