Viggo Mortensen Rides Tall in Cowboys & Indians Magazine

Viggo Mortensen Rides Tall in Cowboys & Indians Magazine

DALLAS, Sept. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- The last time Viggo Mortensen cowboyed up on the big screen, he was a long-distance endurance racer in 2004's "Hidalgo." But in "Appaloosa," the eagerly awaited Western drama previewed in the October issue of Cowboys and Indians magazine, he's shooting straight and riding hard as a lawman in one of the most lawless towns of the Wild West.

Based on the best-selling novel by Robert B. Parker, "Appaloosa" follows the adventures of two veteran peacekeepers -- Virgil Cole (played by Ed Harris, who also directed the film) and Everett Hitch (Mortensen) -- who establish rough justice in an 1882 mining town. The long-time partners duly dispatch the minions of a renegade rancher (Jeremy Irons) who's terrorizing the good people of Appaloosa. But a mysterious widow named Allison French (Renee Zellweger) may prove far more dangerous than the rancher's hired guns.

"It's a good story, and I'm glad to be in it," Mortensen tells C&I, adding that he took great pains to make his character believable -- and his actions, historically accurate.

"I looked at old Remington drawings and other images to see how guys would really stand in gunfights back then," Mortensen says. "It wasn't that thing you always see in movies, where the guy is standing there with his legs apart and with his hands out waiting to draw his gun. Not that people never did that. But it just made more sense to me that you'd have one leg forward, and your hand forward, and your gun's already out.

"I have to say," Mortensen adds, "I did think about it like a bullfighter at that final moment, with the sword. I saw a Remington drawing of a guy facing down another guy in the street, using exactly that position."

Elsewhere in the October issue of Cowboys & Indians, now on sale at newsstands everywhere, singer-songwriter Jimmy Wayne -- whose single "Do You Believe Me Now?" currently is Number One on the Billboard and USA Today country music charts -- talks about the recent re-launch of his recording career with his first new CD in five years.

But wait, there's more: C&I contributor David Hofstede celebrates the stock company of players and collaborators who figured prominently in the classic Western of director John Ford. Cowboys and cowgirls get tips on the latest trends in Western Wear in a fall fashion preview. And superstar Kevin Costner gives readers an exclusive up-close look at his Aspen ranch in a C&I profile.

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Source: Cowboys and Indians Magazine

CONTACT: Joe Leydon, Communications Director of Cowboys and Indians
Magazine, +1-713-403-6910

Web site: http://www.cowboysindians.com/

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Profile: International Entertainment