Jiří Popel

* 1955

  • “There were Czech policemen there, the slightly post-revolutionary kind. They still wore those green uniforms with red epaulletes. Normal cops, right. They made a cordon through the closed off part where there weren’t any people any way, and the band was supposed to go through there. That they’d protect them, like. I went with Soundgarden through the cordon of policemen. There was one there, a tubby sort, sweaty armpits in that green coat-shirt. He turned to his mate, and because he thought I was an American like the rest of the band and that I wouldn’t understand him, he said: ‘Shit man, this is effed up. A few years ago we’d be giving these machos a mashing, and now we’re protecting them.’”

  • “People advised me: ‘Look, that ambassador, he’s a kind of cowboy from Texas. Don’t speak with him about human rights or freedom of speech. He doesn’t care about that. Tell him you want to go to America so you can buy an enormous colour TV and a Cadillac with tail fins. And listen to Kenny Rogers and Johnny Cash. And he’ll go: Right!! and sign it for you straight up.’ And so he did.”

  • “I was kicked out of school in my sixth year. I had brought my father’s Scout fleur-de-lis to show my classmates. The chairman of the Pioneer troop council confiscated it, saying it was a forbidden item and how could I dare bring it. So I put out my hand like us for him to give it back. Except he stabbed it with a fountain pen against the desk. I looked at my up-turned hand, saw the blood mixing with the ink, and I got really angry. I jumped up, grabbed a chair, and gave him a proper beating with it. And then I was expelled from school.”

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America was the kind of place where you fulfilled your dreams. But I don’t regret coming back

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zdroj: archiv Jiřího Popela

Jiří Popel was born on 16 January 1955 in Prague as the third child of the literary historian and philologist Miloš Popel. He grew up in the Small Side of Prague. His family was constantly persecuted by the Communist regime. It began with the „nationalisation“ of his grandfather‘s law firm and culminated in Jiří‘s signing of Charter 77 and emigration to the US in 1979. He spent a happy and successful fifteen years in California. He worked his way up to the post of director of a laboratory that made film make-up and props, and he enjoyed America to the full. After the fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia, he returned home in 1993. He started a family here. He translates books from English and plays in a big beat band called Píča („Cunt“).