THE DEAD DON’T HURT is a story of star-crossed lovers on the western U.S. frontier in the 1860s. Vivienne Le Coudy (Vicky Krieps) is a fiercely independent woman who embarks on a relationship with Danish immigrant Holger Olsen (Viggo Mortensen). After meeting with Olsen in San Francisco, she agrees to travel with him to his home near the quiet town of Elk Flats, Nevada, where they start a life together. The outbreak of the civil war separates them when Olsen makes a fateful decision to fight for the Union. This leaves Vivienne to fend for herself in a place controlled by corrupt Mayor Rudolph Schiller (Danny Huston) and his unscrupulous business partner, powerful rancher Alfred Jeffries (Garret Dillahunt). Alfred’s violent, wayward son Weston (Solly McLeod) aggressively pursues Vivienne, who is determined to resist his unwanted advances. When Olsen returns from the war, he and Vivienne must confront and make peace with the person each has become. Both a tragic love story and nuanced depiction of the conflict between revenge and forgiveness. THE DEAD DON’T HURT is a portrait of a passionate woman determined to stand up for herself in an unforgiving world dominated by ruthless men.
As The Dead Don’t Hurt prepares to release in Australian cinemas on December 5, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the film’s iconic star, writer, and director, Viggo Mortensen (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) about balancing the multiple roles he had making this film, what he enjoys about the writing process, and he extended the interview time to talk about how he purchased the entire Western section of a closing down video store.
Nick: Viggo, it’s a pleasure to meet to you, sir. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat. How are you today?
Viggo Mortensen: I’m doing alright. How are you?
Nick: I’m very well, thank you. You’re an actor who I’ve admired and appreciated your work for a long time, so I’m excited to chat with you today. And I’m curious to find out what your story telling process is. The Dead Don’t Hurt is a very character driver story, but being set in the West also lends to things that happen in the narrative. I’m wondering whether you’re a writer who lets characters dictate where the story is going to lead? Or do you try and mould them into a set journey?
Viggo Mortensen: Oh, I’ve never thought about that. I don’t know. Some people do an outline and have a structure, and they know what acts one, two and three look like. Every script I’ve written, about six of them so far, I start with the idea, usually an image.
In the case of The Dead Don’t Hurt, it was an image of a little girl running through a forest. And then, I start building the first scene, and then the second scene. Then at some point, maybe 20 to 30 pages in, I realise where I want it to end, and that’s basically how I approach it.
And as I’m writing characters, I guess I’m imagining their voices, their dialects, their behaviour. I’m sort of acting them out as I go along. I suppose I just follow my instincts for each character, and how they contrast with other characters, and so forth.
Nick: Do you find you go on the journey with the characters discovering things from the perspective of the audience? As if you were watching the film yourself? Or do you feel like as a writer, you owe due diligence to do what’s right for the characters themselves?
Viggo Mortensen: You know, sometimes I’m surprised. You just realise what a scene is that you’re going to tell, and then some of that dialogue just comes to you. Sometimes it’s flowing. But other times, you do have to leave it alone for a while and then come back to it.
In the case of this story, as well as Falling, the first movie I directed, both these stories flowed pretty constantly. Falling has more dialogue, but that sort of appeared to me, or it was relatively easy. Then I went and rewrote, and rewrote, and fine-tuned until I had the shooting script I was happy with. You sort of trim the fat away in the same sense as you would an editor. I have a publishing house, and I enjoy editing because you can be more objective. If it’s someone else’s poetry, or someone else’s essay, or even images and photographs, I can stand back and help them with presentation, structure, selection, running order of things. It’s easier to help someone than it is to help yourself sometimes.
But, with these scripts, it’s almost like the characters came to me with ideas, and even other characters made up how they should sound, how they should speak. And then I was also observant, with The Dead Don’t Hurt being of a historical period, about how people spoke then, or what terms of phrase did they use. What was a character’s background?
Alfred Jefferies is the father of our bad guy, Weston, and Alfed is played by Garrett Dillahunt. And he’s a man of very few words. He’s very, kind of, impatient. To the point. A man of action and violence. He’s rather corrupt, but a man of few words. And then you have Danny Huston’s character, Rudolph Schiller, the mayor and owner of the bank. He’s probably the only person in that region who has had a university education, and probably trained as a lawyer. So, he’s very glib, and he uses a big vocabulary. He uses his intellectual capabilities, you know, as a weapon to achieve what he wants.
All these different characters, I knew, had to have different ways of speaking, different tones, different vocabulary. It’s fun to put those things together. Vivienne [Vicky Krieps] does have English as their first language, so she speaks English in a particular way. She speaks French in a particular way for that time, being North American rather than French. Holger’s [Mortensen] from Denmark, so he speaks in a particular way. Claudio [Rafel Plana], the piano player, doesn’t say a lot in the movie, but he’s married to someone who’s Mexican and has a daughter who is Mexican American. But, he’s European, and it’s those little things that affect turn of phrase, vocabulary, accents, and all of that. I enjoy that there was a lot of variety in that regard.
Nick: That’s so fascinating. And I heard you mention you have a publishing house and enjoy the editing process. This might sound like a silly question initially, but I am curious, as someone who enjoys a lot of the artistry of making a movie, of which here you write, direct, compose the music, and star in the film, how do you manage the collaboration with director Viggo and writer Viggo, or director Viggo and actor Viggo? Are there conscious conversations you must have with yourself about the different artistic elements of filmmaking?
Viggo Mortensen: [laughs] I think all of it, the music, the directing, communicating with the actors, as well as the original writings, are all in the screenplay as far as I’m concerned. As you’re casting, you’re re-writing. As you’re on the set, you adapt to the locations. You’re re-writing as you’re shooting. You hear a line and go, “Oh, maybe she doesn’t need to say that. She can still get across this emotion without saying anything.”
Then when you’re editing, it’s almost your last chance to re-write. Then when you’re putting in the music, it’s also a form of writing. You affect how the scene is perceived, even how dialogue is perceived. In some cases, it’s even the absence of music. The colour timing, in terms of images, suddenly your eyes see in a different way. It’s all in the writing to me. It all branches from the tree, though.
To tell you a story about the team, even though I wrote the music and the script, that music is obviously affected by the players who I collaborate with, the musicians, and the way they sound together. It’s the same with the actors. If they, or the crew – I make it clear from the beginning that a good idea can come from anyone, no matter what they do on a film set. I like the collaborative aspect of movie storytelling a lot. That’s probably why I really got into it in the first place. I wanted to figure out how it all worked. How do they take a screenplay and get it on to the screen. What’s the secret?
And you know, I came to directing very late. Much later than I wanted to. But it was probably a good thing, because I got to watch a lot of great teams. I got to watch many kinds of directors, many of them really talented men and women with different styles and different storytelling abilities. But, the best of them always prepared meticulously, and always communicated really well with their cast and crew, and got most out of the collective effort.
You have one shot to tell the story together, you might as well get the most out of all the tools you have, which is everybody that’s involved. So, I never felt like I was just railroading everyone and saying, “Okay, this movie is my idea. It’s got to be exactly like I want it to be.” The thing is, sometimes, after taking in all of the advice from everyone, and reacting to how other react to the words I’ve written, or the music, or if the cinematographer wants to frame something in a certain way, I might disagree sometimes, but it’s about having listened to what they say. The more it flows as a team, the more the people are involved. And it’s not just another job for them. I think you make a better movie that way, and you also have more fun when people aren’t just punching the clock. They feel like they’re actually part of telling a new story.
Nick: It takes a village creatively, right?
Viggo Mortensen: Absolutely.
Nick: Viggo, unfortunately, that’s my time. This has been such a fascinating conversation, and I have so many more questions I’d love to ask. However, before I go, I just want to thank you for being such a significant part of the reason I love movies. I worked at a Blockbuster video, and I would watch movies just because you were in them, and that introduced me to directors like David Cronenberg. So, thank you for being such a big part of that.
Viggo Mortensen: Oh, fantastic. Thank you. There aren’t many video stores left are there?
Nick: Unfortunately, not. But I started collecting all of these DVDs and Bluray’s behind me once that Blockbuster closed in the hopes to preserve some cinema history.
Viggo Mortensen: I have a lot too. And I’ll tell you one thing really quick. Whoever is in charge here will probably kill me for dragging this on some, but that’s okay.
In early 2021, I was in Queensland shooting Ron Howard’s movie, Thirteen Lives. A really good movie, which unfortunately, because Amazon bought MGM, a movie that should’ve been seen in thousands of cinemas was streamed. I mean how much money do they need? But that’s another story.
But, while we were there shooting, it was a great experience. I happened to walk into this mall, and there was a video store there that was, I don’t know if it was going out of business or they were just getting rid of a lot of stuff, but there was a section of Western DVDs, and I had a DVD player in my hotel room. And I said, “Oh, shit!”
I was trying to get financing for The Dead Don’t Hurt, so I looked at them, and they had all the classic Westerns, and a lot of Westerns that I hadn’t seen, and spaghetti Westerns. All kinds of shit. And they were on sale. Really cheap. Hundreds of them.
And I went up to the guy, and said, “They’re really cheap already, but would you give me half price if I bought enough of them?” And he asked, “Well, how many do you want?” And I said, “All of them!”
So, I ended up getting bags and bags, hundreds of movies. I had to do a couple of trips to take them back. After work every day, I would watch one making dinner and eating, another before going to bed. And on weekends, that’s all I did. It was insane. I’d go for a walk down to the beach, jump in the water, come back and put another Western on.
But, yeah, I watched a lot of movies. I rewatched ones I grew up seeing as a kid, but I watched a lot of ones that I hadn’t seen. So, I wish there was as many video stores as there used to be.
Nick: I agree with you. I think physical media is such a special, tangible thing. Thank you so much for extending our time, I’ve really enjoyed chatting with you, sir!
Viggo Mortensen: Thank you so much.
Thank you so much to Viggo for his time, and to Transmission Films and TM Publicity for organising the interview. The Dead Don’t Hurt is in Australian cinemas December 5.
