‘The Dead Don’t Hurt:’ How Costume Designer Anne Dixon Recreated the 1860s For the Viggo Mortensen-Directed Western

Viggo Mortensen produced, composed, wrote, directed, and stars in his latest film, The Dead Don’t Hurt. While wearing so many (Stetson) hats on set, Mortensen took a very active interest in production. According to costume designer Anne Dixon, the three-time Oscar nominee gets as thrilled as she does when they manage to hunt down period-appropriate buttons.

Having previously worked together on his 2020 directorial debut, Falling, Dixon eagerly reunited with Mortensen for The Dead Don’t Hurt. a Western co-starring the luminous Vicky Krieps. Mortensen and Krieps fall for each other, but are separated when he chooses to go fight in the Civil War. Leaving Krieps’ Vivienne to face the brutal frontier alone.

 It’s a love story that spans decades and locations, with the film being shot across Canada, Mexico, and Spain—meaning that like her director, Dixon was left with a lot to juggle. Prioritizing realism, Dixon oversaw costumes that highlight everyone from high society tradesmen to down-on-their-luck beggars, placing her leading lady in rich reds and Mortensen’s carpenter alter ego in worn down, utilitarian attire.

After a successful, buzz-building premiere at TIFF, The Dead Don’t Hurt releases in theaters May 31st. Here in an interview with Awards Daily’s Shadan Larki, Dixon details costuming Mortensen’s audacious Western. Buttons and all.

Awards Daily: Let’s dive into recreating the 1860s. 

Anne Dixon: Well, it was a dream. It’s fabulous to be able to dive into that period. One of the things that we really wanted to make sure of is that it wasn’t a big, huge costume period fashion show. We wanted there to be an honesty to the characters and a real honesty to the costumes. We wanted it to be true to the story, and about the characters. It just happens to be in the 1860s. We wanted reality, and that was the most important thing.

I had some conversations with Viggo. He’s such a Renaissance man. In this instance, he wrote The Dead Don’t Hurt, he composed it, he was one of the producers, he directed it, he was also one of the actors in it. He has such an extensive vocabulary for the arts and a respect for your craft. The Dead Don’t Hurt is my second film with him. There’s a real symbiotic thread between him, the production designer, Carol Spier, and me, and it just flows really well. Viggo sent us a lot of Westerns to look at that he was interested in, and we kind of exchanged [notes on] what we liked and what we didn’t like.

Then, I delved into the research on all of the different areas in the film. It starts off in the 1830s, and you have the Coureur des bois, which were traders from upstate New York and Quebec, and then you’ve got the British troops. You’ve got the settlers. Then, we jump to the 1860s in San Francisco. And there we have the higher society of the art salon, the theater, the restaurants, the rich and wealthy kind of civil war feel. Then you’ve got also juxtaposition of the waterfront. So, you’ve got the seamen, the tradesmen, the Chinatown. There were a lot of things there to look into. Then we go into Elk Flat, which is more on the Western side. You’ve got the saloon. You’ve got the cowboys, the Mexicans, the miners, and the frontier.

Once I have all of my research, and I just gather and gather and gather information from all over the place. I have an extensive library of books and rely on then the internet. I make a look book. And that becomes our Bible, our visual language—a standing point of view. It helps so that we’re on the same page also helps with the production design. We know where we’re going, as well as the cinematographer [Marcel Zyskind], and all my crew who will try to establish this.

And what’s interesting with the lookbooks is that the actors, usually it’s the first time they delve into the world that we’re trying to create. And when they see me for their first fitting, it helps them get into their character to see these boards of visuals for the world we will be going into.

AD: Tell me about working with Viggo. He obviously knows his way around a film set. How did his knowledge and previous experience aid in your costume design process?

Dixon: Viggo is such an incredible Renaissance man. He is always curious. Even as an actor, he was curious about all the departments. He’s a real collaborator, and every single person is as important as Viggo.

And for the craft side of it, as a creator, we started this relationship with Carol Spier the production designer. Carol and I have worked a lot together, so we have a beautiful shorthand. And then with Viggo, there’s a lot of discussions, a lot of trust. He gives you a kernel of a seed, and then you can go water it and just make it bloom. It was a real collaboration, and because he understands filmmaking from the very base of it as teamwork and collaboration. Viggo is a costume designer’s dream to work with as a collaborator. He also has a real sensitivity to in-depth characters. And it’s so fun. Let’s say I find little period metal buttons; he gets just as thrilled as I do.

AD: Watching the film, I was really fascinated by how the different classes of people were represented. How did you show that diversity through the costumes?

Dixon: The Dead Don’t Hurt is from Vivienne (Krieps)’s perspective, from the female perspective. She’s the heartbeat of the story.

When we started off, the young Vivienne would be in reds and terracottas. And then when we jump to 30 years later, when we’re in San Francisco, she’s more into salmon-y colors. And then when we go into the Elk Flat, she’s into softer colors to kind of show her femininity, but also the juxtaposition of how harsh and brutal the world of the frontier world was.

Another thread within that is the Ceinture fléchée, which is the traditional woven belt that was worn first by the Indigenous people and then by the explorers in Quebec. It is a real French-Canadian thing that follows her through the very end of the story. And that, again, has some reds in it. I got a traditional weaver from Quebec that actually did it for us.

But, where the honesty and the realism comes from is that we asked a lot of questions; for instance, when we jumped from the 1830s to the 1860s, what Vivienne bring across the country? You see the same little sweater that she has. And then there’s her chair that she carries through. There are a few pieces like that.

The biggest thing was, what did she have on her horse when she left San Francisco to go across the mountains to arrive at Elk Flat? She’s got the one horse. What does she bring? From furniture to pots and pans to clothing. When she arrived at the bottom of the mountains, we had to think, ‘How often is there a tailor in the town? How often does the coach arrive with bolts of fabric?’ That determines how many clothes she would have made and so forth. We really slimmed it down to the reality of it.

As the story goes on, she gets more strength out in the desert and has to be stronger. She uses pieces from Olsen’s [wardrobe]. For Olsen (Mortensen), I decided, being a carpenter, he should have a period Carhartt jacket. We made a canvas Carhartt jacket for him that was traditionally the right cut for the time. Then Vivienne also uses it at times, mixing and matching with her own stuff. She starts off wearing the bonnet, which is very period appropriate. When she begins selling flowers, she has her straw and then she uses that at the beginning when she’s in Elk Flat, but eventually she wears one of Olsen’s old Stetsons instead. So, we had all these little beats of trying to make it real.

It was pretty epic because we shot in the eastern part of Canada, we shot in the western part of Canada, we shot in Mexico City. And Mexico doesn’t have big period costume rental houses, so we went to Spain, and we pulled from Peris Costumes there. Because there aren’t a lot of clothes left from the frontier period, they made us, I don’t know how many dresses, from my designs. And more elaborate things. I had a group prepping in Spain. I had some people in Ontario. I had another group in British Columbia. I had one in Mexico City, then we moved to Durango, and then we had another crew there as well. So, it was a lot of coordinating and Zooming.

AD: Another thing that added to the realism was the various townspeople we met. Their looks added so much dimension. How did you build out the world of The Dead Don’t Hurt outside our main characters?

Dixon: I think what’s always interesting in costume designing is that it’s not just your actors that are important. It’s your background. It’s kind of like if you’re doing a painting—if you have no background to your painting, it’s just very, very flat. So, to me, it’s always important that if you stopped and looked at every single one of those people, you could actually tell a whole story behind it. It was about making sure that you had a variety of different silhouettes, a variety of different looks and feels, and hats, which were, of course, incredibly important.

When we’re in Elk Flat, we have some Mexicans there, we’ve got the saloon, we’ve got some workers, we have some carpenters, we have more churchgoers, and some characters that are a little looser. I think that just really gives you a lot of depth. And then your characters. can really pop out even more so.

AD: What are you working on now?

Dixon: I just finished doing David Cronenberg’s next feature film, The Shrouds, [due in September]. And that will be quite phenomenal, actually.

The Dead Don’t Hurt releases on May 3st.