Oct 21, 2026 04:17 AM
(This post was last modified: Oct 21, 2026 04:55 AM by Magical Realist.)
"Viggo Mortensen wrote, directed and starred in a film about a gay man caring for the father who throws homophobic slurs at him, and distributors kept telling him it was "too much."
The film was Falling (2020), his first as a director. Mortensen, who turns 68 today, plays John, a married man in Los Angeles whose father, played by Lance Henriksen, is sliding into dementia and comes to stay with John and his husband. The father never stops attacking who John is. John keeps trying to care for him.
Writing an early scene where John gets a call from his partner, Mortensen asked himself, "What if it's not a wife? What if it's a husband?" When distributors balked at the father's language, he asked: "Have you paid attention to what's going on in the country?"
And when he was asked about a straight actor playing the gay lead, he pushed back on the premise: who said he was completely straight? The answer, he added, is "frankly none of your business."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvE0ReOrPn0
The film was Falling (2020), his first as a director. Mortensen, who turns 68 today, plays John, a married man in Los Angeles whose father, played by Lance Henriksen, is sliding into dementia and comes to stay with John and his husband. The father never stops attacking who John is. John keeps trying to care for him.
Writing an early scene where John gets a call from his partner, Mortensen asked himself, "What if it's not a wife? What if it's a husband?" When distributors balked at the father's language, he asked: "Have you paid attention to what's going on in the country?"
And when he was asked about a straight actor playing the gay lead, he pushed back on the premise: who said he was completely straight? The answer, he added, is "frankly none of your business."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvE0ReOrPn0