Aragorn v Bush- no contest!!

I saw this as I'm on the Konformist e-list. Very interesting- worth signing up to, although it does publish some right rubbish (a recent posting accused Noam Chomsky as being an agent of the New World Order. Yeah, right). Without any further ado- an interview with Viggo Mortensen.

Please send as far and wide as possible.

Thanks,
Robert Sterling
Editor, The Konformist

http://www.konformist.com

http://progressive.org

Viggo Mortensen Interview
By Nina Siegal
November 2005 Issue

Sure, he's cute. Well, not cute. Strikingly, jaw-droppingly
gorgeous. But the most intriguing thing about Viggo Mortensen, who
played King Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and who
recently won critical acclaim for his leading role in the latest
David Cronenberg release, A History of Violence, is how much he
loves to talk politics.

When I called him in July to interview him for The Progressive, he
had returned from four months' shooting the forthcoming Spanish
historical epic, Alatriste. He sounded exhausted, as though he could
barely hold the phone, but when we started talking about the war in
Iraq, the Bush Administration, and the role of actors and artists in
mainstream political discourse, he didn't feel like sleeping.
Eventually, I had to tell him I was tired.

Two days later, he called back. He wanted to clarify a few things
he'd said and to answer more questions. And he tried me a few times
after that. We spoke one final time in the wake of Katrina. I might
have flattered myself to think one of the best-looking Hollywood
leading men liked the sound of my voice. But that clearly wasn't the
case, since he did most of the talking.

Born in Manhattan on October 20, 1958, to an American mother and a
Danish father, Mortensen spent his childhood in Argentina,
Venezuela, and Denmark. He went to school in Watertown, New York,
just south of the Canadian border. He studied acting at the Warren
Robertson Theatre Workshop in Manhattan in the 1980s and then moved
to Los Angeles. There, he met Excene Cervenka, the lead singer of
the punk band X, and became a familiar face in the Los Angeles punk
scene. The couple had a son, Henry, together in 1988, and
subsequently divorced.

Mortensen made his feature-film debut in 1985 as Alexander Godunov's
Amish brother in Witness. After that, he had a run as a villain in a
series of films, playing a paraplegic ex-con snitch in the 1993 film
Carlito's Way with Al Pacino, and Lucifer in The Prophecy with
Christopher Walken, two years later. In 1997, he played the tough-
talking training instructor to Demi Moore's G.I. Jane, and the
following year he appeared as Gwyneth Paltrow's home-wrecking
paramour in A Perfect Murder.

In recent years, Mortensen has been cast as much more heroic
figures, not only as King Aragorn but also as the lead human in
Hidalgo, the horse story in which a down-on-his-luck postal carrier
rides his mustang in a race across the Arabian Desert.

Most recently, he won acclaim for his portrayal of Tom Stall, an
Indiana diner owner whose life is changed forever after he acts
against two robbers in A History of Violence. The film, an
adaptation of John Wagner and Vince Locke's graphic novel of the
same name, was a critical hit at Cannes. He also plays the lead in
Alatriste, portraying the seventeenth century soldier and missionary
Captain Alatriste, based on the book of the same name by Arturo
Perez Reverte. The film is due out in the spring.

Mortensen is a part-time musician, a published poet, and a
photographer and painter who has had exhibitions at art galleries
such as the Robert Mann Gallery, Track 16 Gallery, Fototeca de Cuba,
and Museet for Fotokunst in Denmark. On top of all that, he founded
the independent publishing house Perceval Press.

Even when he's not jet-lagged, he is soft spoken. He doesn't like to
talk about his personal accomplishments. But get him going on
politics and he's hard to stop. Below is a condensed account of our
many phone conversations.

Question:Why did you decide to go down to Camp Casey and join Cindy
Sheehan?

Viggo Mortensen: I went in the first week, when there were only a
few people down there. She was being so maligned and dragged through
the mud. I thought the best thing to do was just to go and listen to
her and make up my own mind. If you're someone who is a public
figure, if you make too much of it, the risk is that you can be seen
as just trying to get attention for yourself. So I intentionally
went down without saying I was coming. No one even saw me getting
out of the car, and before anyone knew it I was just standing in
front of her. I stayed very briefly, and she was nice enough to give
me a little of her time.

Q: What did you talk about?

Mortensen: Well, first of all, I just said, respectfully, I'm sorry
about your son, and I said thank you for some of the things you've
said and for bringing attention to the issue, for keeping this topic
alive. I left there really impressed with her, with her integrity
and sincerity.

I also had a sense of just how threatening someone like this would
be to people who are used to running the show, in terms of
perception and media information—or disinformation. It's like she
pulled an end around just by being herself, a relatively ordinary
woman displaying extraordinary courage and being quite eloquent and
brave, knowing she's being savaged and hearing it and standing up to
it and having her say as an individual and as a woman. The fact that
she was a woman—how could this little woman do that to us?—it just
galled them. I thought, good for you.

Q: What was your reaction to Katrina?

Mortensen: Cindy Sheehan and how badly Katrina was bungled are two
shots to the heart. I hope the beast does fall down soon. What's
more shameful than the criminal negligence that made a bad situation
much, much worse is the arrogant attitude after the fact. The
outright lying—even though we've become accustomed to lying from
this Administration—has broken new ground in the field of
dishonesty. They're so clumsy in their attempts to come off well.
And there is so little heart in what they say. Even the sound of
their voices is so false.

Q: Are you anti-Bush, as the pundits say?

Mortensen: No, I'm not anti-Bush; I'm anti-Bush behavior. In other
words, I'm against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism,
religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless
capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his Administration.

Q: What's wrong with pinning it all on Bush?

Mortensen: It's too easy, and it lets a lot of people off the hook.
I think impeachment proceedings need to be started immediately but
not just against him. God forbid we should have Dick Cheney as
President. No. Those two need to go, and many of the others in the
inner circle need to go.

Q: It seems much of the media has responded differently to Katrina
than they did to earlier screw-ups by the Bush Administration. Why
is that?

Mortensen: It's because it's here. You can see it. You can't hide
that. So all of a sudden these mousy, timid, go-along reporters are
finding some spine, and that's nice to see. I hope it lasts. I hope
they don't recede into their self-congratulating, privileged little
niches.

Q: Are you hopeful about political change?

Mortensen: I think most Americans will look back on this period
since 1980 as a morally bleak, intellectually fraudulent period of
history. There will be a certain amount of shame, a feeling we were
part of something wrong. People standing outside of this country can
see this because it's very obvious. It's like looking at a spoiled
brat, a kid who's totally out of control, but because the parents
are really rich and because they own the school, you have to put up
with it. America is an empire in decay. But we don't have to lash
out and do damage on the way down. We can reverse some of the damage
we've done. It's possible.

Q: You have been criticized for wearing anti-war T-shirts while
promoting your films, particularly The Lord of the Rings. Did you
have a particular strategy?

Mortensen: I made use of an opportunity. The first time was in the
fall of 2002, when I happened to be on The Charlie Rose Show. I went
there wearing a shirt that I just scribbled with a pen, "No More
Blood for Oil."

Q: But it was also connected to the politics of the movie.

Mortensen: Yes, I was getting tired of journalists presuming
that "obviously" the Fellowship of the Ring is America or the West,
surrounded by poor Oriental Islamic extremists. Tolkien presents a
complex and detailed and interesting set of stories and ideas and
archetypes. The Lord of the Rings was appreciated around the world
because it speaks to a lot of universally understood truths and
myths, not because it justified the right wing of the Republican
Party or some kind of North American Protestant Christian
fundamentalism.

Q: Following the Charlie Rose appearance, USA Today contributor
Michael Medved took you to task for ruining a popular movie by
politicizing it. "Political preachments, on or off camera, only
interfere with the entertainment value of creative work by major
Hollywood stars," he wrote, in a piece that got a lot of attention.
What did you think?

Mortensen: It was a shoddy piece of journalism. I won't descend to
his level to call him an idiot or anything like that, but it was
obviously something he did to curry favor with his fan base or the
people he would like to impress in religious political circles. He
wanted to be able to say, "Look, I slapped that guy down." The only
reason he took aim at me at all was because the movie I was in had
done very well, so I was a visible person. The establishment media
will often do that; they'll see someone who has visibility and
they'll take them down. The risk is that the person might actually
be listened to. It poses a threat. I'm glad I resisted the
temptation to respond at the time. In the end, it didn't mean that
much to me.

Q: Should the average citizen care what a celebrity thinks about
politics?

Mortensen: I don't think special attention should be given to an
actor or a singer or a baseball player or a soccer player more than
anyone else, but they do have an opinion like anyone else. When
people say that entertainers should "know your place," they might as
well say the same thing about plumbers and teachers and cab drivers.
We all should be able to express our views.

Q: Do you think actors are particularly stymied when they try to
speak out?

Mortensen: It's almost a standard tactic, really, to try to minimize
any effort that people in the entertainment business or in any
public occupation make to express themselves. Look, there are people
that grandstand and seem to be publicly politically engaged because
they like the attention, more than because they're genuinely
concerned about the world. But I don't think that's the majority.
The majority of those who take the risk—and it is a risk because
it's much safer to keep your mouth shut and keep making a living—
have something to say. They speak up, or go on a march, or get
involved in the political process because they do care and they are
concerned. I consider myself very fortunate to have a platform. I
don't take it lightly, and I don't abuse it. I don't speak up about
something unless I feel strongly about it and until I've researched
a subject extensively and have an informed decision about it. But I
think if you don't say something it's lying by omission. I
personally think it's immoral. Yeah, it might cost you a few fans,
but you have to say something.

Q: What has it cost you?

Mortensen: I don't know. There might be people out there who
wouldn't hire me because they thought I should keep my mouth shut,
but I'm not aware of that. Even if I saw evidence of that, it
wouldn't really concern me. Bertrand Russell said one of the first
symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that
one's work is terribly important. I take my work seriously, but it's
not the only thing that exists in the world.

Q: You've played a number of roles now—in A History of Violence,
Hidalgo, and The Lord of the Rings—in which you are a type of
cowboy, fighting the forces of evil. A Toronto newspaper dubbed
you "the New John Wayne." What are your feelings about portraying
these types of heroes?

Mortensen: I don't know what the new John Wayne is. I'm not
consciously picking any type of role, even so-called hero roles. And
if some character seems very certain or very courageous, I always
try to find the other side of that. When are they not courageous and
when are they not certain?

Q: When you were asked to play Frank Hopkins, the pony express
carrier in Hidalgo, I read that you were concerned about being cast
as the American cowboy riding through the Arabian Desert. How did
you deal with that?

Mortensen: Yes, at first I had concerns about how the movie would be
made and also how the movie would be promoted. When we were about to
start shooting, it was early 2002 and anyone could see that the Bush
Administration was already gearing up its PR machine to sell the
U.S. public on its war in Iraq. I was very anxious that I was going
to be playing a role as a mythic American cowboy participating in a
race in the Middle East. I met with the director and asked
him, "What do you want to say? Is this just going to be some
American that goes and kicks ass in some heedless way? Or, are you
going to show Wounded Knee? Are you going to show, in some small
way, that someone from the West and someone from the East with
seemingly opposite points of view can come to understand each
other?" He said that's what he was going to do, and he also said a
lot of other things that made me feel the project was worthwhile.
And, in the end, I feel it was.

Q: What attracted you to your role in A History of Violence?

Mortensen: It was very thought provoking. It's very much like a
Western on a lot of levels. Plus, it was fun to work with David
Cronenberg. He's one of the best directors working in the world
today, and he has a lot to say, and he's very clever about the way
he says it.

Q: You have a lot of interests outside acting. You're a
photographer, a poet, a musician, a painter, and a publisher. If,
for some bizarre reason, you had to choose just one medium in which
to express yourself, what would it be?

Mortensen: That's like saying would you rather lose your eyesight,
your hearing, or your ability to speak. I would rather not even
think about it. I pursue the things I do because I'm interested in
them. And I'm grateful for the opportunities I've had, putting one
foot in front of the other.

Nina Siegal is a freelance writer based in Iowa City, where she is
writing her first novel at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.