Viggo Mortensen did not plan to be in The Dead Don’t Hurt but had to dust off his cowboy boots and appear in the movie when another, unnamed, actor dropped out. That meant Mortensen added starring in, to writing, producing, directing and creating the music for the Western.
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“I had not planned to act in the movie,” Mortensen said at the Munich International Film Festival. “The actor who had the part decided at one point late in preparation stages, after being with us for many months, to do something outside. So we tried to replace him with an actor who was younger than me, an actor the age as it was written originally, and was well-known enough for the financiers to say ok.”
Having failed to find the right person with the right availability, Mortensen had to add starring in The Dead Don’t Hurt to his to-do list. “In the end I said: ‘I could play it.’ My coproducer said: ‘That would work.’”
The multihyphenate explained that he then asked Vicky Krieps, whose character is central in the film, if she was ok with him switching into the role, which meant he would play opposite her. Fortunately she was. The script then had to be amended to reflect Mortensen’s character, Holger Olsen, a Danish immigrant, being older than the character originally written.
Mortensen is festival-hopping mode with The Dead Don’t Hurt . Having opened Karlovy Vary with the movie, he has decamped to the Munich International Film Festival. He was joined by one of the stars of the film, Solly McLeod, who plays antagonist Weston Jeffries, for a discussion about the movie that was co-hosted by Christoph Gröner, Festival Director, and Julia Weigl, Artistic Co-Director.
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McLeod had a packed audience rolling in the aisles when he relayed how, after intensive training in the UK, a video of him horse riding was sent to veteran horse trainer and cowboy Rex Peterson. McLeod thought he was doing well. Peterson ‘s verdict was less positive: “We’ve gotta lot a work to do; in that video you look like a monkey f***ing a football!” he told McLeod when they met in person. The actor, however, mastered the riding and Mortensen paid warm tribute to him: “He couldn’t be more professional, more hardworking, and [he has] a great screen presence.”
McLeod said he needed to find the humanity in his seemingly all-bad character. “It’s hard to find any redeeming factors with Weston Jeffries… he’s just the worst,” he said. “But for me, as an actor trying to play him, I didn’t want him to just be a surface-level psychopath.”
Mortensen sent McLeod dozens of westerns to watch as part of his prep. The younger actor name-checked Jeff Bridges starrer Bad Company , John Wayne movie Red River and 1943 picture The Ox-Bow Incident as among those that had an impact.
Mortensen was quizzed about his movie influences and the films he returns to, and said his tastes are eclectic. Proving the point, he went on to namecheck 1928 silent movie The Passion of Joan of Arc , the aforementioned Howard Hawkes’ picture Red River and Will Ferrell comedy Anchorman .
For more on the movie, check out Deadline’s earlier interview with Mortensen here .
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