The Fly
In David Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES, Viggo Mortensen* urinates hard on a gravestone. Wish I could remember the name carved on the stone so I could Google it. I mean, what an unmissable opportunity! I’m sure the cemetery people (cemetarians?) wouldn’t allow an actor to pass water over a real Last Resting Place, so the stone must’ve been knocked up specially, in which case somebody got to choose the name inscribed on it, and who could resist making that name at least a close facsimile to an ex-wife’s, a movie critic’s, an unsympathetic producer’s or a school bully’s?
Wish I knew which. Two obvious possibilities, Robin Wood, once Canada’s premier writer-on-film, who never liked Cronenberg’s stuff, and the producers of Cronenberg’s dull drag racing movie, FAST COMPANY, can be excluded. Because it’s not their name. I don’t recollect exactly what the name IS, but I didn’t recognise it. Anybody out there with an Academy screener who can check?
New Year’s resolution: get my mind out of the sewer.
*Regular reader Elver Loho points out that it’s not Viggo who does this at all, but another character. So this post is even more fatuous than we already believed…
December 30, 2007 at 10:33 pm
I’m fairly certain it wasn’t Mortensen urinating on the gravestone, but the son of the bald Turkish gangster on his way to a football (soccer) game. He gets his throat cut soon after.
And every mind is much more fun in the sewer :P
December 31, 2007 at 12:15 am
You’re utterly right! I should hire you as my Editor in Charge of Micturation Issues.
I’ll put in a little erratum, wouldn’t want Aragorn coming after me.
December 31, 2007 at 6:36 am
Rumor has it that Mortensen used to walk around town wearing the Aragorn sword between shooting on LOTR. To stay in character. The local police wasn’t amused. For Eastern Promises he traveled around Russia for two weeks without an interpreter, studying local culture and gangs. That’s one dude you really don’t want coming after you :P
December 31, 2007 at 10:25 am
Yeah, and he and Maria Bello were black and blue after the sex scene on the stairs in A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE. I don’t want that either! I don’t think.
December 31, 2007 at 11:45 am
Another possibility would be to put the name of someone who’d enjoy being pissed on. Or would that be wrong.
December 31, 2007 at 12:14 pm
No, Binky, in a way that would be a nicer thing to do. And it does seem possible Cronenberg might know such a person, although everybody says he’s quite normal really.
Chris Ecclestone: “Cronenberg? He’s a JOKER! Completely relaxed. He just sits there reading his motor magazines between takes.”