All reviews say more about the reviewer than they do about the show. That said, this is my blog and if you continue to read this entry, you will discover that my punctuation is best described as ‘creative.’
I always look forward to reading the marquee above Brixton’s Ritzy Cinema across the street from Lambeth City Hall on my bus rides into town. It gives that brick building next to a library a fleeting ‘small town’ vibe. The marquee displays: movie titles, marriage proposals, festival and anniversary announcements. I was pleasantly surprised to see on there that Viggo Mortensen was doing a Q&A for his new movie The Dead Don’t Hurt one Saturday. I had seen the movie poster a week before and laughed out loud at the title. It was something my super-Midwestern dad would say just before eating a burger in front of me when I was a vegan.
I was looking forward to seeing the movie anyway because pretty much everything Mortensen has been in has been worth seeing. The Dead Don’t Hurt is a Western, a movie and TV genre that I have never particularly sought out. Growing up in the American Midwest, I got more than my fill of real and wannabe cowboy culture. The pervasive aroma of cowshit and pig farms on bus rides to school was enough for me.
There is very little Mortensen didn’t do in this movie. He wrote the script, the score, as well as, produced and starred in the damn thing. He even helped source the horses in Mexico. What compelled him to take all that on? I mean, the movie could have been the Western version of J-lo’s This is Me…Now: A Love Story —possibly the best argument against investing in yourself in recent memory. (That said, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of J-lo’s therapy sessions with Fat Joe.) The Dead Don’t Hurt holds its own probably because Mortensen appears to have done his homework. Although the age difference between the love interests was wider than I’d like to dwell on and the meet-cute is so silly Celeste Barber should recreate it on Instagram—it’s a great Western movie for people like me who don’t like Westerns. I think it is also a fantastic wake-up call for any woman with a prarie dress in her cottagecore-filled closet yearning for ‘a simpler time. Spoiler alert: there has never been one.
Assuming the Q&A probably would be through satellite link/zoom meeting in the theater, I though it would be funny to dress up for it. I wore in a shiny green jinbei-style suit from my photo shoot for the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival that didn’t make the poster. Low and behold, Mortensen showed up in the flesh. My husband, his cousin and I all sat on the front row, I regretted wearing something so shiny but my husband liked it. He said, I looked like I had dressed up for my first high school social and was given no guidance. Thanks Honey.
The actor, Solly McLeod, who grew up in South London and plays the baddie in the film was also answering questions at the Q&A hosted by Rolling Stone film critic Anna Smith. He recounted to her how he got the job and how determined he was to learn how to ride horses. The story of how Mortensen came about acquiring some of the horses was a little more chaotic than I thought it would be but I suppose that just proves you do what you gotta do to get the job done at every level.
When Mortensen insisted this was a story about an extraordinarily ordinary person in the 1860’s, it was hard not to balk but I think he meant a character with no safety net, support network or inheritance to fall back on and I’ll give him that. Througout the movie I couldn’t help but think of what it would be like to go back to living in rural America again—a country so vast and disconnected, it’s impossible to not fall through the cracks.
I liked the audience a lot. I don’t think they were entirely sure Mortensen would be there in person either. Some of the questions definitely had the vibe of ‘I have a personal connection to your body of work and I want to say thank you and how much I appreciate you but I have to think of a question instead because those are the rules.’ I did not ask a question because I wore that shiny suit. Anything I asked would just make me look like an asshole. If I remember correctly, Mortensen divulged that he wrote and recorded the score before filming the movie which was jaw-dropping. Surely the score is recorded after filming to accommodate unforeseen changes in the script?! To do so before filming? Man, Viggo’s got balls. With that in mind, the movie’s sound mixing was even more impressive to us three film nerds.
BTW, if you want to see my new Edinburgh show with music I did not write because I wouldn’t even know where to begin to do that— I’ll be at the Pleasance Courtyard in the Beside every day at the festival except the 13th doing Spring Day: Exvangelical. Click here for tickets.
