Josh Olson on Viggo Mortensen in "A History of Violence:" “There were probably a couple of other actors who I thought of, but he was in the top one or two. …He’s got the sort of quintessential type of American look to him. He reminds me of Kirk Douglas sometimes in darker films that he did.
I was really gratified when ‘Lord of the Rings’ came out. I said, ‘Oh there he is. He’s playing almost a super hero and now he’s going to start getting bigger parts.’ He’s just somebody I spotted as having a kind of appeal that I don’t see a lot of actors having anymore. It’s just mainly from when I grew up that I’m always on the prowl for guys who could kind of play the roles Clint Eastwood played 30 years ago. And he sort of seems to be that kind - with some real serious acting chops. So he kind of came to mind.
There were probably others. Obviously with something like this, invariably Sean Penn’s gonna pop up, especially post ‘Mystic River.’ But yeah, Viggo’s kind of the guy who like locked himself in my head.”
On New Line’s Involvement: Asked if New Line tried to get them to cut out or tone down the sex scenes, Olson said absolutely not. “No, not at all. I was surprised it made it through. And I think that has something to do with the fact that we had some pretty graphic violence and it distracted them a little bit. And also they’re fully clothed and they’re married, so it’s all right.”
Josh Olson on Scenes That Didn’t Make It Into “A History of Violence:” “There’s a couple of things that got lost. I’m always wary… To me it’s like the writer who complains about the movie had better be complaining about how bad the movie is, not what’s not in it. If I’m watching a film, I’m not noticing that there’s not a scene set in a bar. I’m noticing the performance is terrible, this story makes no sense.
There’s a couple of scenes, a small handful in every single one of them but I know why they’re not in the film. There’s one or two of them I might have kept in, but they’re not like [mandatory] - you know what I mean? It’s not like, ‘Why did you cut this?’ If I were directing it I would have kept that because that’s the kind of movie I would be making, and David’s about making that film. There’s this one scene that’s just kind of cool for older fans like me that - a dream sequence that’s a little gruesome, kind of horrific that got cut out. I think it may be on the DVD.”
