Video:Viggo Mortensen Interview - Appaloosa
with Rebecca MurrayViggo Mortensen reunites with his 'A History of Violence' co-star Ed Harris for 'Appaloosa,' a Western drama based on the Robert B Parker book. At a special LA screening, Mortensen joined actor Luce Rains and composer Jeff Beal to discuss the film.
Transcript:Viggo Mortensen Interview - Appaloosa
Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the Los Angeles Premiere of Appaloosa.
Viggo Mortensen ('Everett Hitch')
What's the appeal do you think now for bringing back Westerns? Why do you think audiences are accepting them now?
Viggo Mortensen: "I don't know why people keep saying this thing about bringing them back. They've made Westerns every year. They don't make as many as they used to when I was a little boy, and they don't make very many at all that are as good as this one. But this one, Appaloosa, falls squarely in the tradition of the classic Western, you know? It's beautiful. You get to see the scenery. It has it's leisurely pace, but it has a lot of drama, too, and really good characters. So I don't think they've ever gone away, they just make fewer of them. So if you're an actor and you like them, since they only make a couple a year, you've got to be lucky to get in one. I consider myself fortunate to be in this one."
Was that the appeal for this, the fact that it was a Western?
Viggo Mortensen: "Well you know as much as I like Westerns, I would never do one – even though I like horseback riding and I like the Western period – I would never do one just to do one. I want to do one if it's a good movie, a good story, and this was a great script. And with Ed Harris, you know, it's bound to be interesting ."
What's it like when you have a relationship with him as a director and as an actor?
Viggo Mortensen: "Well when we worked together on History of Violence he had already directed Pollock and proven to me anyway that he was a great director. He's very similar as a director, you know? As an actor he pays attention to every detail. He's very aware of his surroundings. It's the same that goes into being a really good director, so I wasn't surprised that he did a great job on this."
Luce Rains ('Dean')
Luce Rains: "I play Dean. He's one of Randall Bragg's men. We're on the wrong side of the law but we think we're on the right side of the law, which is the way every outlaw thinks ."
Is that how you approach a character who's a bad guy anyway? You always think of him as a good guy?
Luce Rains: "Well, bad guys don't think they're bad. They're just doing what they have to do. It was great being one of Jeremy [Irons'] army. We had a good time."
Did you have to do a lot of horseback riding and gunslinging and all that?
Luce Rains: "They had us riding for a month and a half out there. Fortunately that's something I really enjoy doing so it was great. "
And learning to shoot?
Luce Rains: "I didn't have to learn shoot. I know how to shoot pretty well."
Why do you think people are getting back into Westerns again?
Luce Rains: "I don't know. I think you can tell any story in a Western genre. It's pretty much just about being a human being and living life's experience. So a Western's a good way to do it."
Composer Jeff Beal
How do you create a score for a Western without making it a generic Western, because there's always that type of music?
Jeff Beal: "Yes, and there's also been some amazing music done for Westerns. And we kind of made some rules for ourselves in the beginning to avoid a few things. One of the earlier attempts he had at music before I came onboard was to use a lot of guitars. And because that didn't work out, we started with the rule of none of that. We actually kind of broke that a little bit later on, but by sort of opening up our picture of what the music could be, I think we were able to find a sound. It's all about getting specific, really, and this is a character piece. It's a drama that takes place in the West so a lot of the music does acknowledge the genre. It wants to feel natural and honest, but it's also sort of a little more geared toward being specific and personal. I like chamber music. A lot of times with a big movie you throw a big orchestra at it all the time, and I tend to write – just since the type of music I like, I tend to write smaller pieces. I did a small little documentary before I did this film about another painter. I did Pollock with Ed several years ago. But this was a movie about an artist, and I played Ed some of the music as we were getting ready to start on this and he loved it. And actually the sound of some of those cues became the sound for Renee Zellweger's character. It was like a string quartet and a bass and a little percussion. It was something you wouldn't… It wouldn't normally be associated with this style."
Do you find yourself often sampling your own work and bringing it into other works?
Jeff Beal: "Not a lot. In fact there's always a temp track in a film and sometimes even when it's my music I don't want to hear it. I'm more like a character actor. My heroes as far as film composers are the ones when I look at their body of work, I mean there's a thread I would hope in your music but I also like a composer whose work is specific to the project that he does. And it gets harder the more scores you get behind you not to just repeat yourself, and try to be inspired. I think that's one of the things I like about Ed. He's the type of artist who likes to take risks, you know? And you have to be with a director who's not afraid of that. We tried a lot of things. We did a lot of experimenting. We found a lot of valuable things through that experimentation."