From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment, what you can also hear at KCRW.com, I'm Elvis Mitchell.

My guest is a poet, a musician, a painter, a writer.

We've come to the last decade. We've come to know him as an actor, though. He's been acting for much longer than that. He's Vigo Mortensen. His newest film is the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Vigo, first of all, thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me. somewhat your poetry is about transition. Your last three films have been about something that runs in your poetry quite a bit,

which is that connection between man's animal nature and his civilized nature.

And if we look at The End of Violence, Appaloosa, Eastern Promises,

and now the road, these films have all dealt with that precipice that men find themselves upon.

I like to read books or short stories or poems, go to movies where people are up against it.

You know, I mean, that's inherently dramatic.

I think people, most people are interested in the stories that, well, you don't necessarily have to go through

it yourself. You can live vicariously through other people who are tested, you know, severely sometimes,

because that's when your character comes out and you make mistakes. Do you rectify those mistakes?

Are those mistakes fatal? Are they tragic and long-lasting? Can you fix it? Are situations where

relatively ordinary people end up sometimes doing extraordinary things just because of the pressure

or, as in the case of the road, out of love for your son.

You do things. You live longer. You have more courage because you're protecting someone.

An extreme situation brings something out of you that you didn't know you had.

You know, those kinds of stories I've always found interesting.

But these last four movies, though, there really is that they're about animal nature versus civilization.

And they have kind of four in a row that deal with that in very different ways,

but that's really crucial to each of those characters.

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