Y’all know me. Know how I feel about men fightin’ in the nude.
And now you know how David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen – with their second collaboration, Eastern Promises – feel about it, too (courtesy of The Globe and Mail‘s Liam Lacey):
"But the scene that will undoubtedly prove the major talking point of the film is a bathhouse fight between Mortensen and two other men that is loaded with extreme violence along with nudity.
…
Somewhere in there, he says, there was the question of what to do with the towels.
‘I’ll fight naked. That’s how it would happen,’ Cronenberg says of Mortensen’s reaction. ‘There wasn’t even a discussion about what else we do because Viggo knows I’d be too restricted if I couldn’t shoot him from the waist down.’
Cronenberg says he’s already got feedback commenting on the bravery of the scene. ‘These days with DVDs and screen grabs and so on, we know there will be naked shots of him on the Internet, so the naturally vulnerability of the actor is increased, but we also know that’s how the scene must be played.’"
Yes. We know that’s how every scene must be played. Man versus man, coated with sweat, glistening under the midday sun of a cloudless August day… God, how I miss Crete! And young, sinewy Niklos. So petulant. So poised. So powerful!
Eastern Promises opens in limited release on September 14, 2007. Clothing optional, Crisco required.