Viggo Mortensen talking:
I saw both the clip of what he said on the 24th of October, and I saw him on All In last night with Chris Hayes, and I thought that Quentin Tarantino knocked it out of the park in his interview last night. He clearly saw what anybody with eyes on their head could see in certain videos. Fortunately, those certain events were videotaped, of police brutality. He was commenting, like the people, the families of those who had been slain by police officers—unarmed people, you know. In some cases, those acts have been condemned, you know, have been called murder. And in other cases, they have controversially not been—what happened on Staten Island, you know, recently, and in other places, even though they were videotaped, and all could see what was going on.
You know, clearly, there is a—it’s a small minority, obviously, and it is a problem, of police officers, not just in New York and not just in Missouri and not just in the South, but all over the country—there are some individuals who break the law, who are committing criminal acts as police officers, who are murdering, who are using excessive force. But what’s more troubling—and that’s part of the reaction, the backlash against Tarantino—is the condoning, the tacit condoning of these abuses of power by certain police officers by their bosses, by people who should know better.
Quentin Tarantino did not say that all cops are murderers. He didn’t say, “I hate cops.” Never said any of those things. He said, “Certain things that I have seen and that everyone has seen are wrong, and I’m bearing witness.” You know, that’s what the Howard Zinn book and Twilight of Empire are about. They’re about bearing witness.
But it’s not just Tarantino. It’s about all the other people that were there on a 24th. It’s not—you know, just being someone in the entertainment business does not give you more right than anyone else to speak, and it certainly doesn’t give you less right. You know, the way that the police authority figures are speaking against Tarantino is by making irrelevant moral judgments about his movies, you know, to attack him. And that will work, you know, with a certain part of the population who likes to think, “Well, everything that’s done in the movie business is—you know, it’s Sodom and Gomorrah, and these people shouldn’t be allowed to speak,” and so forth.
I mean, I don’t think anything I say on this program today is going to be a problem for me as far as big reaction, because I’m not, you know—I mean, people see my movies, fortunately, but I’m not—it’s not like when Lord of the Rings came out. Then I was more in the news, along with the rest of the cast, you know, because those movies were a box office phenomenon. But I was, you know, mercilessly attacked and slandered by all kinds of people just for saying in—I remember 2002, I think, I was on Charlie Rose and in other places when I was asked what I thought about, you know, what was going on or the buildup to war in Iraq. I just said, “Well, it’s wrong.” I said, “Obviously there’s no justification for it.” And I got hundreds of emails a day for months and months saying, you know, “Why don’t you move to France?” And much worse.
I was a traitor and a coward and so forth, and I didn’t have a right to speak. This is what they do to Quentin, saying, “You’re a movie maker, you don’t have a right to speak. Let the politicians speak about politics.” Well, I think that letting our rulers decide how to govern us is not—we haven’t had a great history there.
there were some people, you know, friends of mine or people who are among those who do like to find out, who do like to see what’s going on and think for themselves, who felt that it was a good thing to speak up, you know? And yes, I was there to promote the movie. And there are some who would say, “Well, you know, you’re there to talk about the movie. Don’t talk about that.” He asked me about the shirt I was wearing, so I answered.
I think there’s times where you have to speak up, or you should, or you look back and you think, “You know, I should have said something, because I knew better.” And that goes for most of Congress, you know, in 2002 and 2003. This interview that you just showed a clip from was in the fall of 2002. And I think on that show at one point—whether it was on the air or not, I don’t remember—Charlie said, “Well, how do you—why are you saying there’s going to be an invasion of Iraq?” And I said, “Well, you know, today I opened the fashion section of The New York Times, and they were showing all the new military uniforms. I mean, this is a movie that’s obviously green-lit and well on its way in pre-production, and it’s ready to go.”
I was talking about the invasion of Iraq, you know, under false pretenses. And I don’t know. Yeah, no, I got a lot—because those movies—that was when the second one was coming out, The Two Towers, and so all of us who were involved in that trilogy were suddenly very popular. And just as is the case with Quentin Tarantino now speaking about police brutality and the condoning of it by the authorities within police departments, I got a lot of crap at the time, you know, tons of it, on a daily basis for months and months, that I was a traitor, that I should, you know, move to France, as I say, and much worse, you know? And this is what—this is what routinely happens. I mean, Quentin Tarantino didn’t say anything that many other people have said, but because he is a public figure and he will be making the rounds and be doing interviews for months to come and probably go to the Oscars with his movie The Hateful Eight and so forth, they attack that movie and are trying to make people boycott and so forth. I mean, I have a feeling that probably more people will go see his movie than would have anyway. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. But sometimes you do—you do lose employment.
I have gotten emails at times when I have said something critical of U.S. foreign policy, whether it be with regard to the government of Israel or problems in the Middle East, problems in Latin America, when I’ve spoken about, you know, something that’s a long tradition in this country. I mean, even in recent history, the Clinton Doctrine, Bill Clinton Doctrine, basically says that the United States has—reserves the right to use unilateral military force anytime, anywhere that, you know, it feels that it doesn’t have access to foreign markets or resources, anytime it wants to enforce its geopolitical ambitions. I mean, that’s crazy. That’s tyranny. And George W. Bush didn’t do anything new. He just followed that doctrine. And so has Barack Obama.
You know, I saw an excellent show you had on here with Jeremy Scahill talking about “The Drone Papers.” I mean, everybody should see that, you know? I want to see, I want to know. And when I saw that show, I sent that link to everybody I knew—and many people I didn’t know. And whether they looked at it or not, I don’t know, but there are times when you have to say something. I felt at that moment in 2002, in the fall of 2002—I was in New York City, and here we were, you know, New York City, where the year before, you know, September 11th and all that. And just there are certain things that can’t be left alone without comment, I think.
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Viggo Mortensen
Academy Award-nominated actor and editor of Perceval Press.
— source democracynow.org