"In the beginning there was the Word" is a frequently cited phrase. In Mladen’s case, however, the word was the beginning and the essence of a gentle, brilliant, scintillating, spiritual and fruit-bearing professional life during which he offered to his viewers, listeners and readers a bountiful of words that will resonate with them always and forever.
Presented together with his work is the blue-eyed, light-haired boy from the Djuro Salaj Primary School, then the once Eighth Grammar School of Belgrade and then the Drama Arts Academy – present-day School of Drama Arts – casting his soft smile, lavishing his wittiness upon us, and sharing the story of the joy of life, work and immeasurable love that he bestowed upon his nearest and dearest and everyone who did and did not know him personally.
Put before the public here is what Mladen has left behind – theatre plays, song lyrics and newspaper columns.
This website is dedicated to the memory of humorous remarks and erudition that many benefited from growing up; they helped many to learn what was so beautiful about the New Year’s concert of the Vienna Philharmonic, who was who in the Eurovision Song Contest, where everybody stood concerning the Oscars and, to the older generation, where the borders of the Games without Borders lay and who topped the charts on the Hit of the Month back in the eighties.
These marked the times which are generally remembered as better, happier and less troubled, while the grim reality is making us conscious of an ever declining number of people who boast unpretentious charm that disguises extensive knowledge, professional skills and inexhaustible ideas that were so characteristic of Mladen.
A remarkable gentleman engrossed in the music of words, elegant, witty and hedonistic, a world traveller and polyglot, the man with an attitude, and the Drama Arts Academy graduate at the age of only 22. In the time following the opening of his graduation play Summer on the Sunny Terrace, he became known as a script writer and author of more than three hundred radio and TV programmes, writer of lyrics for pop and rock songs, and author of a number of plays, the best-known being Nijinsky, The Beetle and Dandelion and the Retard.
Mladen’s weapon and tool of choice throughout his life was the word -- always appropriate and always spoken for a reason. It was precisely the word that, following a brief statement to the opposition press in 1997, cost him the editorial position at the Serbian Broadcasting Corporation Film Programs, after twenty years of service. Fortunately, that was not when Mladen’s creative life came to an end. Afterwards, he worked for Saatchi & Saatchi, for Pink TV channel as the film programs editor, and the last few years as a freelance artist.
Being a proven connoisseur of cinema, Mladen hosted press conferences at the FEST film festival; relying on his discriminating criteria and experience, he made on mistake forecasting the Oscar winners and rarely would he fail predicting who of the promising actors and actresses or theatre directors had prospects of a notable and long-lasting career.
Before you is the story of Mladen to browse through and make use of it at you leisure, appreciating all the while what he has left behind to benefit all of us.