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Cowboy Swagger: Mortensen's roots made him comfortable in western
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Published: October 5, 2008
TORONTO - The surprising thing about Viggo Mortensen is how talkative the guy is. Seriously: The smolderingly still actor of Eastern Promises, A History of Violence, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy turns out to be a regular Chatty Cathy in person.
He's at the Toronto International Film Festival promoting not one but two movies, the big-budget Appaloosa and the small WWII-era drama Good. In addition, the much-awaited movie version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road will also open this fall.
The interview takes place in a Toronto hotel suite and the subject is Appaloosa, a western with both classic and revisionist elements that is directed by and stars Ed Harris as Virgil Cole, one of two bounty hunters hired to clean up a frontier town. Renee Zellweger and Jeremy Irons also star, and Mortensen plays Cole's partner, the slightly more articulate Everett Hitch.
Mortensen has the attitude of a surfer, the eyes of a killer, and the brain of a slacker bookworm. Blithely ignoring the hotel's no-smoking policy (as well as everything else -- he's a celebrity and he knows it), Mortensen discourses on westerns old, westerns new, and the glories of having absolutely nothing on his plate.
Q. I understand you spent time ranching when you were growing up?
A. I was raised in Argentina and I learned to ride when I was little; I always liked horses. If you end up riding, it's probably because some part of you is comfortable doing it, and I am. It makes it fun to be in a western -- although I wouldn't do a western just to ride, because most westerns aren't very well made, I think.
Q. Why's that?
A. They're not well acted, they're not well written, they're not that well directed. Most of them are horrible. When they first started making movies, they made hundreds of westerns -- thousands. That was the big genre. Now it's not. Now it's the minority genre, but every once in a while, a really nice one gets made.
Q. Did you have an affinity for westerns when you were growing up?
A. I liked 'em. Being raised in Argentina, once in a while I'd see a gaucho western, but it had the same ideas: loyalty, self-sacrifice, self-sufficiency, revenge, discretion, a certain way of speaking. Appaloosa was so well-crafted in the work that Robert Knott and Ed Harris did in researching and getting the language right. All the characters, even if they're being direct and even if the circumstances are primitive sometimes, speak in a language with a formality and a politeness -- a sort of a Victorian nicety that we no longer use.
Q. Did you build Everett up by looking toward classic western movies roles, or western history, or just by thinking about the character?
A. I was really looking at history. Photographs, in particular, and Remington drawings. For example, the way of shooting: There's an etching by Remington of a guy in the street that's in that same position I'm in at the end there. I guess from movies, too, probably subconsciously.
Q. Do you feel comfortable in these roles?
A. I like it. And I think Ed's made for it. He's not known for it but I think people are going to look at him differently now. Not too many people who are alive now -- Eastwood, Duvall maybe -- can do so much with such economy.... But that exchange between Jeremy and Ed in the bar is just great to watch, and Ed's side of it ... was just great to watch. His behavior, and the sly humor, and everything being so subtle.
Q. Do you have any desire to direct?
A. I might. I see that when you do it right ... it takes a lot of time and energy, and you can't really do other things. There's a story I like that I have the rights to that I might adapt and do. Trying to take part in my own life a little bit more (laughs). So I'm saying no to everything right now, even though I suppose my agent will go crazy.
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