Viggo is easier to listen to than read, because he has this kind-of constant-stream-of-consciousness way of talking...
Here is an excerpt that I like: (They have been talking about his photography exhibits, and his poetry)
ST: That's an interesting physical manipulation, like the one David Lynch used in Lost Highway, where he actually takes the lens off his camera to get a blur you can't get with any kind of other manipulation. You work in many different mediums. Which do you feel is the most rewarding? Do they all bring you the same satisfaction?
VM: I look at them all as being the same thing. The only difference, practically speaking, is movies. There the finished work is out of your hands. I like acting, I like the whole process of movie-making, the team effort of it. No matter how big the film is, it doesn't have to be impersonal. However, as an actor you do not, so to speak, finish the painting.
Coincidence and Memory. "I wouldn't put anything in a book, thinking, 'Somebody might like this.'"I'm working on a job now and I've got this whole crew sitting up on a hill in middle-of-nowhere Montana. A couple days ago, there was this hail. And everybody's just sitting there, kind of setting up the scene with clothing from 1890 and a herd of close to a thousand horses. And the waiting is almost like a ritual, like preparation for a religious moment where something might happen. You have words for the ceremony, the vestments, and all the elements and you're hoping that something good happens. So it's still interesting, the group getting together and doing it.
But the end result of what I do individually as an actor isn't mine. I don't always recognize it that much as being mine, depending on what someone does with it. Whereas with the other media, for better or worse, the process and the results are both mine.
ST: Your poem "Edit", from Coincidence, makes me think of that. The "graveyard that smells of popcorn".
VM: Yeah, I wrote that about 10 or 11 years ago. When I wrote it, I was being sort of tongue-in-cheek -- trying to have a bit of a sense of humor about the situation -- but I probably got more angry about it then than I do now. I've learned to accept that that's just the deal. That's the nature of it: the director or whoever is in charge of the editing. It's their painting and I'm just a part of it.
