Hidalgo and Appaloosa star Viggo Mortensen shines in The Dead Don't Hurt, opening May 31.
Viggo Mortensen is Zooming from Spain, the latest stop on his European promotional tour for The Dead Don’t Hurt, and he’s eager to talk with us because he knows how much C&I writers and readers enjoyed his performances in Hidalgo and Appaloosa — and how likely we are the target audience for the new western (opening May 31) where he does triple duty as director, screenwriter and star.
Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi service in his hotel room is just a sometime thing, and our conversation is sporadically interrupted. But neither he nor I will give up. If it takes repeated attempts to connect and reconnect digitally, and to follow up with questions and answers swapped over emails, so be it. What follows has been patched together from our exchanges, edited for brevity and clarity.
C&I: Our readers certainly enjoyed Hidalgo and Appaloosa, so they’re doubtless looking forward to your latest western, The Dead Don’t Hurt. Are you especially fond of the genre?
Viggo Mortensen: I grew up with them. And I liked them. I’m old enough that when I was a little kid and first started going to movies — I was four or something — it was sort of the end of the golden age of classic westerns. Like, 1960, '62, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. And Lonely Are the Brave — sort of a modern western, but really great. As an adult, I’ve continued to watch westerns. And basically, my goal with The Dead Don’t Hurt was to make something that was respectful of the codes of the classic western.

C&I: It’s basically a simple story: You play a Danish carpenter named Holger Olsen who meets a French-Canadian woman named Vivienne Le Coudy [Vicky Krieps] in San Francisco, and she returns with him to live in a remote Nevada town. They are happy together — until he enlists to fight in the Civil War. While he’s away, she has to fend for herself while dealing with some of the less pleasant men in town — including Weston Jeffries [Solly McLeod], the volatile son of the town’s corrupt boss. Nothing good comes of this. Did you write this with Vicky Krieps of The Phantom Thread in mind, or was it after you wrote the script that you had to go looking for your Vivienne?
Viggo: No, I didn’t write it with anybody in mind. But I was hoping that she would do it once I had the script, and I was saying, okay, “I need someone who can speak French.” More than that, though, it was just her presence. She just has something that really works. Some actresses just seem too modern, or there’s a certain vanity involved in their presentation of themselves, no matter what character they’re playing. And there’s none of that with Vicky. She’s just no-nonsense, and really feels like a woman from that time. A tough, independent, self-sufficient person, but very much a woman of that time. There isn’t any vanity. There’s just no false moves. There’s not a moment where I think, “Oh, she’s acting.” I don’t feel that watching her in any of the takes. Even if maybe one wasn’t as good as another take, it wasn't that it wasn't good because it wasn’t credible. It’s just that some were better than others, let’s say. She was tremendous, so that really helped.
C&I: What are some of the classic (and maybe not-so-classic) westerns that influenced you at an early age?
Viggo: If I went into all of the classic westerns that influenced me early on, and continue to influence me today, it would make a list far too long for this interview. However, fans of the genre might recognize some or all of a partial list which includes, in no particular order, Stagecoach, Red River, The Oxbow Incident, Lonely Are The Brave, Decision At Sundown, Seven Men From Now, Monte Walsh, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Forty Guns, The Day of the Outlaw, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Missouri Breaks, The Grey Fox, Yellow Sky, and McCabe and Mrs. Miller, just to name a few.

C&I: What westerns do you think directly influenced you while writing and filming The Dead Don’t Hurt?
Viggo: I was not thinking of any western in particular as I wrote The Dead Don’t Hurt. It was simply a process of coming up with a good story about a unique woman named Vivienne Le Coudy. As our story was set in the American West in the early 1860s, I assumed that all the books, movies and stories related to that time and place that I’d taken in over the years would help me fashion a western that was historically accurate in its details and give audiences a good ride.
We took a lot of care with every detail, took a lot of care with the sound mix, so all the sounds feel accurate, and you hear small things. You hear creaking of wood, and the saddle leather, and boots, and spurs, and insects and everything. And people look and sound right. And importantly, the camera doesn’t draw attention to the way it’s showing things. I wasn’t trying to reinvent the western. I wasn’t trying to do a Spaghetti Western treatment with the camera, or exaggerating music. Like putting rap music or something in the movie. I wanted the music and everything else to be right for the period, and I wanted to see the people in the landscapes inside the rooms. I wanted to see the lamps. I wanted the light. If the light is a lamp and a candle, it’s going to be a little dark. I wanted it to be accurate.
C&I: It was very common in film noir thrillers of the 1940s and ‘50s to begin with the hero at the end of his rope, and then flash back to what brought him there, as if to underscore that there’s no way he will escape his fate. You do something similar in The Dead Don’t Hurt, with its time-tripping narrative structure. Were you thinking of film noir when you wrote the script?
Viggo: I wasn’t thinking of that when I wrote it, but I guess it’s for similar reasons — I like to show the effect before the cause for this story. In part, with this particular story, I like the idea that the audience is ahead of the characters in some cases. And this affects how you look at, for example, Wilkins [Alex Breaux], who you see hung, early on, and you get to know him during the movie. You see him several times. You start to understand why he was used as a scapegoat. He can’t speak, he can’t defend himself. He’s kind of the butt of everyone’s jokes, and so forth. That’s just a minor detail.
But also a scene like when Weston goes to visit Vivienne after Olsen has left, and she’s gardening, and the audience knows that he’s a killer. Well, they don’t know how much of a sociopath he is yet. But we know that he is a murderer, and that we saw him kill a bunch of people earlier, and just walk to his horse and get on, humming, and ride out of town, not a care in the world, apparently. So we know that. So when this guy rides up to bring some manure and talk to her, we’re thinking, “No, don’t talk to him. You’re by yourself.” And then she says, “Would you like some cold mint tea?” You're like, “No, don’t invite him.” You know what I mean? We know that.
So that’s interesting — with that structure, the audience is ahead of the characters. But I just liked the way it worked. In editing, I tried a different way once. I just thought, “Well, let me just try it,” to undo what I’d written in a sense, and to see if doing it linear made any difference. You never know. And I didn’t like it. I preferred it the way it is, the way it was written, essentially. I tweaked two things, but yeah, I liked it. I liked showing the effects before cause. You know?

C&I: It has been said that a major appeal of westerns is the notion that, if you’re unhappy with your current lot, you can just load up your saddle bags and ride out over the horizon to somewhere else and reinvent yourself. How do you think this mythos fits — or doesn’t fit — with The Dead Don’t Hurt?
Viggo: Well, people end up where they do in life out of economic necessity, or due to familial or emotional attachments, or to escape trouble or persecution in other places. And some, simply out of a spirit of adventure. Some westerns have shown over the years that the western frontier of the U.S. in the mid- to late 19th century was in fact, as it is now, increasingly populated by people arriving from many different parts of the world. However, very few classic westerns have as principal characters immigrants that do not speak English as native-born people do. In The Dead Don’t Hurt, our two main characters, Vivienne Le Coudy and Holger Olsen, as well as other important roles, speak languages other than English, and speak English with accents related to other language backgrounds. That culturally diverse and multilingual heritage is what really made up a significant part of the non-indigenous population of the western frontier.
Illustration of Viggo Mortensen by Raul Arias
C&I: The western continues to endure as a crowd-pleasing genre, whether it be in movies like yours, or limited-run TV series, or made-for-video westerns that are major sellers at Wal-Mart and popular items at Redbox, or in old TV shows that are constantly rerun on cable and streaming platforms. Why do you think that is so?
Viggo: The western movie genre started out, early in the 20th century, with fairly simple, often naïve stories that reinforced certain kinds of folkloric myths about the opening and settling of the Western frontier. The best of these stories adapted to and reinforced the development of a national identity, and were not only good escapist entertainment, but also morality tales that audiences have always been drawn to in any genre.
Many thousands of westerns were made over the first 50 or 60 years of the cinematic art form, many of them cheaply-made B-movies intended for the opening feature on a double-bill. These rapidly-shot and edited westerns were usually fairly naïve stories that were aimed at rural movie patrons that included families with children. These movie stories were usually fairly straightforward repetitions or reincarnations of stock situations involving pioneers, outlaws, lawmen, cattle rustlers, military conflicts with Indigenous peoples, and so on. Audiences got what they wanted and came back for more every week. Among the more than 7,000 westerns made in the half century leading up to 1960 or so, there are also, thanks to talented screenwriters and directors, some great original stories in the Western genre. The best of them, before and after 1960, include profound and complex stories that are the equal of the finest poetry, adventure stories, and tragedies ever imagined by human beings.
Viggo Mortensen and Vicki Krieps in The Dead Don’t Hurt
C&I: Except maybe for Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand, I don’t remember too many other westerns that deal with the subject of women left behind by adventure-seeking men as sympathetically and insightfully as yours. Is this something you might like to explore in another film?
Viggo: Yes, The Hired Hand has been reevaluated by critics who initially dismissed Fonda’s work in telling that story. And although a woman is quite important in that movie, I agree with you — the way women have usually been portrayed in westerns has not kept pace with changes in society and the evolution of how women are perceived and perceive themselves. It is fairly rare, even now, to see a realistically-depicted woman at the heart of a western, and it is even more unusual to stay with a female character when her male partner, brother, father, or son goes off to war.
Among the things I wanted to explore in The Dead Don’t Hurt was what little girls and women feel, think, and do when they are left behind by men and boys who go off to fight their wars. As to what I might direct next, there are a couple of stories with significant female roles in them, but the truth is that I will direct whichever of the 5 or 6 ready-to-go stories I have that I can find financing for first. Getting original, independently-financed and -directed movies made has become increasingly difficult. But I can be pretty stubborn. We’ll see.
C&I: We still occasionally hear from readers asking if there’s any possibility of a sequel for Appaloosa. Is that a just a pipe dream?
Viggo: I haven’t been asked about that for a long time, to be honest. I enjoyed working on that story for Ed Harris and [cinematographer] Dean Semler. Good characters, good script by Ed and Robert Knott, great locations and art department work on that movie. Too many years might have passed to make a sequel. But I guess one never knows.
Watch the full trailer for The Dead Don't Hurt.
From our July 2024 issue.