The actor David Cronenberg instantly fell in love with: “It was a mutual seduction”
You may have read the 1997 graphic novel A History of Violence, written by John Wagner and illustrated by Vince Locke, published by DC Comics’ Vertigo line. It’s more likely that you’ve seen the 2005 film adaptation starring Viggo Mortensen and directed by David Cronenberg. The comic is prefaced with lines from William Cowper’s ‘The Needless Alarm’.
“Beware of des’prate steps / The darkest day / (Live till tomorrow) / Will have passed away”, signalling that this is a comic book (or graphic novel, if you like) that takes itself seriously. It’s not your Dad’s Spider-Man comic. Trying to emphasize the ‘novel’ part of ‘graphic novel’. The story is about a mafia hitman who’s retired to a sleepy town in the unspecified vicinity of nowhere, under a new name, new identity and started a new family. Runs a little diner, serving drip coffee and hashbrowns to Bible Belt voters.
Viggo Mortenson’s character, Tom Stall, in both the comic and the film adaptation, brutalises two robbers looking to get the chump change out of his diner’s cash register and ends up on the news. This becomes problematic for him, as he’s a former mob enforcer who had faked his death to assume a more peaceful life. His former gangster associates bother to watch MSNBC that day and find him out, track him down. Drama and violence ensue as his false identity is breached.
You probably know Mortenson from The Lord of the Rings where he played Aragorn (son of Arathorn, heir to Isildur etc etc) the reluctant king who had to fulfill his destiny to help a short guy throw jewelry into a volcano. Since then? He played Sigmund Freud in A Dangerous Method and a scary Russian guy in Eastern Promises, both directed by Cronenberg.
It blossomed into a prolific working relationship, both of them singing one another’s praises at any opportunity. But regarding A History of Violence, David Cronenberg, was immediately attracted to Viggo for the role. He recalls meeting him on a perfunctory LA visit to discuss the role in RadioFree,
Cronenberg says “He was interested right away, but I came to Los Angeles from Toronto to seduce him, basically. I think it was a mutual seduction because we liked each other’s work, but we wanted to see if we were talking about the same movie.” Apparently they were, as this was not the las time Cronenberg would go on to cast Viggo in one of his pictures. Their professional relationship exists to this day.
He goes on, “So we talked a lot about the politics of the script, the characters, the way that I work, the way that he works, and so on. And after that conversation, I knew he would do the movie.” and it’s unclear if either of them actually read the comic book. Cronenberg probably gave it a once over. The two of them are artists in lockstep, though.
