My Friday night with Viggo

Friday night, I went to the screening of "A History of Violence" up in LA with a friend who's a member of SAG. Every year, SAG randomly picks members to be on the nomination committee for the SAG Awards and send these people passes to screenings of current movies that will usually include a Q&A session with the actors from the movies. My friend, Bill, got picked and being that I luuuuurve Viggo, he invited me up and off we went!

The movie was pretty good with a few intense violent scenes and a couple of pretty hardcore, hot sex scenes between Viggo and Maria Bello who plays his wife. Being that it's directed by David Cronenburg, the intensity of the film is not surprising. The thing that I loved the most was that no matter how raw and explicit these scenes were, you (at least, I) didn't walk out of there thinking how gratuitous or unnecessary they were to the point of the movie. The tone was very controlled, the doses of violence and sex were well thought-out and injected in perfect amounts needed to convey the certain emotions that were needed from you as a viewer.

Bill mentioned that he thought the villains were too black and white. Completely evil, one-dimensional. The movie is based on a graphic novel by the same name so that probably adds to the evil-without-a-doubt, one-dimensionality of the villains. They were pissed, remorseless, and completely focused on getting their job done.

After the movie was over, Ashton Holmes, Maria Bello, and Viggo (he was a few minutes late due to traffic—-DAMN LA!) came out for the Q&A session. Viggo came out in a suit with what underneath??? A freakin' Mets jersey! How random, but how perfect! Is he not the perfect man?!?!?!?! Anyhoo, the interviewer onstage got the conversation rolling with a couple of questions and then people from the audience started asking their questions. Of course as expected almost all the questions people had were about the sex scenes. They all took their time answering everyone's questions patiently and thoroughly without any sense of arrogance or rush. I was quite impressed, no air of high-and-mightiness. Viggo's very soft-spoken, which if you’ve seen any interviews with him, you'll know this. Even with a mic, it was hard for me to hear everything he was saying (especially with my goddamned poor hearing). One man in the audience stated that he was disturbed by the sex scenes and Viggo's response: "Maybe you needed to be disturbed." Maria Bello said her dad was surprisingly OK with watching "his daughter getting banged on the staircase but freaked out when he saw my pubic hair." She said she tried to explain the symbolism of the frontal nudity to him but all he was hearing was "blah, blah, blah."

All in all, it was very cool to see *swooning* Viggo *swooning* and more *swooning* (the man is simply gorgeous)......... The movie was really good. And Maria Bello and Ashton Holmes are pretty damn short!