Why I Am In Love With Viggo Mortensen

This is from The Lord of the Rings: The Making of the Movie Trilogy by Brian Sibley (HarperCollins 2002) -- and yes, I did spend my lunch hour in Barnes and Noble reading it and copying this down because I didn't have $30 to buy the book:

"Seeing a film is not something to be looked down on in comparison with reading a book. There can be millions of identical copies of any book, and yet the copy you hold and read is your personal doorway. It is the same when you go to the movie theater: you and the movie have a secret. It might even be a god-awful movie and you could still walk out with this little secret -- or a big secret -- inside you: a discovery that might stay with you for a day, for a month or two, even years. In those secrets we touch myth and confront universal issues, perhaps even draw new strength for our own lives."

Just such a secret may be found toward the end of The Fellowship of the Ring when, following the death of Boromir, Aragorn takes the dead man's vambraces and straps them to his own forearms. It is a gesture Viggo contributed to the scene: "They serve both as a reminder to Aragorn that he has made a pledge to Boromir and as a way of carrying Boromir's spirit with him as the remnant of the Fellowship continues its journey. In a movie, you can use such symbolism without comment: whether people consciously notice such a detail at the time or not is irrelevant. It still means something. And to the actor, that can be a powerful talisman."

Oh yeah -- the book also had a page about how the production crew had to make a full-size model of Sean Bean so they could shoot Boromir's body going down the falls. Apparently it was so lifelike that one of the production assistants wondered whether they should wake up Mr. Bean and offer him some coffee. I wonder whether it's anatomically correct, and if so, whether Peter Jackson would consider selling it... ;)

And someone on a mailing list I'm on who got to see the extended edition FOTR DVD early just posted a spoiler about the last big Aragorn/Boromir scene, right after they see Gollum, where Boromir tries to convince Aragorn to take the Ring to Minas Tirith. She said, "Aragorn will hear nothing of it, and Boromir winds up grabbing Aragorn by the tunic..." At this point I basically passed out at the mental image.