Eastern Promises in France
Very good David and Viggo interview-
"Without Viggo I would not have made this film"
Les Inrockuptibles magazine
©Les Inrockuptibles
With Eastern Promises, a film about London gangsters, David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen continue their fascinating collaboration started with A History of Violence. A joyful interaction between two accomplices, who like nothing more than teasing each other in public.
By Serge Kaganski and Julian Gester. Photo Geoffrey de Boismenu
Certainly David Cronenberg has already worked with great actors (James Woods, Christopher Walken, Jeremy Irons…) and Viggo Mortensen had filmed with good film makers (Sean Penn, Gus Van Sant…) But exuding from their two films together is a sense of ideal alchemy, as if the sculptured physique and the Sphinx like face of the actor were made for the dry and morally complex thrillers of the Canadian film maker.
Their complicity seems to extend in real life, the couple scattered our conversation with a classic number of duets where Cronenberg plays the one who tease and Mortensen the punch-bag, impassive, thus reproducing a humorous manner that you imagine to be the usual rapport between a director (artist in charge) and his actors (clay to mold in the hands of the former). Between two ironic digs, in spite of everything the two come to describe their working relationship, the process of research on the Russian culture which provides the base of the new film, like the filming of one major fight- recreating an essential illustration in action cinema that will stay in our memories. It all starts with a film review published in the Los Angeles Times.
DC - I just read a positive but very irritating film review.
VM - Often critics don’t know what to think of a film.
Did this critic have something against the violence in the film?
DC: No, it was on the subject of Viggo!
VM - I didn’t read this one, but often, even when a critic is lukewarm, starts by saying “I’m not certain that the film is very good”, then gives the list of everything that is good in the film! But what did this LA Times critic say David? That I was a casting mistake?
DC - Nah….I’m not going to tell you. Read it!
VM - Come on!
DC - It says that in the film you give the impression of being robotic. That you aren’t a character but a robot….
VM - Ah,Ah,ah! She probably hasn’t seen the film
DC - Technically she is has a point. But her commentary on your is very exasperating.
One senses a strong alchemy between you two in your two films, like each of you has found the ideal cinematic partner
DC - In fact you can already notice at which point we function in unison
VM - David uses powerful and subtle psychological tools with actors. He puts in place a very soothing atmosphere, coffee and little cakes on the plate, but, in the filming for example, he played audio recordings, Stalin’s speeches without stopping, and notably one phrase in a loop, and in Russian. I ended up understanding what its significance was “ I have confidence in nobody, not even myself”. And this phrase played over and over and over.
DC - And he had good reason not to have confidence in himself!
How did you two meet? Did you know each other’s work?
VM - Ah if I had known!
DC- The first time was several years ago at the Cannes Film Festival, in a castle decorated in the Lord of the Rings style, for the celebration of that film. It was there that I met Viggo, who had hair down to his shoulders and said to me: “I love your films” He doesn’t even remember it! Liv Tyler was with us, very nice, but you were rather cold and distant. I’d seen films with Viggo in, I thought he was an interesting supporting actor. Certainly not a leading actor!
Had you seen The Indian Runner by Sean Penn?
DC - No, but I knew Viggo’s reputation in this film was good. I’ve only seen Viggo’s bad films! Next, when I was starting to work on AHOV we met again in Los Angeles, at the restaurant in the Four Seasons. Viggo arrived, in a bad mood, and he remembers none of it. I believe he wondered about the political content of the story. He was very concerned with the orientation of the political message of the film. I thought he would never make a film dealing with violence, because he is too politically correct. Viggo, I was really very uncertain of your desire to enter into this project, you sent me very cold signals.
VM - You didn’t have to travel all the way from Canada
DC - That’s true, especially just to meet you. In brief, in spite of that we had a lot of discussions and when we parted I still didn’t know if he was going to do the film or not. Then he phoned me talked to me about the film and his character. He called me again the next day then the day after…At one stage I said to him “Viggo, are you doing this film or not?” he replied “Oh yeah, definitely!” He had never clearly told me yes or no, nor at which moment he made his mind up.
David, do you choose your actors strictly according to artistic criteria or also as a result of the personal relationship develop with them?
DC - I chose Viggo because he was the only one I could get. And because he wasn’t expensive: In the end he told me “ I will do everything you say.” That’s the type of actor that pleases me! Obedience to orders and don't hassle me. There you have the foundation of our relationship.
VM - I knew David was a cinematic artist, that he seemed very intelligent. I wondered personally whether he would be pleasant or strange. He is both. He is pleasantly strange or strangely pleasant! We are friends from now on. We are on the same wavelength, we can cut through a lot of work without the need for lots of talking. We don’t need to waste our time in interminable analysis. For an actor, a conceptual conversation is not the ideal: an actor doesn’t play ideas, but concrete things, gestures, situations. It’s similar for the making of a film. There can be conceptual preparatory work but when you are filming on the set, there is nothing but the tangible.
Viggo were you really worried about the political content of HoV?
VM - Not exactly. When I read the first version of the script, I feared it would serve as an exploitation movie (low level commercial B movie) of violence for violence sake, violence just to win money from the wrong element of the public. And that doesn’t interest me. I suppose you neither David. This type of cynical cinema without thought doesn’t interest you. But all my questioning of the script, David had already thought of. So that stuck immediately between us.
DC - I wasn’t sure of anything with you. You left me in suspense. That was no doubt a strategy on your part. Is it also a strategy that works with women?
VM - Sometimes. Always with the wrong type of women!
Viggo, did David surprise you?
VM - Yes, especially on AHOV, because with EP I knew him better. But the biggest surprise was to discover how it is pleasant, fun, to film with him. Even the difficult scenes are funny to play; with lots of jokes on set, a very relaxed atmosphere. He is very skilled at creating a work atmosphere in which each member of the team goes all out in service of the film and the story. Even if David is the decision maker everyone, actors, technicians is united in service of the story. And on David’s set there are lots of laughs, enthusiasm, even if the screenplays we are filming are tough.
DC - I'm often asked what makes my style, how I place my signature. But I never think of that during filming. I only think of those questions at the end: how to make that scene alive? How to make the shot interesting or exciting? That’s all. I don’t worry about anything else.
However you are perfectly aware of your status in cerebral, highly conceptual cinema?
DC - That reputation is worth nothing in Hollywood! If you go to see a studio with the concept of Crash “car accidents and sex” do you think for a second that these guys want to finance your film? I directed the film, but not with the studios. High concept in Hollywood is an easy to understand film with movie stars and a huge commercial potential. None of my films meet those criteria.
With the last two films have you not found a balance between your personal obsessions and the classic codes of the gangster film?
DC - If you had read that review in the LA Times you wouldn’t say that! You would think that! You would think that EP is a bad anti feminist and reactionary film, because Naomi Watts exchanges her motorbike for baby. The peoples who liked my previous films could tell you that the last two are two mainsteam. You never win if you start to concern yourself with modernism and classicism. Like I said. I try to make the best film possible each time and for EP it seems to me that everyone worked to a higher level of quality. A film, you work on it, you spend two years of your life on it,you have your nose to the grindstone: that’s the reality of a directors work.
There are a lot of layers in EP what was your directorial idea at the start of the project?
DC- I thought that the film would be a good way to thrill the girls.
VM - I believe that for us two….
DC - I forbid you to speak on my behalf
VM - Ok I’ll speak for myself. What made me passionate is that entire underworld culture that Russian world that infiltrates the western towns, in this case London. We have read a lot on the subject of Russia, Russian history, the Russian mafia, the Russian culture, the literature, the poetry, and the more I read, the more I discovered that my understanding was superficial. What’s more, as we went along with the preparation of the film, then the filming, the real subject of Russia didn’t stop, with the business of poisoning opponents, the stories of refugees in London, all this added new layers to the film. Even if the news was not directly relevant to our story they thickened the context.
DC - In North America we always have a tendency to think about Russians by comparing them to a Soviet reference. We forget that the Russian culture is a thousand years old. That unusual, intense culture existed long before the era of communism. What has emerged today in Russia that is the ancestral Russia combined with the brutal discovery of capitalism in its most primitive form. You therefore have a raw capitalism which has mixed with the characteristics of the Russian culture, its melancholy, its fatalism, its dark part and its religion.
EP, could this be a mafia film crossed with Dostoievski?
Absolutely. Dostoievski wrote about criminals. After the Soviet period he signaled his big come-back. Crime is cinematically interesting because criminals live in a constant state of transgression, beyond the law, beyond ethics, beyond morals. “Normal” people are at the same time frightened and fascinated by that. There is something seductive about the idea of breaking the law, that’s to say that you can one day decide to no longer obey the law, the rules, or the manners of society in which you live. The subversion can make you frightened but it is sexy, attracting.
The code of the tattoos of the Russian mafia go to your recurring pre-occupation around the human body
DC - but all film makers are interested in the human body. When you film actors, you film the human body.
But you have filmed the human body in a more intense and problematic way than most film makers
DC - yes I’m conscious of that. My feeling is that to be a human is above all to be a body. I am concerned with guarding that idea at the heart of my films. My cinema is not abstract, not conceptual it is on the contrary very carnal. From this physical characteristic can burst abstract thoughts, but my cinema is above all, physical. The tattoos are a way of writing on the body, to communicate with the body. That interests me.
VM - One of the tattoos that I wear in the film says that it is important to stay human. I found that was a good motto to connect with my character and the story. Evidently for the Russian mafia that motto signified another thing: stay human, it is to be a man, respect no law, no social rule, nobody apart from himself. For me, my character or Naomi Watts' character, could indicate on the contrary that whatever the brutality of the circumstances may be, it is important to act fairly to show compassion. In life nobody is obliged to make good gestures without ulterior motive, but certain people sometimes surprise, and do it. I think that the subject of the film is above all the capacity to remain human in the worst circumstances, rather than the body or violence.
David what are the qualities particular to Viggo?
VM - I am a malleable slave
DC - Obviously. I have worked with lots of great actors. Viggo is certainly at the top of that list. But as good an actor as he is, I chose him according to a role and a film. If I felt that he wasn’t the right person, I wouldn’t have chosen him. We are friends, but I wouldn’t have been doing him a favour in making a casting error. An actor, even talented, can’t play everything. Reading the script I could easily see Viggo in the role of Nikolai. If he had refused I am not sure that I would have made the film. We knew each other and we had developed a tight relationship in friendship as in work and that allowed us to get quickly into the point of the subject. Viggo is an actor in the pure sense of the term. A star worries about his image, and can easily say “I can’t play this role because I don’t want to be seen as a criminal, or as a gay, I don’t want to have such and such an image which doesn’t make me look good”. Actors who react like this are more celebrities than actors. And I prefer to work with actors, because they don’t hesitate to play everything, the good, the villains, and everything in-between those two notions.
Talk to us about the big fight scene in the bathhouse. It’s not often you see a famous actor totally naked in a long punch up scene.
Viggo was drunk one night and I brought the cameras and I filmed. It was just a normal night for him. Every night he went to the bathhouse to beat himself up with Chechens! You don’t believe me? Well, that scene was very simply written in the screenplay. Nikolai is in the bathhouse, two guys arrive with knives to kill him, but it is him who kills them. It was in the filming that we worked out the details of the sequence. For example we had decided on knives - bent for cutting carpet, cheap, and you can find them anywhere. If the gangsters were stopped n the street they could say “hey we are carpet layers” We constructed the bathhouse in artificial décor, basing it on a real one. Then the choreographers and the stunt men worked with Viggo and the two other actors. It all came together gradually. The preparation for the sequence was quite long but the filming only took two days.
VM - There are two rooms, lots of angles, it’s a very ambitious sequence in terms of choreography and geometry. But the filming was quick. I think that with a different director it would have been much longer. I wasn’t distressed about filming nude because this sequence is fundamental to the story. We first of all filmed in long shots so as not to disrupt the movement. Then the second day we filmed the scenes more fragmented and short, we polished up the details.
DC - Viggo was covered in bruises after that sequence. But he likes that!
Viggo Mortensen My Life with the Obsessional
Première Magazine November 2007
© Hachette Filipacchi Media
How did EP come about?
VM - DC and I thought about the possibility of working together again after AHOV. There was even the suggestion of a comedy, but David first of all had to digest the success of the film and also had to sort out all of the proposals he received. Then came the terrific script by Steven Knight.
Cronenberg doesn't though have the idea of a diptych or even a trilogy on violence?
VM - I don't think so. David just liked the script. Like me he was interested in the sub-culture.
How did you learn the role of Nikolai?
VM - When David asked me to do it, I hesitated because I was afraid of not having enough time to prepare myself. I knew that it could be necessary for me to do a lot of research on the subject, the accent of my character in particular. I finally suceeded in finding Russians located in the US who had known the gulag and who taught me precious information. I also spent two weeks in Russia to imprint myself with the culture and language.
Your character, was it well written?
VM - For this type of role, a good number of factors remain abstract. The humour, the way Nikolai thinks, for example. I didn't determine these until after having dicussed in with former villains.
How does Cronenberg direct his actors?
VM - Most of the time we don't speak. He intervenes if necessary but it isn't at all directorial. David has confidence in himself, in his movies and in the people he choses.
Your collaboration in life, has it been an asset or a handicap in filming?
VM - It helps the work a lot. I don't have to question him endlessly and he doesn't have to correct me. All my attention can be paid to the scenes and the other actors. Our common goal is to tell the story the best way possible.
The direction is very precise, very choreographed. Do you enjoy acting in those conditions?
VM - It's strange....from the outside Cronenberg's films appear rigid, even mechanical. But I'm going to surprise you. David doesn't story-board. He arrives on set, rehearses the scene with the actors and only after that decides how to place the camera. That's not the type of director who shelters behind a technique that he has mastered perfectly. He lets life come. Each one of his films is better than the previous because he doesn't confine himself to one formula.
Talk to us about that stupefying sequence during which you fight totally nude against two killers. What did you think in reading that?
VM - It wasn't very detailed, it was like "Nikolai is in a bathouse when suddenly two killers armed to the teeth appear". At the time of creating the sequence with David it seemed obvious to us, that to be realistic my charater must be naked since he struggles violently in self defence, he couldn't hang onto his towel! I said to David that he was free to film me however he liked. I doubted that there would be any voyeurism on his part. It's a good scene but there are plenty of others. I'm quite surprised by its impact. Male nudity always has that effect doesn't it?
Don't you think that AHOV and EP speak more about family than about violence?
VM - Certainly. Of compassion too. The characters are very complex. They all have a code of honour, an ethic. The brutality is more mental and emotional than physical. The violent moments stay with you because they are shown in a direct manner. David doesn't film violence like a ballet to give a sense of security to the audience. He implicates you.
It seems you frightened a couple of Russians in a bar, with your tattoos.
VM - that was at the start of the shoot, in the middle of London where a large Russian community lives. When this couple saw my hands - the tattoos stayed on several days if I paid attention when washing myself - they abruptly stopped talking and appeared worried. I must say that I was listening to get their accent! I could have told them I was just an actor but I felt so embarrassed that I just left. They must have thought that I was going to give my report....
Thanks to Viggo Works - dom for the scans and kaijamin for the translations!
"Without Viggo I would not have made this film"
Les Inrockuptibles magazine
©Les Inrockuptibles
With Eastern Promises, a film about London gangsters, David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen continue their fascinating collaboration started with A History of Violence. A joyful interaction between two accomplices, who like nothing more than teasing each other in public.
By Serge Kaganski and Julian Gester. Photo Geoffrey de Boismenu
Certainly David Cronenberg has already worked with great actors (James Woods, Christopher Walken, Jeremy Irons…) and Viggo Mortensen had filmed with good film makers (Sean Penn, Gus Van Sant…) But exuding from their two films together is a sense of ideal alchemy, as if the sculptured physique and the Sphinx like face of the actor were made for the dry and morally complex thrillers of the Canadian film maker.
Their complicity seems to extend in real life, the couple scattered our conversation with a classic number of duets where Cronenberg plays the one who tease and Mortensen the punch-bag, impassive, thus reproducing a humorous manner that you imagine to be the usual rapport between a director (artist in charge) and his actors (clay to mold in the hands of the former). Between two ironic digs, in spite of everything the two come to describe their working relationship, the process of research on the Russian culture which provides the base of the new film, like the filming of one major fight- recreating an essential illustration in action cinema that will stay in our memories. It all starts with a film review published in the Los Angeles Times.
DC - I just read a positive but very irritating film review.
VM - Often critics don’t know what to think of a film.
Did this critic have something against the violence in the film?
DC: No, it was on the subject of Viggo!
VM - I didn’t read this one, but often, even when a critic is lukewarm, starts by saying “I’m not certain that the film is very good”, then gives the list of everything that is good in the film! But what did this LA Times critic say David? That I was a casting mistake?
DC - Nah….I’m not going to tell you. Read it!
VM - Come on!
DC - It says that in the film you give the impression of being robotic. That you aren’t a character but a robot….
VM - Ah,Ah,ah! She probably hasn’t seen the film
DC - Technically she is has a point. But her commentary on your is very exasperating.
One senses a strong alchemy between you two in your two films, like each of you has found the ideal cinematic partner
DC - In fact you can already notice at which point we function in unison
VM - David uses powerful and subtle psychological tools with actors. He puts in place a very soothing atmosphere, coffee and little cakes on the plate, but, in the filming for example, he played audio recordings, Stalin’s speeches without stopping, and notably one phrase in a loop, and in Russian. I ended up understanding what its significance was “ I have confidence in nobody, not even myself”. And this phrase played over and over and over.
DC - And he had good reason not to have confidence in himself!
How did you two meet? Did you know each other’s work?
VM - Ah if I had known!
DC- The first time was several years ago at the Cannes Film Festival, in a castle decorated in the Lord of the Rings style, for the celebration of that film. It was there that I met Viggo, who had hair down to his shoulders and said to me: “I love your films” He doesn’t even remember it! Liv Tyler was with us, very nice, but you were rather cold and distant. I’d seen films with Viggo in, I thought he was an interesting supporting actor. Certainly not a leading actor!
Had you seen The Indian Runner by Sean Penn?
DC - No, but I knew Viggo’s reputation in this film was good. I’ve only seen Viggo’s bad films! Next, when I was starting to work on AHOV we met again in Los Angeles, at the restaurant in the Four Seasons. Viggo arrived, in a bad mood, and he remembers none of it. I believe he wondered about the political content of the story. He was very concerned with the orientation of the political message of the film. I thought he would never make a film dealing with violence, because he is too politically correct. Viggo, I was really very uncertain of your desire to enter into this project, you sent me very cold signals.
VM - You didn’t have to travel all the way from Canada
DC - That’s true, especially just to meet you. In brief, in spite of that we had a lot of discussions and when we parted I still didn’t know if he was going to do the film or not. Then he phoned me talked to me about the film and his character. He called me again the next day then the day after…At one stage I said to him “Viggo, are you doing this film or not?” he replied “Oh yeah, definitely!” He had never clearly told me yes or no, nor at which moment he made his mind up.
David, do you choose your actors strictly according to artistic criteria or also as a result of the personal relationship develop with them?
DC - I chose Viggo because he was the only one I could get. And because he wasn’t expensive: In the end he told me “ I will do everything you say.” That’s the type of actor that pleases me! Obedience to orders and don't hassle me. There you have the foundation of our relationship.
VM - I knew David was a cinematic artist, that he seemed very intelligent. I wondered personally whether he would be pleasant or strange. He is both. He is pleasantly strange or strangely pleasant! We are friends from now on. We are on the same wavelength, we can cut through a lot of work without the need for lots of talking. We don’t need to waste our time in interminable analysis. For an actor, a conceptual conversation is not the ideal: an actor doesn’t play ideas, but concrete things, gestures, situations. It’s similar for the making of a film. There can be conceptual preparatory work but when you are filming on the set, there is nothing but the tangible.
Viggo were you really worried about the political content of HoV?
VM - Not exactly. When I read the first version of the script, I feared it would serve as an exploitation movie (low level commercial B movie) of violence for violence sake, violence just to win money from the wrong element of the public. And that doesn’t interest me. I suppose you neither David. This type of cynical cinema without thought doesn’t interest you. But all my questioning of the script, David had already thought of. So that stuck immediately between us.
DC - I wasn’t sure of anything with you. You left me in suspense. That was no doubt a strategy on your part. Is it also a strategy that works with women?
VM - Sometimes. Always with the wrong type of women!
Viggo, did David surprise you?
VM - Yes, especially on AHOV, because with EP I knew him better. But the biggest surprise was to discover how it is pleasant, fun, to film with him. Even the difficult scenes are funny to play; with lots of jokes on set, a very relaxed atmosphere. He is very skilled at creating a work atmosphere in which each member of the team goes all out in service of the film and the story. Even if David is the decision maker everyone, actors, technicians is united in service of the story. And on David’s set there are lots of laughs, enthusiasm, even if the screenplays we are filming are tough.
DC - I'm often asked what makes my style, how I place my signature. But I never think of that during filming. I only think of those questions at the end: how to make that scene alive? How to make the shot interesting or exciting? That’s all. I don’t worry about anything else.
However you are perfectly aware of your status in cerebral, highly conceptual cinema?
DC - That reputation is worth nothing in Hollywood! If you go to see a studio with the concept of Crash “car accidents and sex” do you think for a second that these guys want to finance your film? I directed the film, but not with the studios. High concept in Hollywood is an easy to understand film with movie stars and a huge commercial potential. None of my films meet those criteria.
With the last two films have you not found a balance between your personal obsessions and the classic codes of the gangster film?
DC - If you had read that review in the LA Times you wouldn’t say that! You would think that! You would think that EP is a bad anti feminist and reactionary film, because Naomi Watts exchanges her motorbike for baby. The peoples who liked my previous films could tell you that the last two are two mainsteam. You never win if you start to concern yourself with modernism and classicism. Like I said. I try to make the best film possible each time and for EP it seems to me that everyone worked to a higher level of quality. A film, you work on it, you spend two years of your life on it,you have your nose to the grindstone: that’s the reality of a directors work.
There are a lot of layers in EP what was your directorial idea at the start of the project?
DC- I thought that the film would be a good way to thrill the girls.
VM - I believe that for us two….
DC - I forbid you to speak on my behalf
VM - Ok I’ll speak for myself. What made me passionate is that entire underworld culture that Russian world that infiltrates the western towns, in this case London. We have read a lot on the subject of Russia, Russian history, the Russian mafia, the Russian culture, the literature, the poetry, and the more I read, the more I discovered that my understanding was superficial. What’s more, as we went along with the preparation of the film, then the filming, the real subject of Russia didn’t stop, with the business of poisoning opponents, the stories of refugees in London, all this added new layers to the film. Even if the news was not directly relevant to our story they thickened the context.
DC - In North America we always have a tendency to think about Russians by comparing them to a Soviet reference. We forget that the Russian culture is a thousand years old. That unusual, intense culture existed long before the era of communism. What has emerged today in Russia that is the ancestral Russia combined with the brutal discovery of capitalism in its most primitive form. You therefore have a raw capitalism which has mixed with the characteristics of the Russian culture, its melancholy, its fatalism, its dark part and its religion.
EP, could this be a mafia film crossed with Dostoievski?
Absolutely. Dostoievski wrote about criminals. After the Soviet period he signaled his big come-back. Crime is cinematically interesting because criminals live in a constant state of transgression, beyond the law, beyond ethics, beyond morals. “Normal” people are at the same time frightened and fascinated by that. There is something seductive about the idea of breaking the law, that’s to say that you can one day decide to no longer obey the law, the rules, or the manners of society in which you live. The subversion can make you frightened but it is sexy, attracting.
The code of the tattoos of the Russian mafia go to your recurring pre-occupation around the human body
DC - but all film makers are interested in the human body. When you film actors, you film the human body.
But you have filmed the human body in a more intense and problematic way than most film makers
DC - yes I’m conscious of that. My feeling is that to be a human is above all to be a body. I am concerned with guarding that idea at the heart of my films. My cinema is not abstract, not conceptual it is on the contrary very carnal. From this physical characteristic can burst abstract thoughts, but my cinema is above all, physical. The tattoos are a way of writing on the body, to communicate with the body. That interests me.
VM - One of the tattoos that I wear in the film says that it is important to stay human. I found that was a good motto to connect with my character and the story. Evidently for the Russian mafia that motto signified another thing: stay human, it is to be a man, respect no law, no social rule, nobody apart from himself. For me, my character or Naomi Watts' character, could indicate on the contrary that whatever the brutality of the circumstances may be, it is important to act fairly to show compassion. In life nobody is obliged to make good gestures without ulterior motive, but certain people sometimes surprise, and do it. I think that the subject of the film is above all the capacity to remain human in the worst circumstances, rather than the body or violence.
David what are the qualities particular to Viggo?
VM - I am a malleable slave
DC - Obviously. I have worked with lots of great actors. Viggo is certainly at the top of that list. But as good an actor as he is, I chose him according to a role and a film. If I felt that he wasn’t the right person, I wouldn’t have chosen him. We are friends, but I wouldn’t have been doing him a favour in making a casting error. An actor, even talented, can’t play everything. Reading the script I could easily see Viggo in the role of Nikolai. If he had refused I am not sure that I would have made the film. We knew each other and we had developed a tight relationship in friendship as in work and that allowed us to get quickly into the point of the subject. Viggo is an actor in the pure sense of the term. A star worries about his image, and can easily say “I can’t play this role because I don’t want to be seen as a criminal, or as a gay, I don’t want to have such and such an image which doesn’t make me look good”. Actors who react like this are more celebrities than actors. And I prefer to work with actors, because they don’t hesitate to play everything, the good, the villains, and everything in-between those two notions.
Talk to us about the big fight scene in the bathhouse. It’s not often you see a famous actor totally naked in a long punch up scene.
Viggo was drunk one night and I brought the cameras and I filmed. It was just a normal night for him. Every night he went to the bathhouse to beat himself up with Chechens! You don’t believe me? Well, that scene was very simply written in the screenplay. Nikolai is in the bathhouse, two guys arrive with knives to kill him, but it is him who kills them. It was in the filming that we worked out the details of the sequence. For example we had decided on knives - bent for cutting carpet, cheap, and you can find them anywhere. If the gangsters were stopped n the street they could say “hey we are carpet layers” We constructed the bathhouse in artificial décor, basing it on a real one. Then the choreographers and the stunt men worked with Viggo and the two other actors. It all came together gradually. The preparation for the sequence was quite long but the filming only took two days.
VM - There are two rooms, lots of angles, it’s a very ambitious sequence in terms of choreography and geometry. But the filming was quick. I think that with a different director it would have been much longer. I wasn’t distressed about filming nude because this sequence is fundamental to the story. We first of all filmed in long shots so as not to disrupt the movement. Then the second day we filmed the scenes more fragmented and short, we polished up the details.
DC - Viggo was covered in bruises after that sequence. But he likes that!
Viggo Mortensen My Life with the Obsessional
Première Magazine November 2007
© Hachette Filipacchi Media
How did EP come about?
VM - DC and I thought about the possibility of working together again after AHOV. There was even the suggestion of a comedy, but David first of all had to digest the success of the film and also had to sort out all of the proposals he received. Then came the terrific script by Steven Knight.
Cronenberg doesn't though have the idea of a diptych or even a trilogy on violence?
VM - I don't think so. David just liked the script. Like me he was interested in the sub-culture.
How did you learn the role of Nikolai?
VM - When David asked me to do it, I hesitated because I was afraid of not having enough time to prepare myself. I knew that it could be necessary for me to do a lot of research on the subject, the accent of my character in particular. I finally suceeded in finding Russians located in the US who had known the gulag and who taught me precious information. I also spent two weeks in Russia to imprint myself with the culture and language.
Your character, was it well written?
VM - For this type of role, a good number of factors remain abstract. The humour, the way Nikolai thinks, for example. I didn't determine these until after having dicussed in with former villains.
How does Cronenberg direct his actors?
VM - Most of the time we don't speak. He intervenes if necessary but it isn't at all directorial. David has confidence in himself, in his movies and in the people he choses.
Your collaboration in life, has it been an asset or a handicap in filming?
VM - It helps the work a lot. I don't have to question him endlessly and he doesn't have to correct me. All my attention can be paid to the scenes and the other actors. Our common goal is to tell the story the best way possible.
The direction is very precise, very choreographed. Do you enjoy acting in those conditions?
VM - It's strange....from the outside Cronenberg's films appear rigid, even mechanical. But I'm going to surprise you. David doesn't story-board. He arrives on set, rehearses the scene with the actors and only after that decides how to place the camera. That's not the type of director who shelters behind a technique that he has mastered perfectly. He lets life come. Each one of his films is better than the previous because he doesn't confine himself to one formula.
Talk to us about that stupefying sequence during which you fight totally nude against two killers. What did you think in reading that?
VM - It wasn't very detailed, it was like "Nikolai is in a bathouse when suddenly two killers armed to the teeth appear". At the time of creating the sequence with David it seemed obvious to us, that to be realistic my charater must be naked since he struggles violently in self defence, he couldn't hang onto his towel! I said to David that he was free to film me however he liked. I doubted that there would be any voyeurism on his part. It's a good scene but there are plenty of others. I'm quite surprised by its impact. Male nudity always has that effect doesn't it?
Don't you think that AHOV and EP speak more about family than about violence?
VM - Certainly. Of compassion too. The characters are very complex. They all have a code of honour, an ethic. The brutality is more mental and emotional than physical. The violent moments stay with you because they are shown in a direct manner. David doesn't film violence like a ballet to give a sense of security to the audience. He implicates you.
It seems you frightened a couple of Russians in a bar, with your tattoos.
VM - that was at the start of the shoot, in the middle of London where a large Russian community lives. When this couple saw my hands - the tattoos stayed on several days if I paid attention when washing myself - they abruptly stopped talking and appeared worried. I must say that I was listening to get their accent! I could have told them I was just an actor but I felt so embarrassed that I just left. They must have thought that I was going to give my report....
Thanks to Viggo Works - dom for the scans and kaijamin for the translations!