Esquire - May 14, 2009
The actor on golf as torture, the connection between funny and scary, and why he's sick of playing messed-up characters
Morning is the best time to see movies.
I remember once, years ago, I was walking out a door — I'd been having a conversation and I was walking out the door, and this guy said to me, "Chris," and I stopped and I turned, and he said, "Be careful." And I never forgot that. And it comes back to me often: Be careful. That was good advice.
That's supposed to be a fact, that the question mark is originally from an Egyptian hieroglyph that signified a cat walking away. You know, it's the tail. And that symbol meant — well, whatever it is when they're ignoring you.
When I was a kid, there was someone in my family, an adult, and whenever I saw them, they would say, "You got a lotta nerve." From the time I was a little kid, it was always like, "Heh, heh, heh — you got a lotta nerve." I always thought, What does that mean? But then when I got older, I thought that it was an instruction. If you tell a kid something, it sticks. I think I do have a lot of nerve. But, I mean, I think I maybe got it from that person who said it to me.
My father was a lesson. He had his own bakery, and it was closed one day a week, but he would go anyway. He did it because he really loved his bakery. It wasn't a job.
I used to love Danish. My father used to make a Boston cream pie. You never see that anymore. Very good.
Most of the jobs I get are basically very unwholesome people. There's always something wrong with the guy, and sometimes something deeply wrong. I'm tired of that. I tell my agent I want a Fred MacMurray part. I want a part where I have a wife and kids and a dog and a house, and my kids say to me, "What do you think I should do, Dad?" and I say, "Be careful."
I always figured that if I'm gonna be playing these people, that there should be this relationship to the audience that is very clear. "That's Chris, and look at Chris having a good time, wanting to take over the world and sink California and shoot everybody in the room" — just so long as they understand that that's Chris on the set having fun. And that Chris wouldn't really do anything like that.
Golf. My God, that's a mysterious occupation. I know people who are — good friends — who are absolutely smitten, practicing their swing and talking about it. I can understand some sort of sport where your body got a benefit, like marathon running or bicycle racing. That's not golf. And not only that, but the whole business of standing in the sun — my God. That's like torture.
I love spaghetti. And I like to cook spaghetti. And I used to eat it every day. I weighed thirty pounds more than I do now. You can't — you can't do that. Ice cream — I love to watch television and eat ice cream. But that's like a ten-year-old. I can't do that anymore. Beer. Beer, spaghetti, ice cream.
Professional dancers don't go dancing.
When you're onstage and you know you're bombing, that's very, very scary. Because you know you gotta keep going — you're bombing, but you can't stop. And you know that half an hour from now, you're still gonna be bombing. It takes a thick skin.
I had an agent when I first got into the movies who said to me, "You're gonna be in Los Angeles now once in a while. If somebody invites you to a party, don't go. Stay in your room, go to the movies." And I have a feeling I know sort of what he meant: Don't show your face around too much. Let 'em be a little glad to see you.
It all happened when I did The Deer Hunter. Suddenly — I'd already been in show business for thirty years, and nothing much had happened. I mean, I really was laboring in obscurity, and then suddenly this movie. It was kind of infectious, and I really did become rather social. Gregarious. And that lasted, I don't know, ten years.
Movie scripts are usually pretty loose — things usually change a lot. But not with Quentin. His scripts are absolutely huge. All dialogue. It's all written down. You just learn the lines. It's more like a play.
Sometimes I look at this watch and I think, There's some guy that puts these little screws in there? There is something about it. I'm not into cars, either, but there is something about a really magnificent car.
Me and Dennis [Hopper], when we were doing that scene in True Romance, it was hilarious. It really was — including shooting him. All that laughing was real. He was killing me. And all the guys around us — that was a very cracking-up day.
I like to listen to radio interviews. I got a list of things that if I wasn't so lazy, I would do something about, but the idea of having a radio show — two people talking on the radio is fascinating. I'll bet you there's some college around here — they all have radio stations. I get now that I don't like to go anywhere, so if there was some place down the road — twenty minutes' drive.
I don't like zoos. Awful.
They say that the human smile is in fact one of those primordial things — that in fact it's a showing of teeth, that it's a warning. That when we smile, in a primeval way it has to do with fear.
There's something dangerous about what's funny. Jarring and disconcerting. There is a connection between funny and scary.
_______________________________________________________________Movieweb.com - Jul 2, 2007
EXCLUSIVE: Christopher Walken Loves Up on Travolta's Fat Suit in Hairspray
Christopher Walken
discusses hair products and falling in love with John Travolta
By now, everyone is familiar with Christopher Walken's appearance in the Fatboy Slim video Weapon of Choice. What many of you might not know is that Walken is a classically trained dancer with a background in Broadway and musical comedy. In Hairspray, he gets a chance to put his amazing skills to use.
Walken plays Wilbur Turnblad in the film, a role originated by Jerry Stiller in the 1988 John Waters original. Wilbur is the loving father of Nicky Turnblad, an energetic teenager with weight issues. He is also the husband of Edna Turnblad, a happily obese John Travolta in a fat suit.
We recently sat down with Walken to talk about his experiences on the set of Hairspray. Here is what the iconic cult figure had to say about it:
Good job!
Christopher Walken: Thank you.
Did you have to think twice about doing this role at all?
Christopher Walken: No. No. They don't make many movie musicals these days. So, to be in one is pretty rare.
You sure have a lot of energy in these dance sequences.
Christopher Walken: I do. That's what I did when I was a kid. It comes back. I was a show dancer.
Did you think you'd ever be kissing John Travolta?
Christopher Walken: I don't think we actually kiss. Almost. A little bit.
It was a little peck on the cheek. It was sweet.
Christopher Walken: They cut the kiss because it turned into an X-rated scene. We had to have a PG.
Were you feeling up the costume, or what?
Christopher Walken: (Laughs hysterically for a minute) No. It was a pleasure. When John and I worked together, we rehearsed a long time on that dance. And he was always John. And he was very fit. He's playing this big woman, I wondered, "Why do you have to be so fit?" But then when we were shooting, I understood. This was a huge thing, this costume. And he was in high heels. It was like carrying a mattress. He had to be very strong underneath that. When I saw him in it, I was awe struck. But a few minutes later, when I looked at him again, it was just John under there. I never thought of him as Edna. I just thought of us as Chris and John. For a moment I was shocked. When he walked on, and there were all the people in the movie. It was really something. But after five or ten minutes, it was just John.
Were you a little nervous about taking this part?
Christopher Walken: I don't think so. No. I was fine. I hear that John was the one that initiated me being in the film. But once they asked me, I was fine with it.
Adam, the director, said there was a little reluctance on New Line's part.
Christopher Walken: Maybe with New Line. The producer may have hesitated. But I didn't. The producer always hesitates.
Did you ever feel like a victim of typecasting?
Christopher Walken: No. I don't feel typecast. Typecasting is better than no casting. (Laughs)
How do you feel about working with all these new, young actors?
Christopher Walken: It was amazing. The only young person I was really with was Nicky Blonsky. When I saw the film, I thought they were all fantastic. Amazing. They were wonderful. Elijah Kelly was pretty good, huh?
Have you see the finished film?
Christopher Walken: I didn't see what you saw. I don't think so. The version I saw was longer. And there was no audience. When I saw it, there were three people there. I have to go see it with an audience.
Do you have product in your hair, or do you just have naturally perfect hair?
Christopher Walken: I use hairspray. (Laughs)
Did you have to go through a lot of rehearsals on this movie?
Christopher Walken: We rehearsed, sure. Then again, we shot it very fast. I'm glad you guys liked it. I've worked with Michelle Pfeiffer before. I love her. But I had no idea that she could sing like that. That was really her. She can sing.
How did you and Travolta get so close?
Christopher Walken: We were together rehearsing, and I like him very much. I think we just like each other. That's just lucky. We weren't pals. I didn't know him. But when we would work, we got along very good. I think you can see that.
What do you think it is about your personality that resonates with this younger crowd?
Christopher Walken: Its great to hear that, but I'm not sure what it is. There are a few things that I did. I remember when I did Batman Returns. That was a little while ago, but I was with my wife in Italy. And we were walking up this very dusty road in a small town. This local woman with a young boy was coming in the opposite direction. And as we went by...I played Max Shreck...And as we passed, the woman says, "Bonjurno!" The little boy looks up at me and says, "Max!" So, I don't know. That's nice, you know. Also, the Fatboy Slim video. I think a lot of young people saw that. Saturday Night Live. A lot of young people watch that.
How is it that every impressionist wants to do you?
Christopher Walken: That is true. I must be easy to do.
Who is your favorite?
Christopher Walken: There's Spacey. Jay Mohr. A lot of people. People who are not actors like to come up to me and do it.
Does that ever bother you?
Christopher Walken: No, it doesn't. It's good. I don't know why. But its very interesting, isn't it?
What character would you like to do in the future?
Christopher Walken: In this, I play a father and a husband. A good guy. I would like to play more of those.
How did you get involved in Balls of Fury? Are you a big Ping-Pong player?
Christopher Walken: No. It just seemed like something I wanted to do. The actual script, itself, when you read it, was funny.
Do you think it will be funny?
Christopher Walken: I don't know. I haven't seen it. The trailers? I don't understand why people pay so much attention to the trailers. I have never known anything about a movie from watching the trailer. It doesn't do anything. I don't understand what it is about them.
Are we ever going to see your memoirs?
Christopher Walken: I would write my memoirs, but I can't remember anything. I have been asked to write my memories, actually. I feel that I am too young to do that. I could get my notes together. The thing about memoirs is that you can't write them without talking about people. That's the only hitch.
So, you're going to wait until you retire?
Christopher Walken: Or have my papers ready to go in a safe box until I have gone into the great beyond. Then, you can read my memoirs. If I'm not in the great beyond, people will kill me anyway.
What do you do for fun when you're not acting?
Christopher Walken: What do I do for fun? This, here is okay. I stay home a lot. I live in a nice place with trees. I like to stay there.
Do you like doing comedies better than the dramas?
Christopher Walken: I think all stories are good. I don't think it's a bad idea to approach any story like a comedy. Some stories are serious, but they are serious all by themselves. I don't have to make it serious.
Is there anything you'd do over if you could do it over?
Christopher Walken: I wouldn't have eaten that last slice of pizza...Sorry. I don't know. Actually, they say that if you do one little thing differently, everything changes. You have to be careful. I wouldn't do anything different.
Do you think you picked the right profession?
Christopher Walken: Oh, definitely.
Did you know all along that this is what you wanted to be doing?
Christopher Walken: I did. Because I was already there and doing it. I also knew that there was nothing else I could do.
Do you still feel like that, looking back?
Christopher Walken: Yes. Oh, yes. If I did anything else, it wouldn't be as good to me as this.
Are there any people you've never worked with that you would love to work with?
Christopher Walken: Sure. People I have never worked with. Martin Scorsese. Sydney Pollock. Bertolucci. Lots of people.
How have you managed never to work with Scorsese?
Christopher Walken: I almost worked with him once. Years ago, I was going to be in the The Last Temptation of Christ. But way back, in the early 80s, I was going to do that and they cancelled it. Then they were going to do it again, and they cancelled it again. By the time they made it, I was gone. But I was with him for some time. Talking, and getting ready for the film. It was fascinating. We looked at paintings a lot.
Has he talked to you at all about the film Silence?
Christopher Walken: No, he didn't call me yet.
Hairspray opens on July 22nd, 2007
_______________________________________________________________AboutFilm.com - Nov 2004
Christopher Walken is best known for… well… being Christopher Walken. People don't remember great Christopher Walken movies. They don't remember that he won a Supporting Actor Oscar for Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978) or a Screen Actors Guild Award for Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002). They don't remember his subtlety and nuance in lead performances, as a man struggling with psychic abilities after a prolonged coma in David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone (1983), or as Sean Penn's murderous father in James Foley's At Close Range (1986).
No, people remember great Christopher Walken moments. These moments include the wristwatch speech in Pulp Fiction (1994); his confrontation with Dennis Hopper in True Romance (1992); Russian roulette in The Deer Hunter; and his breakthrough moment in Annie Hall (1977)—musing as he drives about plowing his vehicle into oncoming headlights, with a terrified Woody Allen in the passenger seat.
Such moments have made him the baddie of choice for a diverse range of producers and directors, appearing as a Bond villain in A View to a Kill (1985), Matthew Broderick's unbalanced drill sergeant in Mike Nichol's Biloxi Blues (1988), a rich sexual predator in Paul Schrader's The Comfort of Strangers (1990), a Batman villain in Tim Burton's Batman Returns (1992), a fallen angel in Gregory Widen's The Prophecy (1995), Johnny Depp's blackmailer in John Badham's Nick of Time (1995), the ghost in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow (1999), and mobsters of all stripes in films like Suicide Kings (1997), Last Man Standing (1996), Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995), King of New York (1990), and True Romance. He is also known for never turning down a role, leading to Razzie nominations in both 2002 and 2003 for Kangaroo Jack, Gigli, and The Country Bears, collectively.
Despite the Razzies, Walken seems to have renewed his interest in more substantial roles, such as his masterful performance in Catch Me with You Can, in which he played Leonardo Dicaprio's father, a broken man left with nothing but his pride. Now, he offers us Around the Bend, the directorial debut of screenwriter Jordan Roberts, who performed uncredited rewrites on The Shawshank Redemption and Road to Perdition. In it Walken plays Turner, a long-absent father who returns home in a shabby state just in time to see his own father, Henry (Michael Caine), die. Turner and his son (Josh Lucas) and grandson (Jonah Bobo) are then forced to take a road trip together to fulfill Henry's last wishes, in which long-simmering resentments come to the fore.
Regardless of the uneven quality of his movies, Walken has always stood out. His intense demeanor, his slightly odd pronunciation, his off-kilter line delivery—these things have made him an American icon and the subject of frequent comic impressions and pop-culture references. Walken himself has joined in the fun, appearing numerous times on Saturday Night Live, where he has poked fun at his persona and showed off his consummate dancing skill—which is the last thing you'd expect a guy like Walken to be able to do. This dancing ability is how Walken made his living as a young man, appearing on stage with Liza Minelli in the musical Best Foot Forward in 1963, and later in a touring production of West Side Story, where he met his wife of thirty-five years, Georgianne Thon, who works today as the casting director for HBO's The Sopranos. Later Walken got to dance on film in Pennies from Heaven (1981), and most recently in, of all things, the Fatboy Slim video “Weapon of Choice.” Next year, we'll see him dance again in John Turturro's musical Romance & Cigarettes.
There is one other thing the sixty-two year old Walken is known for—being a difficult interviewee. He is just as reticent as Sean Penn and Robert De Niro, though without their hostility. He smiles as he gives short, unrevealing answers. He's playing a game with you. Ask the right question, and you'll get a decent answer. In October 2004, AboutFilm and a small group of other reporters attempted to ask the right questions. One of the wrong questions referred to director Peter Bogdonovich's 2004 TV production, The Mystery of Natalie Wood. Walken was, of course, infamously present on the yacht off Catalina Island when his Brainstorm co-star Natalie Wood disappeared and drowned in 1981. While it is likely Walken and Wood were merely close friends, some people believe that they were having an affair. Walken's jaw works back and forth at the mere mention of Wood, and he deflects the question.
Question: The script of Around the Bend calls for you to show up looking like a walking corpse. What's it like playing a walking corpse?
Walken: Right. I had to keep my weight down.
Question: You had to keep your weight down?
Walken: Yeah. I was on a big diet for that movie.
Question: What kind of diet?
Walken: Just to, you know, stay thin.
Question: No Kentucky Fried Chicken?
Walken: No.
Question: You didn't eat any on the set?
Walken: Well, there was a lot of it. But they put in a line where I say, “I don't eat that stuff.”
Question: Are you a vegetarian?
Walken: No. But, if you want to be thin, you can't eat breaded [food].
Question: What appealed to you about this character, Turner?
Walken: Well, it's a big fat juicy part. Also, I play a lot of monsters, people who want to take over the world. This was just a guy.
Question: This movie is partly about fathers, and sons yearning for an absent father. What was the relationship you had with your father? Was there anything you could draw from for Around the Bend?
Walken: There's really nothing about this character that has to do with me, except that we look the same and sound the same. But, no, of course, the relationship with your father is vital here, and I did think a lot about that. My own father died a few years ago. He was almost 100 years old. He had a great life. Of course you think about that. I did a movie called Blast from the Past a few years ago, and I had to age 35 years or something. They took hours to put all this stuff on me, and when they were done, I looked exactly like my father. So, you do think about that. I think all men when they get older, they look at the mirror and they probably see their father a little bit.
Question: Was there anything you wanted to do with your father, that you couldn't do?
Walken: Oh, you mean to fix something? No, no. But the man in this movie has a lot more troubles than I do.
Question: Around the Bend is partly about death. Have you imagined your own death like Michael Caine's death?
Walken: Death is wonderful because you can't think about it. How are you gonna think about it? [laughs]
Question: Michael Caine did in this movie.
Walken: I don't know what he did. I don't know what anybody does. But I know that whenever I think about death, I come up against a stone wall.
Question: You play the bad guy so much that people react to you that way. How do you feel about that?
Walken: It's good. In the movies, if you're a movie actor, if they want you, it's good. It doesn't matter what reason. If they want me to be a villain, that's okay. But sometimes you get a chance to do something else that's good. You know, one of the difficult things about being an actor is to stick around.
Question: Are people afraid of you? How do people react to you when they meet you for the first time?
Walken: People say hello. I never get that they have any reaction. In New York City, if I'm in the street, I get a lot of, “Heeeey! Chris!”
Question: Jordan Roberts has said that why he wanted you for the role of Turner, to a degree, was because of your reputation on the screen—the expectation of evil that you bring. Going through the ninety films that you have done, is that something directors say to you often? Do you know that they want that?
Walken: No, I think that that's just true. Everybody knows that. Every time you see a movie, and you see an actor who has made a lot of movies, you see not [just] the character they're playing. You know, actors carry a lot of baggage with them from other things, and sometimes that baggage can be used to advantage. If I show up and they think everybody's gonna be dead in ten minutes, that can be used. If it turns out that I raise puppies, that can be good, because to defy expectations— If you're an actor, like I said, a hard thing is to stick around, to stay viable. I try to do that by taking the opportunity to do something different every once in awhile.
Question: Where do you go to draw upon the evil, in movies like At Close Range and True Romance?
Walken: You know what they say; playing those guys is fun. It's fun. You get to do all sorts of things you couldn't possibly do. I think one of the things about my villains is that the—and I think it's because I come from— I wasn't a trained actor, I was trained in musical comedy theater, and when you do that, the audience is completely part of the thing. It's like Elizabethan theater. You play the scene, and then you turn—the audience is part of it. It was the same for me when I went into the movies. It's impossible for me to play a part without thinking about the audience. So I think that, when I play somebody who wants to blow up the world, I think that the audience knows that that's Chris, and he's having fun.
Question: One of the things about your villains that's effective is that they're not usually tough megalomaniacs. They're more low key, but there's something really nasty about them. There's something about the inflection of your voice, and your eyes, and I was wondering if you're aware of that. Because we all are.
Walken: Yeah. I think you're right, but I think there's a little unacknowledged wink to the audience with these things. It's a movie. Some people don't like the expression, “It's just a movie.” But I think “it's just a movie” is what it's all about. You're watching a movie. And a movie is a very specific thing. It's a thing unto itself. A movie doesn't necessarily have anything to do with life as we know it.
Question: Around the Bend is a family movie. You yourself have been married twenty-five years?
Walken: Thirty-five years.
Question: So what's the secret, when everybody in Hollywood gets divorced?
Walken: Well, I don't live in Hollywood. I live in the country. And you know, I think you have to be lucky.
Question: There's no secret?
Walken: I don't see a secret. I just think you have to have good taste. Also, I'm very easy to get along with. It's true.
AboutFilm: Josh Lucas told us that you don't read any of the other characters' dialogue when you work on a movie. Is that true, and if so, what is your process there?
Walken: I confess, it's true. I look at my own lines. Then, when other people talk, it's a surprise. [laughs]
Question: But, without knowing the rest of the script, don't you sometimes say things a different context than intended?
Walken: [I do], but it's interesting. Very often it fits.
Question: You're known for spontaneity in performance. When it comes in theater it can be very interesting. You wrote and starred in a one-man theatrical production called “Him” back in 1995.
Walken: Well it wasn't— I wrote it, but there were a number of people in it. It was the hardest thing I ever did, because it wasn't very good. It was very, very whimsical. It really depended on what kind of mood I was in when I did it. If I was feeling silly enough, and brave enough, outrageous enough, it usually worked okay. That was usually on a weekend. Again, it had to do with the audience. There was something very silly about it that I think the audience had to share with you.
Question: Winning an Oscar so early in your career—we've heard stories about how difficult that can be. Good, bad, or terrific for you?
Walken: To win an Oscar?
Question: To win an Oscar so early in your career.
Walken: Oh, absolutely terrific. Absolutely terrific.
Question: No worry about then about having to live up to it?
Walken: Well, I never worried about that. You know, winning an Oscar at that point—I had already been in show business for 30 years.
Question: When you did Deer Hunter?
Walken: Yes. You know, I was a child jumping bean.
Question: What do you think about the fact that you were nominated the same year for best supporting actor in Catch Me If You Can and worst supporting actor in The Country Bears?
Walken: Well, I liked The Country Bears. And I thought I was good in The Country Bears. Didn't you think I was funny, with my little shoes? [laughter]
Question: Yes, but what about the reaction? You care about the Oscars, but you don't care about the Razzies?
Walken: I do care. Very much. I care very much. I want to win them. [laughter]
Question: Is it true that you try to work a dance move into every one of your films?
Walken: I don't try, but it does seem to happen.
Question: Talking about dance moves, I also read that you danced with Judy Garland. Is that true?
Walken: That's right. I was in an off-Broadway show called Best Foot Forward with Liza Minnelli. She was sixteen, and her mother gave her a Sweet Sixteen party at a very exclusive New York club. Very elegant. And I danced with Judy Garland. She was beautiful. Very sexy, actually.
Question: Was she a good dancer?
Walken: She was terrific. Very good looking, you know.
Question: Did she compliment you on your dancing?
Walken: She was nice.
Question: What about your name? You were born Ronald Walken; how did it change?
Walken: When I was dancer, I was working in a nightclub act with Monique Van Vooren [in 1965], who was a chanteuse. It was me and two other guys. And we would dance in back of her while she sang. She would introduce us at the end, and one night she said, “You know, Ronnie, I'm going to call you Christopher.” So I said, “Sure, go ahead.”
Question: How many people call you Chris today?
Walken: Everybody calls me Chris, except my wife and my brothers.
Question: What's the story behind the “Weapon of Choice” video?
Walken: The director, Spike Jonze called and asked me to do that. Sent me a tape of the music.
Question: Was it based on his knowledge of your dancing?
Walken: I think he must have— You know, I did a picture called Pennies of Heaven, a musical movie. He must have seen something. You never know how you get these things. But the choreographer was Mickey Rooney's son.
Question: Did you see the Peter Bogdanovich film on Natalie Wood earlier this year?
Walken: No, I never did. No, I'd heard he'd done that. Was it good?
Question: Well, it was okay. He made much ado about nothing, but there it is. Your wife—you've been married a long time—is a rehearsal person, what does she do?
Walken: She's a casting director. She casts The Sopranos and movies.
Question: Does she ask you for advice?
Walken: Sure. Sure, she says to me, “Who do you think?”
Question: So you are behind the casting—
Walken: No, no, just sometimes.
Question: Will you ever do a cameo on The Sopranos?
Walken: You know, it almost happened once. In fact, it was the part that Peter Bogdanovich played. They had several people they were thinking about.
Question: So you're not twisting her arm to get in?
Walken: Nah. You know, it's amazing how many actors say to me, “Put in a word.” It's amazing how many actors would love to be in The Sopranos . But I tell her all the time, “You know, I bumped into so-and-so, and they would love to be on The Sopranos .”
AboutFilm: I'd like to follow up a little bit on expectations. Things about your voice, your diction, the parts you play—these have become almost iconic. Are these things that—particularly in a role like this one—you try to stay away from consciously?
Walken: Sure, there's lots of things I can't play. If they're looking for the King of France, they're probably not gonna pick me. I have limitations, but there are things I can do.
AboutFilm: When did you first become aware that there are things about your performances, or your acting, that are memorable to people?
Walken: You know, I think that one of the things—People have said that I'm strange. Yeah, strange—I get that a lot. But I think that anybody who's been in show business since they were five years old is going to be a little different. My entire education, my background, all my references, all the people that I grew up with—everything that I know comes from show business. Everything. I've always been in show business. So of course I'm strange. I'm from, like, another country.
Question: Can you tell us about The Wedding Crasher?
Walken: You know what I play? I play the Secretary of the Treasury.
Question: It's the King of France role.
Walken: The King of France...No, you're right, who would believe that I would be playing the Secretary of the Treasury? So, you know that this movie is funny.
Question: Did you model your character on anybody?
Walken: I didn't model it on anybody. I mean, I thought it was so bizarre that I thought, “Well, I just won't bother doing anything. I'll just put the suit and tie on.” I don't wear suits and ties a lot in movies. That's really what it was, a suit and tie. We shot in Washington in one day, and there was a little cameo with Senator McCain, and James Carville. So I have a little scene with them, and they're talking to the Secretary of the Treasury. It's sort of funny, in a way.
Question: Were you a Democratic Secretary of the Treasury, or a Republican?
Walken: You know something, I never checked. [laughs]
AboutFilm: When are we going to see you on Saturday Night Live again?
Walken: I don't know. They haven't asked me.
Question: You've got a standing invitation to host any time you want, they say.
Walken: Yeah, that's what they say. That's what they say.
Question: Is it true that you never say no to a movie?
Walken: Well, I do sometimes, but it's hard for me to say no.
Question: Why is that?
Walken: Because it's my favorite thing to do.
Question: Any evil roles coming up?
Walken: I don't have any roles coming up.
Question: There are a lot of B or C-grade movies that would love to use your reputation, use your quality to leverage themselves up a little bit. Are you conscious of that when offers come up?
Walken: Sure. If you do movies that are modestly budgeted, the way they finance them is they figure out how they can sell them. You know, there's a market in Israel that represents a certain amount of money, and then the European—all over the world—South America. They get a little from here, a little from there, and they get a few million dollars together. So I'm sure that an actor's reputation can help a lot. It's what they call Big in Japan I guess.
Question: I was more talking about the idea of being used by people, if you like. Because you said that you rarely say no to anything.
Walken: Use me! I love being used.
Question: Can you tell us about the John Turturro thing, Romance & Cigarettes?
Walken: Yeah. I haven't seen it. It's coming. It's a musical. Susan Sarandon, James Gandolfini, Steve Buscemi.
Question: Because you haven't read the script.
Walken: You know, that's the truth. I'm looking forward to it. It's a musical movie. I do a Tom Jones song, “Delilah.”
_______________________________________________________________Total Film - Oct 2004
The Total Film Interview - Christopher Walken
Terrifying. Shocking. Bizarre. But enough about the hair. Christopher Walken, America's greatest screen villain, teaches Total Film all about the art of the bad guy...
People are staring. This being New York, where the locals have perfected the rude gawp into something of an art form, it's hardly a surprise. But the eyes. You can feel them every time somebody walks past our table at the Soho Café. They're odd stares, quizzical, then narrowing, then widening in an unsteady balance of recognition and intimidation. That's the strength of Christopher Walken's icy, diamond-tough screen persona. When he's out and about, people stare. Problem is, they're not sure they're allowed to. In spite of the comedies, the musicals, the kids' films, the Broadway shows, Walken is forever burned into moviegoers' minds as Mr Scary.
A veteran of over 80 movies, you could argue it's always been that way. Walken's first identifiable screen role was in 1977's Annie Hall, playing Diane Keaton's younger brother, a jittery loon with a compulsion for driving head-on into oncoming traffic. A year later, Walken won an Oscar for playing Nick, The Deer Hunter's intense, deranged Vietnam vet. From then on, if a casting director needed a screen rogue with a glacial aura and menacing burn, Walken was the go-to guy.
Digging into a plate of lasagne and drinking cappuccino, the really disturbing thing about meeting the man who so memorably threatened Dennis Hopper with his "vendetta kind of mood" in True Romance is that he's not intimidating in the slightest. He's witty. Intelligent. Quite the charmer, in fact. He also absolutely loves the movies: watching them, talking about them but, mostly, making them. "It's my favourite thing," he says, smiling. "I don't have any kids, I don't have any hobbies, I don't play any sports, I don't socialise much. I love to go to work."
He's also a lot more versatile than his rogue reputation suggests. When you see Walken's name billboarded alongside Denzel Washington's in this month's vigilante thriller Man On Fire, your expectations mark Walken out as the film's twitchy villain. Not the case. Although his character Rayburn is a former CIA assassin, he plays a key role as Washington's best buddy. In other words, a good guy. Not a whiff of malice. The screen time's brief but, as per usual, as per Walken, any screen time he has is delivered with maximum impact. "I think I've had success because I know how to create an edge or aura to a performance - that's always been the key to what I do," he says. "Because I rarely get to play lead roles, I try to give my characters something that will make them distinct and memorable." And, it has to be said, bloody scary. Speaking of which…
Are you really as scary as people think you are?
I'm a pussycat! [Laughs] I would make a very bad killer in real life because I don't think I could even pick up a gun, much less actually shoot one. Guns make me very nervous. They're dangerous. I'm more of a pacifist than anyone could imagine.
So it doesn't bother you that people think of you as a scary guy?
In a way. I understand that because 90 percent of the characters I get to play are bad guys. I don't have to worry too much about people approaching me on the street or in restaurants asking for my autograph. I think people respect me, but they're always wondering if there's something innately mean inside me. But I take it as a compliment that audiences get caught up with the characters I play. When I play a villain, I want people to be scared and gripped by the character. That's the art, that's the desired effect. You want people to believe that you're one horrible motherfucker!
Still, you have a unique gift for conveying menace. Any idea where it comes from?
I'm a great observer of people. Growing up in New York is like living in a horror museum because there are so many strange people walking the streets and riding the subways. You learn to develop a tough front if you live here, just in case you get into any kind of trouble and you need to talk your way out of it. When I was studying acting, I learned how to harness what other people tell me is a very cold and frightening look that I have when I'm serious. But in real life I think I smile and laugh more than most people, and in a lot of my films I think you'll see that even the most evil characters I play are usually laughing half the time, even if it's just before they're about to kill someone.
Is there anything you find scary?
I really don't like to get on horses. When I did Sleepy Hollow, I was the Headless Horseman and I said to them, "I not only can't ride a horse but I'm also sort of scared of them." So I rode a mechanical horse - I believe it was the same horse that was used in National Velvet with Elizabeth Taylor.
In your latest movie, Man On Fire, you're not on screen for long but you still make a strong impression...
It's not necessarily how many minutes you're on screen, it's the material you have. A lot of the time I have really good things to say. It's more important what it is you have to do than the amount of time you're there. I read in the wake of Marlon Brando's passing, that in The Godfather he was only on screen for eight minutes...
You play Denzel Washington's best buddy. You seem very natural together...
Oh, I've known Denzel for a long time over the years, just to say hello. I like him very much personally and I thought our relationship in the movie, of being close friends, was very believable for the audience. People who've known each other for a long time and liked each other. The guy I play is someone who has found the good life in Mexico and had got out of the killing business. He's willing to help Denzel's character get back on his feet and get him a job as a bodyguard because he knows he's a good man. But like the line in the film says, "I'm finished with killing people." He's put that part of his life behind him, and so I played it very casual in that sense and I hope I upset people's expectations in that way because I know I carry a certain amount of villainous baggage when it comes to these kinds of characters. This time, it felt much more interesting to be the good guy.
Wouldn't you rather play a good old American hero for once?
It depends on the role. Usually, if you're categorised as a character actor like I am, the best roles are the mean ones. Leading men like Harrison Ford play the same part over and over again, with only a few variations. But if you're the bad guy, you have a lot more freedom to create a truly hateful, miserable character that can do almost anything and not worry about protecting your image. Most leading actors are trapped playing within a certain range. I'm happy to be in my position. I never play a villain the same way twice. There are always different shades and angles that you learn to explore.
Do you think your image as a villain makes it more difficult for audiences to appreciate you as a good guy?
I think there's always something in the back of the audience's mind that even if I'm playing a priest or a school teacher, they expect me to take out a knife and start slicing up the choirboys or the kid who asks too many questions in class! [Laughs] But after a few minutes, I think the character and the film takes over and people forget how many times they've seen you play a killer.
Yet, weirdly enough, you've been making a lot of comedies recently...
Yeah! Suddenly in the last few years I've been doing a lot. My background is in musical comedy theatre, but when I started to make movies I suppose the first two things I did happened rather close together and both involved people who were strange. One was the brother in Annie Hall and the other one was when I was suicidal in The Deer Hunter. I think somehow I got a strange thing going in the movies. I look forward to the day when I'll start playing people's fathers and uncles…
Or sons, even. In the upcoming Around The Bend, Michael Caine plays your father...
Michael had to have prosthetic things to make him look older. He looks fabulous in person. Hey, and I look pretty good for my age, too! He did have to age-up while I play someone in the movie who's very ill; I am supposed to be younger in the movie but the fact that I'm gravely ill can excuse my being older.
Let's talk about some of your past roles. King Of New York is one of the few films where you've enjoyed the lead. Would you say playing Frank White represents some of your best work?
No, I don't think so. It should have been my best work, but I fucked up. I've only seen the film twice and I felt that I didn't give Frank enough complexity and perspective. You don't see enough anguish in his face and the things that drive him to do what he does. I wish I had another chance to play him because I would have completely altered my performance. I'm flattered that you and other people enjoy the film and my character, but I'm not satisfied that I did justice to him. Both myself and the director, Abel Ferrara, worked hard at creating a mysterious edge to Frank's personality but we lost his motivation and a sense of where he was coming from. So I'm disappointed by what comes off on the screen.
We've heard Abel Ferrara can be a bit, er, "difficult" to work with...
Not for me. I know him well so I understand him when he gets very pumped up and frantic and goes off on a rampage on the set. That's part of the energy that he needs to bring to his work. He's made a choice to live on the edge and that's part of what makes all of his films so interesting. He goes through a lot of pain and angst - you appreciate how he's struggling to get a certain kind of emotional tension up there on the screen.
You and Abel Ferrara used to party very hard. Was that a form of release, too?
At a certain point, too much of anything - vodka, in my case - starts making you sick. One day I felt so sick that my wife asked me why I was doing that to myself. I didn't have a good answer, so I stopped. I don't drink hard liquor any more. Long ago I discovered the virtues of great red wine…
Your role in Biloxi Blues was a big hit. Was your drill sergeant based on a real person?
Mike Nichols had a military advisor to the movie who was a real drill sergeant - a professional soldier to tell us what the proper procedure was. Drill sergeants in movies tend to be always yelling but he was a very soft-spoken man, very nice to us. Mike chose him for a very good reason: he wanted us to see a different kind of drill sergeant in action. I certainly did.
Your character acts like a villain, but there's a real avuncular side to him...
I think that sometimes it's interesting to defy expectations. It's interesting for a person who plays villains all the time to suddenly play somebody who's avuncular. I have a friend, I won't say who, who always plays heroes, and I said to him once, "Have you ever played a villain?" He said, "I'd love to but nobody ever asks me." I think it's interesting to mix it up sometimes.
Famously, you got an Oscar for your work in The Deer Hunter. What was it like working with an actor like Robert De Niro?
When we were shooting The Deer Hunter, I had been working on this very difficult scene for two or three weeks, and then when the day came to shoot it I started to get real worried and I realised that my preparation was all wrong. I spoke to Bob about it, told him I was confused and he didn't even take time to think about it. He went out a door, came back through it and started moving through the room. It was the perfect solution - I did what he suggested and the scene turned out to be one of the best in the film. That's the mark of a genius like Robert De Niro, as opposed to a good craftsman like myself. But that's okay. We can learn so much from watching geniuses at work even though we might never reach their level.
Do you think you've had your moments of genius as an actor?
I think there are some scenes over the years where I really delivered the goods. I liked my work in The Deer Hunter and in The Dead Zone. I liked a lot of my dancing in Pennies From Heaven. And my scene with Dennis Hopper in Tarantino's True Romance was about as interesting as it gets between two actors…
What's interesting about that scene is that for much of the conversation you and Dennis Hopper are laughing at each other...
What happened was that when Dennis starts telling the story about the Moors and how Italians are half-nigger, I started to laugh off-camera and that made Dennis laugh too. Of course, the laughter is very eerie because he's trying to provoke me and my character is laughing as a way of disguising a lot of anger that's building up. The laughter and the grinning that's going on is a way of diluting the tension at the same time as adding to it. So when I finally shoot Dennis, it's a way of bringing that laughter to a very brutal stop. None of the laughter was in the script but it made Tarantino's dialogue work even better. Those are the moments every actor likes to find in his work. They don't come that often.
Another sinister character of yours is The Man With The Plan from Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead. It must have been a challenge playing a quadriplegic...
In a way, that was difficult, but in another way it frees you from having to make a lot of choices. I think in the original script he was physically more incapacitated than I was. I think I was a little bit more physical than the original character had been. I think it worked out fine, though.
In terms of indie movies, that was a pretty big hit. But since you've made so many films, not all your movies have been so well-received...
I've made movies that I've never seen, and the reason I haven't seen them is that nobody else has either! That's not good. On the other hand, I made the movie, I had fun, I made some money. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't. I never know how successful a movie is going to be - when you make a movie you're always hoping for the best.
So what about the films you wish people had seen?
There are movies I've made which I think are fun and probably nobody's seen them! I made a movie of the children's story Puss In Boots years ago. I thought it was one of my better efforts but I'm not sure if anyone ever saw it. In fact, I'm not even sure anybody could locate a video of it!
People definitely didn't see Gigli...
When Gigli came out, I was making The Stepford Wives. I was going to work every day and I think it was only in the theatres for less than a week. So I have never seen Gigli either. I read the reviews - not only of things I'm in but everything else. I think they're important. Some of them are excellent, and it's wonderful when you pick up a paper and it says, you know, "Chris was terrific!" And then sometimes they don't. I always love to get great reviews and hear that people are going to my movies in droves.
Does that mean you take bad reviews to heart?
Of course. I get a bit blue about it, but then something else comes along and I get distracted.
It's probably even worse when you get bad press before the movie even comes out. The Stepford Wives, for instance...
There were rumours of problems on The Stepford Wives set, a lot of talk about people not getting along, which is mysterious to me because that's absolutely not true. It was really like a playground every day, all those terrific actors. We played and got paid for it. I would love to make another movie with that whole bunch of people. Glenn Close, who played my wife, can be very intimidating when she wants to be. But she's a brilliant actress and we had a great time on the set. Nicole Kidman, too: she's got a very good sense of humour and she enjoys the camaraderie on a set. I would describe her as a natural actress because she has this way of slipping into a character that leaves no traces. She also has a fearless quality to her approach to acting - she takes the kind of risks an actor needs to take if they're going to take their work to the next level. It's kind of an intangible thing, but she has it.
Finally: you're a man who mixes his indie films with more standard Hollywood fare. Is there anything that bothers you about Hollywood today?
Too many young actors are strutting about and doing films without having developed some of the depth you need to bring off certain kinds of roles. I think that's the problem with today's system, where a lot of younger actors who haven't had a chance to develop suddenly become stars. It took me 20 years before I felt that I really mastered what acting was about. I was working as a janitor at the Actor's Studio in New York for 15 years simply because I needed the extra money. So I look at some of the younger guys out there and I don't have the sense that they have enough substance to their work. But that's why I do so many independent movies. I will never be a star in the way Tom Hanks or Brad Pitt are. I'm a character actor. I have to find work in good movies where I can make something of my role. I'm a very lucky guy to be in that kind of position. It's like a kid who dreams of becoming a baseball player and then he gets to play for the Yankees...
_______________________________________________________________Movieline's Hollywood Life - May 2004
Christopher Walken has been doing it his way since he started in show business at the age of three. Now he’s inspiring a new generation of actors.
By Lawrence Grobel
Christopher Walken is not fond of the label creepy. “Creepy is not a mammal. Creepy is like an insect,” he protests. “Spooky is OK.” Walken’s been spooking audiences since playing Diane Keaton’s demented brother in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. His career spans over 80 movies, including his Academy Award-winning turn as a Russian roulette-playing Vietnam vet in The Deer Hunter. He was Sean Penn’s crazed father in At Close Range, the wickedly evil mobster who took out a taunting Dennis Hopper in True Romance, the crime boss in Abel Ferrara’s King of New York, a villain in the Bond film A View to a Kill and sleazy businessman Max Shreck in Batman Returns.
Between the spring and fall of 2004 Walken will appear in four new films: Envy, directed by Barry Levinson; Man on Fire with Denzel Washington; The Stepford Wives, as Glenn Close’s husband; and Around the Bend, with Michael Caine and Josh Lucas. He put a week’s work into John Turturo’s Romance & Cigarettes, with Susan Saradon and James Gandolfini. And he will be playing the father of the bride in The Wedding Crashers.
Though he’s 61, his appeal to the young has never wavered. He has guest-hosted Saturday Night Live a half-dozen times, and his hilariously tacky character The Continental has become a classic. He was the star of one of the most downloaded videos on the Internet, dancing on tables and up walls a la Fred Astaire in Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice, directed by Spike Jonze. Like Marlon Brando before him, he is probably the most parodied actor of his generation. Everyone has a Walken impression they like to perform at parties.
What unsettles Walken today? Young actors who are “a little too young, a little too good-looking, a little too sure of themselves.”
LAWRENCE GROBEL: Since this is the Young Hollywood issue, do you feel like an elder statesman?
CHRISTOPHER WALKEN: Well, I play a grandfather in Around the Bend, I don’t feel like one, but I have been around a long time. I’ve been in show business since I was a kid. So if young actors are watching my performances, that’s great. When I was a kid there were actors I always went to see, and they certainly had an influence on me.
Q: Who were they and what were the movies that made an impression on you?
A: As a kid in the ‘50s, I went to the movies a lot. The action movie then was usually in reference to the Second World War or Korea, like The Bridges at Toko-Ri with William Holden. My father took me to see Ben-Hur. In those days you would see three features and 27 cartoons, so going to the movies was an entire day. I remember seeing Richard Burton in Alexander the Great. Brando in On the Waterfront. Katharine Hepburn, Peter O’Toole, Christopher Plummer, my God. The first time I ever wrote an actor a letter was to Ian McKellen, just telling him I thought The Promise was great. So yes, I do have actor heroes. Lots of them.
Q: How different is it being a young actor today than it was when you were young and upcoming?
A: I came out of a variety-review background – singing, dancing. That was useful, because I had decades to make a lot of mistakes and not really be seen. I don’t thing anybody noticed my presence until I was well into my thirties and did The Deer Hunter. So I had a lot of time to do it wrong and try to get it right. Today, with TV, the exposure is so enormous, it might be difficult to make a big splash and then have something not work out; it’s much more public than it was for me when I was starting out.
Q: What auditioning stories do you have that might offer some hope for young actors?
A: What I used to do was, I’d get the script and see who the character was – a spy, a lumberjack, whatever – then I’d try to dress the part for the audition, to give the impression that I was tough or funny or whatever the part seemed to call for. That was always a disaster. I would never get the job. If I learned anything it’s not to do anything like that. Now if they want to look at me, I go in and let them look at me. Let them figure out their own reasons for why they’d want to hire me.
Q: Has another actor ever given you helpful advice?
A: I was in the original stage production of Lion in Winter with Rosemary Harris and Robert Preston. I had terrible stage fright and I thought the producers were going to fire me. Robert Preston was very helpful. He would say kind things to calm me down. He used to say, “Don’t stand in the wings and go over your lines. You’re getting yourself all wound up.” He was right. I used to go over my lines before walking out on stage, and when I went out I didn’t know what I was doing. You get your head all crammed with stuff an it’s impossible to be spontaneous. It wasn’t until after I was 50 that I could stand in the wings and look forward to going on stage and not have a sense of dread.
Q: Before you became successful, how often did you stand on unemployment lines?
A: There were years when I didn’t do anything but collect unemployment. I worked a lot, but I worked for nothing. I worked for 15 years as a kind of janitor at the Actors Studio. I would do manual things. I did lots of plays, theater workshops, for nothing.
Q: Once you started making films, what was the low point for you?
A: The first movie I made was The Anderson Tapes. Sidney Lumet directed, Sean Connery was in it. Then [after 1972’s The Happiness Cage] I didn’t make another movie for several years. I never knew the reasons for that. But when the phone doesn’t ring and they don’t want you – that’s tough.
Q: And the high points?
A: When you’re in a movie that’s popular and you get good reviews, and people come up to you and say they loved it, that’s great. You want people, and critics, to say you’re wonderful. Then, for reasons that are mysterious, you’re in a movie like Gigli, and that’s a shock. I was in a makeup trailer and somebody started reading me the reviews and I thought, how did that happen?
Q: During Catch Me If You Can, Leonardo DiCaprio spoke of a certain scene where you started to hyperventilate and he thought you were having a heart attack, remember that?
A: We were doing this scene in a restaurant, talking about my wife. My technique is to try things different ways. There’s a temptation to do a take and then do another, more or less the same, and try and make it better. I don’t go that way, I usually try to do takes with variety – I try to do one real fast, then take my time on another, then do it as if the scene was funny, then earnestly. So that when the editors take it apart and put it together later, there are some different colors to work with.
Q: Johnny Depp has said that he always thinks he’s going to get fired when he starts a new job, because he wants to do the character a certain way. How often do you think about that?
A: With Johnny they’d be smart to let him do it his own way. He’s one of the best. He is so much fun to watch. If you get hired for a part, it’s because of whatever it is you bring to it. I very rarely had anybody say, “That’s okay, but you’ll do it this way.” Because I would have to say, “I don’t know how to do it that way.”
Q: How often have you changed the way the character was written?”
A: You can’t change the way a character is written, but you can do it your own way. The writer sometimes tries to indicate how he sees it in stage directions. I’ve read scripts where the stage directions were like an operator’s manual like when you buy a washing machine. I don’t look at them. I don’t pay any attention to anything but the dialogue. If a line comes with the direction “wishfully” or “angrily.” It makes me want to do the opposite.
Q: You tend to play a lot of bizarre, peculiar people and villains, why do you suppose that is?
A: One of the reasons for that is, there aren’t that many people who have been in show business since they were 3-years-old. That has its mark on me. I’m a show business animal. The way I speak, everything I do. There is something a bit foreign about me. That can translate into strange and strange translates to villainous. It seems to be something I’m pretty good at, so I tend to get a lot of those parts. I would love to play the Fred MacMurray parts, with the wife and the house and the kids who say, “Dad, what should I do?” And sometimes I do get that chance. But look, if you’re an actor, you’re lucky if they want you.
Q: You love to cook and even travel with a collapsible steamer so you can prepare fish the way the Chinese do. What type of cuisine would you like to master?
A: Italian. European cooking generally means that you buy the best stuff you can get and cook it simply, you don’t use butter, you use oil, garlic. People spend so much money on pre-cooked, packaged stuff. They don’t realize that it’s so much cheaper, as well as better, to buy your food and cook it. When I’m learning lines if I’m simultaneously thinking food, the power of distraction helps. I put my script on the kitchen counter and read my lines as I prepare food.
Q: What are some of your favorite food?
A: I eat the same things all the time: fish, hardly ever meat. Chicken, vegetables. I’m fond of steamed sea bass over leeks. I don’t drink hard liquor. I like wine.
Q: Do you watch much TV?
A: Yeah, I do. I watch a lot of movies. And the Comedy Channel to see the stand-ups. I like to watch Charlie Rose.
Q: Ever watch South Park?
A: No. But I’ve never seen Seinfeld either.
_______________________________________________________________Venice Magazine - Feb 2003
Los Angeles' Arts and Entertainment Magazine
CHRISTOPHER WALKEN DANCER IN THE DARK
He dances. He can carry a tune. He has become a regular host on Saturday Night Live. He loves Jerry Lewis, cats, Bugs Bunny, cooking and painting. Oh, wait, I'm forgetting a few small details. He also won an Academy Award in 1978 for playing a suicidal soldier in Vietnam, gave audiences a lifetime of nightmares and sadistic chuckles playing a heavy in King of New York and a thug amongst thugs in True Romance, and to this day has one of the most recognizable hairstyles of anybody gracing the Silver Screen.
Frankly, I was more than a little nervous about interviewing Mr. Walken, based purely on his resume of psychologically unstable characters. My initial thought was ‘I hope he's nothing like the folks he's played.' Looking through Walken's roles of the past three decades, it feels like a Zagat Guide of every classification of Antagonist—a Villain du Jour menu that only Satan could cook up. Fortunately, when I was greeted by the actor at his home in Connecticut, he didn't pull out a gun and strong arm me. As a matter of fact, forget everything you think you know about Christopher Walken based on his body of work because the man couldn't be farther from the toxic characters he's played. He's instantly likeable, very accessible, down to earth, and, uh, would you believe, just a regular good guy. If there's ever a person for which the adage, “Don't judge a book by its cover” applies, it would be Christopher Walken. The fact is, he knows it, and he wants everyone else to know it, as well.
Lest you think he was hatched by the imagination of Edgar Allen Poe, the story of Christopher Walken begins in Queens, New York, when he was born March 31, 1943. Raised the middle son of three boys, Chris spent a good portion of his childhood working for his father, Paul, at the bakery he owned. Had the Golden Age of Television never arrived, Chris could very well have been groomed to become the next great pastry chef. But his mom, Rosalie, once an aspiring actress before becoming a full time mother, transferred her thespian passion to her boys, and Chris fell in love with being in front of the camera. During the fifities, Chris spent much of his time jumping from one live telecast to the next, racking up appearances on The Ernie Kovacs Show, Colgate Comedy Hour, and Playhouse 90 to a name a few of the shows going at that time.
So that these shows wouldn't conflict with his education, Walken enrolled in the Professional Children's School in Manhattan, an institution that allowed children to work and study side by side. Here, his focus and training was dance, an art form that to this day he continues to utilize in almost every movie or show he appears in. Chris dropped out of college when he got his first big break, starring alongside Liza Minnelli in the Broadway Musical, Best Foot Forward, and from there went on to dance in a number of musical theater productions. The shift moved away from dancing when he was cast in his first major acting role in 1966 as King Philip in The Lion in Winter.
For years, Walken worked steadily on and off Broadway, hoping to eventually break into movies. After nearly getting cast in two roles that would've insured an immediate leap into stardom— Star Wars and Love Story —Chris finally landed his first leading role alongside Sean Connery in 1971's The Anderson Tapes. His next standout performance came in a brief but very memorable role as Diane Keaton's menacingly funny brother in Woody Allen's Annie Hall. Though he was making a name for himself in the seventies in film, it wasn't until he was cast in the part of Nick in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, that the public took notice. His portrayal of a suicidal American soldier in Vietnam not only won him acclaim, it won him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1978. That changed everything and, at age 35, Christopher Walken occupied his own constellation in the pantheon of great actors.
In 1980, Walken starred in what would become MGM'S last musical, Pennies from Heaven, turning in a dance number that was so memorable that at a party he was complimented by two of his favorite dancers of all time—Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire.
After Pennies, the evil side of Christopher Walken was introduced to the movie-going public with his acclaimed performance as criminal syndicate head Brad Whitewood Sr. in At Close Range. Not worried or bothered by being typecast, Walken continued to take on the bad guy whether it was a Bond villain in A View to a Kill or an irascible drill sergeant in Neil Simon's comedy, Biloxi Blues.
The nineties established Walken as an icon of the independent film movement, and it's an association that exists to this day. Currently, you can find his countenance on the posters and billboards of this year's Sundance Film Festival campaign. Whether delighting audiences with a lengthy monologue in Pulp Fiction or shocking them with his sinister ways in King of New York, Walken quickly became the poster child for hip, artsy, and edgy cinema.
But being versatile and wanting to show that behind the dark exterior lurked a rich sense of humor, Walken turned on his funny bone. He became a regular host on Saturday Night Live, and to this day is—with Alec Baldwin— a member of the exclusive “5 times club,” with an open invitation to host anytime.
Neither his comedy nor his film roles could prepare audiences for what would come in 2001, when he danced his way through the Spike Jonze-directed music video of Fat Boy Slim's Weapon of Choice.
In the last few years, Chris has expanded his horizons beyond acting, creating a cooking show for Split Screen, writing and directing the short film, Popcorn Shrimp for Showtime, and writing the play Him, which he starred in playing Elvis Presley as figured in the afterlife. He's also an avid painter, though he considers that part of his life more of a hobby.
Considered one of Hollywood's busiest actors, Walken's hard work looks like it may pay off once again. Walken could be up for another Academy Award in 2003, judging from the heat he's already received for his sensitive and spirited performance as Leo DiCaprio's father, Frank Abagnale, Sr, in Steven Speilberg's highly-touted, box-office smash, Catch Me If You Can. Though he appreciates the attention, Walken doesn't rest on his laurels or abandon his love of small cinema either. This month he will return to the indie screen in Poolhall Junkies, a movie about a pool hustler struggling to make his way. To look at these two films is to understand that Christopher Walken is an actor who can play both sides of the film fence without alienating either camp—the Hollywood studio system and the American Independent. That, above all else, is what intrigued this writer enough to quell my nerves and meet him on his home turf.
Arriving at his house in Connecticut (which for some reason I imagined might be a dark castle at the top of a hill), I encountered a scene more Norman Rockwell than Max Shreck, the villain he played in Batman Returns. Despite his non-stop work schedule, Christopher Walken leads a relatively “normal,” quiet life with his wife of 34 years, Emmy-Award-winning casting director Georgianne Walken. Within moments in his home, he has made me a delicious cup of coffee which fuels the conversation that follows. We cover his beginnings, his processes, his opinions on everything from acting to cooking. If only every breakfast could be this much fun.
Venice: How do you prepare for a role? What's the Christopher Walken process?
Christopher Walken: I do the same thing every time.
Which is?
What I do has a lot to do with the words. My favorite thing is to have two scripts at the same time, and study them simultaneously in the kitchen. Go over the words, over and over, do them different ways, different inflections and rhythms. For me, rhythm is very important. I think we express ourselves as much with rhythm as with the words. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. I think it's very true. If you start to say your lines and it sounds right, usually I stick with that. If it sounds right, it probably is right. It's curious, how you're not collaborating with anyone at that point, and by the time you get there with other actors on the set, usually what you've done at home makes sense, and it's acceptable to everybody. The thing I have trouble with, because I'm so dependent on knowing my lines, is that if suddenly somebody says, “Here's a big speech. You're going to do that instead,” I get lost. At that point, I understand why Marlon Brando loves cue cards.
If you have a scene and the director comes over and says, “We're cutting this,” is that what you're talking about?
Well, cutting is another thing. I'd love to be a silent movie actor. [laughs]
If I had a day in movies where I get on the horse, come to town , tie up horse, come out, shovel some hay, that would be great.
What about research for your roles? Does that come into play?
I used to do that. It's everything I was taught, but it didn't work for me. I found I did my best when I found something in [the material] that was kind of like a “secret.” Often it has to do with humor. I've played scenes in which I had a secret. I would be playing a scene like “so and so,” but I don't tell anybody. It's just on my mind. I pretend I'm somebody else. Not necessarily anybody to do with the movie. Suddenly I'll be in a scene with you and I decide in this scene I'm Elvis, but I'm not going to tell you.
Can you give me some other examples of this “pretend?”
I do it all the time. I'll pretend I'm a U-boat commander. I do a Woody Allen thing. I'm a terrible impersonator. I'm the worst, but it's good for that because I'm doing something and nobody knows what it is.
You ever find you have time for rehearsal? How do you feel about it as an actor?
I love rehearsal. It's something that if I ever got to direct a movie, I would do. It's restrictive because agents will say, “You use him for a week, you pay him for a week.” So a rehearsal can be enormously expensive. When I worked with Sidney Lumet, we went into a big room with tape on the floor, the way most plays are initially rehearsed, and we went through it scene by scene, just like a play. And then, when it came time to shoot it, it did make things a lot easier. I'm all for that.
Rehearsal allows you to go home and sleep on it. If I'm shooting a scene with you next week, and the director says on your day off, let's go to the locations, go through the lines. It makes an enormous difference because you go home and you know where the door is, you know where the stove is, you know that you don't want the chair there, and a few days go by and even if it's subconsciously, you're working on it and it makes a huge difference.
Ingmar Bergman, on all of his movies, his actors knew, no matter what happened, you would shoot the first two weeks over again. If good stuff happened, he'd keep it. He'd shoot it again. Because getting started on a movie is sometimes difficult.
Is typecasting a problem?
I'm grateful to work. No. Occasionally you get to do something different like Catch Me If You Can or the Spike Jonze video Weapon of Choice.
You have played an eclectic group of characters. What inspires you in choosing your roles and films?
I don't hear actors talk about it that much. I hear people ask actors about their choices. I can tell you that with my career, there is very little about it that's planned. I more or less just take the best thing in front of me. I've always been that way. I was in show business since I was a kid. When I was in musicals someone asked me to be in a play and I was then in a play. Someone asked me to be in a movie, I auditioned and got the part. And now, it's still the same. I don't have children and I don't have hobbies and I like to go to work. It's better for me physically and mentally, everything. So I ‘ve made a lot of movies. Most are independent movies. I haven't made that many big studio movies. Part of that is because I lived in New York all my life. I've never lived in California. The other part is that you know independent films usually take less time to make ‘cause they don't have a lot of money. Most movies that I make— even if I'm in them from first day to the wrap party— it was usually five to six weeks. So there is something to be said about those small movies. In fact, a lot of the movies people consider the classics— those movies from the 30s or 40s in black and white— they were shot on sound stages for like six weeks. I think those Bogart movies, like Casablanca, took six weeks.
The classics were shot in the same amount of time as today's low budgeted indies.
Not only do they have great writers/and actors/directors/stories, but they were done on soundstages, very controlled environments. They were black and white, which always helps. You see black and white and you say, ‘This is a movie.' Even if it was harbors with docks and boats, it was soundstages. Very controlled environments where shots weren't screwed up by helicopters or the sun going behind a cloud. You can see it in the movies. There's something to be said of making movies fast.
You were at the Actors Studio. You studied under Lee Strasberg. What was that experience like for you?
I had apprenticed at the Actors Studio for a long time. For years. It was an interesting place to go. A regular thing to do. And sometimes the moderators would be fascinating. Every Christmas, Kazan would do a session. He was great. They had people who were very interesting moderators: Ellen Burstyn, occasionally Al Pacino. And I worked there. I helped them do sets and stuff. At one point I auditioned and got in. Strasberg was there a lot when I was there.
To be frank, there's something about the method that I've never understood. I'm not sure what it is, even now. There was one single thing at the Actors Studio that made something clear to me that I've carried with me my whole life. After I'd been a member, I was doing a scene from Death of a Salesman with another actor. There's a famous scene where two brothers are talking in the bedroom. Somebody in the middle of my scene dropped a cardboard box full of dishes and it made a tremendous noise. I noticed the whole audience go like this [shifts his head] and I went on. Afterwards, Strasberg said to me, “What do you think?” I said I thought it went well. He said, “You know somebody dropped a big box of dishes when you were performing. Everyone jumped except you. You didn't even react.” I said, ‘Yes, I was concentrating.' “That's not concentrating, that's bad acting.” [laughs]
You can't exclude life from what you're doing. You bring it with you. You make it your own. You use it. If I don't feel well one day, that's going to affect the scene and it should. If I'm mad at somebody, that's going to affect the scene and it should. And it's a good thing because it's real.
There are things about movies that don't make sense to me like the notion of ‘Action' and ‘Cut.' It's funny. Movies still are the same as they were with D.W. Griffith. They go from reel to reel. The scene starts with ‘Action' and ends with ‘Cut.' The best directors are aware of the fact that things segue; that what you bring onto the set with you should be part of the scene; that the scene begins way before ‘Action' and is over way after ‘Cut.' I've worked with directors that don't say ‘Cut.' You run out of lines and the scene is over and nobody says ‘Cut.' Sometimes very interesting things happen. Actors keep ripping it. It's like jazz. Sometimes you get your best stuff from accidental scenes.
Good directors know that. Interesting movies are full of stuff that nobody knew was there. Abel Ferrara does that a lot. I think it's true that you can look at a script and say, ‘That's my big scene,' when that's not your big scene. The big scene isn't something in the script.
It hasn't happened.
It hasn't happened. You can't surprise anybody if you can't surprise yourself. Surprise is a big thing. There are so many great things. Dancers have a great mentality about what they do. They say great things. A choreographer used to say to me, “Show me something I never saw before. I don't care what it is. Just do something original.”
Speaking on the subject of dance, with the Fat Boy Slim music video “Weapon of Choice,” that was the first time I became aware that you started out as a dancer.
I danced from the time I was a little kid when I was a chorus boy until I was about thirty-something.
Is it true you try to incorporate a dance move into every one of your roles?
I do that a lot. Lots of times they've kept it in.
Can you give some examples?
King of New York, At Close Range. I dance for a minute in Catch Me If You Can.
Talk a little bit about doing “Weapon of Choice.”
It's a very catchy tune. The big thing about that for me was to work with Spike Jonze. He's terrific. And young. He asked me to do that based on my work on a movie twenty years ago, Pennies from Heaven. The best thing about that for me was I'm going to be 84 years old [kidding] and at this point [it's nifty] to be able to be in a music video and actually have kids think it's cool. I suppose musicals have always been my favorite thing— I'm talking about movie musicals. If somebody asks me if I want to go see a show, my choice is almost always musicals. I think if I was in the movies at an earlier time, I might have been in a lot of musical movies. But certainly MTV and music videos, some are brilliantly done, little movies.
I would think it's difficult to dance to something electronic like “Weapon of Choice.”
It is good for tap because it has a deliberate almost drum-like beat. They say tap dancers are like drummers.
Who or what had the single greatest impact on you as an artist?
I think certainly my movie-going as a kid. I was a religious moviegoer. In those days, going to the movies was different. You never went to see a movie. You always went to see at least two movies and on Saturday, usually three features, 27 cartoons. Wasn't any particular movie or actors but it was that whole experience of going to the movies. When I was growing up, there were a lot of movies influenced by the Second World War and then the Korean War. Also a lot of great westerns.
Would you say that's how you caught the acting bug? Going to the movies?
It was typical of that time. My friends and I would go to the movies, go to some vacant lot, and then act it out. Particularly war movies. It was the thing that kids did. Also kids in those days went to dancing school. Parents would send their kids on Saturday to dancing school. This was a working-class neighborhood. It was a typical thing for kids to go to tap class, girls to go to ballet or acrobatic class.
Touch on how you got involved in TV as a child actor.
It sounds odd but it wasn't at all. It was the late forties to late fifities. The so-called Golden Age of TV was born to the world. Came from NYC. Came from a six-block radius from Rockefeller Center. Three networks had their facilities in that small area which was connected to suburbs by subways. Ninety live shows every week; some were only 15 minutes, some 30 minutes. And they used a lot of kids. They weren't child actors necessarily. They were put there as set dressing. I didn't often have a lot to do. I would occasionally have a line. I did that and my brothers did that. The thing those days was to be a “triple threat.” My brother did a TV show which had a radio show connected to it, a soap opera called The Guiding Light. Sometimes he would be too busy doing other things and I would do the radio show because we had a similar voice, and the thing was to be a triple threat, which meant you could sing, dance and remember a few lines. That made you eminently hireable. I remember my older brother went to an audition once. They said, “We're looking for a young man who can play an accordian.” My brother raised his hand. He didn't even know what an accordion was. He rented one, had a few lessons, played “Home on the Range,” and got the job.
You like to cook. You shot a cooking show with Julian Schnabel called “Cooking With Chris.”
The thing about cooking is it's so interesting to watch. I don't know why, but if you go to somebody's house and they're making something, they usually say interesting things while they're cooking. I watch cooking shows a lot. I don't watch them as much now because the commercialization of them has become greedy. If you watch a cooking show, a half hour will rarely be 18 minutes. If you watch them, the host is almost always saying, “And when we come right back.” Cooking with Chris was really amusing. Julian and I and this other guy, a friend who has a restaurant in Little Italy decided to do this cooking show that had to do with buying the food, cooking it, then eating it. Three acts. I thought it was entertaining.
Let's talk about the short film you directed, “Popcorn Shrimp.”
The same people who did the cooking show came to me. They were doing five- minute shorts. They had a bunch of actors do their own pieces and they asked me. I hung up the phone and wrote it. The story is about a case of mistaken identity. The police had seen these people who were suspicious. They thought they were dangerous looking. Whenever we cut to them they are talking about food. The experience demonstrated that I'd be a lousy director.
So directing is not something you're interesting in doing?
My weakness as a director was if somebody would ask me something I'd say, ‘Just do whatever you want.' [laughs] My impression is that a director must be a little like a general. You'd hate me to be running a war because I wouldn't know what anybody is doing. [laughs]
Let's talk about some of your movies that are out now. Catch Me If You Can was a much different role for you.
Oh yeah. It's really important. One of the reviewers really hit it on the head. They said I finally got a part where I play a human being.
Not a monster.
Somebody who doesn't want to take over the world with radon. [laughs]
You weren't the headless horseman.
Playing the part of the father, I was a person, and a person who was struggling.
I don't know much about a movie until I see it. There were a couple things I thought immediately after reading the script. I'm a big Jerry Lewis fan. I heard him say once in an interview that his big secret is he's only nine. That all his life he's only been nine years old, and I thought, yes, absolutely. He's like a kid. You get that feeling with certain people. Mick Jagger has that. I think that's a wonderful quality, especially as you get older. I did get the feeling that Frank Abagnale, Sr. and his son were like a couple of juvenile delinquents.
What was it like working with Speilberg?
It was wonderful. I know because of watching his films, among the many things that's amazing about his movies is how good the actors come off. Every actor in every movie he's made is good. I figured he cast me for his own reasons. There's a physical believability between me and Leo. I never discussed it with him and we never discussed it while we were making the movie. It was very efficiently done. There wasn't a lot of sitting around. He's very fast.
You also have another film coming out. A much smaller movie but an enjoyable film called Poolhall Junkies. This was a classic case of a first-time director with very little clout, Mars Callahan, and you helped get the ball rolling on this script he's had floating around for years.
I was in a play in New York and Mars came to see it. And he told me this film he was doing. He sent me the script. We shot my scenes for little more than a week.
Mars did an Orson Welles on it. Wrote, starred, directed, did the publicity for it. It's his baby.
Let's talk about comedy. I watched your “Saturday Night Live” shows (five total). You have an open invitation to host. You obviously enjoy working with the troupe.
I think I enjoy funny people. Olivier has said no matter what the part is, even if it's King Lear, look for the jokes. I love watching comic actors. People who are funny are just a blessing to work with. I'm hosting my next Saturday Night Live on February 22.
Do you approach comedy differently?
I think of everything I do as comedy. Even when I'm holding a machine gun.
The villains you've played always seem to have a chuckle behind them, like a wink to the audience.
I've never gotten away from the idea of the performance thing. I come from musicals where there is no fourth wall. I grew up watching Zero Mostel in pieces like A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. And Jerry Lewis, with Damn Yankees, he'd walk out and do the scene and always turn to the audience and [makes funny expression]. There's always in the cast list of a play an unmentioned character. It's the audience and I carry that with me into the movies. When I play these villains, I think people can see that's Chris, pretending to be Max (from Batman Returns) and Max knows he's really Chris, and Chris knows that you know that Chris knows that.
You are a genius with monologues. Movies like Pulp Fiction and True Romance are memorable because of your speeches. You have a gift for them.
People don't have monologues in movies. I get monologues a lot. I worked with Peter Berg in the last thing I did, Helldorado. He was directing and he came in and gave me this big speech that was three pages. He said, “You're good at big speeches.”
Berg wrote it after he hired you?
He did. I think it comes from doing so much theater.
What about the long speech in Pulp Fiction?
Pulp Fiction was eight pages long. I was talking to the camera. It was great. I had the speech for months. I must say in that case every time I went through that long speech, every time I got to the end, it cracked me up. It stayed funny.
Do you have any favorite directors?
I've enjoyed working with almost everybody I've worked with. And there are people I'd like to work with. I've never worked with Scorsese.
That's shocking to me.
I almost worked with him once. He tried to make The Last Temptation of Christ a number of times. At some point I was going to play Jesus. I spent some time with him and it was fascinating, but then the studio wouldn't let him make it and ten years went by. I almost got to work with him. So many wonderful directors I'd love to work with: Sydney Pollack, Spike Lee, Bernardo Bertolucci, to name a few.
What do you hope the next 10 to 15 years will bring for Christopher Walken, the actor?
As I get older, I think the whole thing with Catch Me If You Can is maybe the beginning of something where I play uncles, fathers— you know, decent people.
I have my James Lipton (“Inside the Actors Studio”) question: When all is said and done and you're gone from this planet, how would you like to be remembered?
There's something about movies. You know when I sit there and watch Bogart. I watch Cagney, I watch Olivier. Are they dead?
That's what I want.
_______________________________________________________________The Age - January 27, 2003
No more Mr Bad Guy
After years of playing freaks, murderous fathers, mad scientists and headless horsemen, Christopher Walken is trying something new, writes Lorenza Munoz.
Sipping tea on a sunny winter morning in West Hollywood, Christopher Walken sees a bird perched on a tree branch in an outdoor patio. The bird, a common little house sparrow seen at any restaurant picking up bread crumbs, interrupts his thoughts.
"Hey there, little bird," he says softly. "I'm going to give you some bread, little bird." But there is no bread to give and he is in the middle of an interview. So instead, he stares at the bird for several seconds, creating an awkward silence.
Whether it's a bird, a siren or a daydream, Walken has a hard time focusing on the topic at hand - him. It becomes obvious that Walken, one of Hollywood's most outrageous character actors, is a gentle, if eccentric, soul.
He seems to loathe talking about himself and, when he does, deliberately understates his accomplishments. Despite performing since the age of nine, he is ill at ease talking to strangers. He once told a friend he wished he had a tail like a dog so that people could know what mood he was in before they approached him.
But he seems unlike the personas he has created for a variety of roles: freaks, murderous fathers, mad scientists, twisted and sick Vietnam vets - even a headless horseman.
A friend, artist and director Julian Schnabel, says he often wants to shield Walken from certain social situations. "He's like a deer in the headlights," says Schnabel, who has known Walken for more than a decade. "He is a very, very modest person."
Moviegoers can see him now in Catch Me If You Can, as Leonardo DiCaprio's father, Frank Abagnale senior - a Willy Loman-like character constantly deluding himself and his family with grand ideas.
His performance as an endearing loser goes against type for Walken - he doesn't kill, threaten or frighten anyone in the movie.
But despite the aura of menace he has created around himself, his life outside acting seems almost mundane on paper. He is a creature of habit.
At 59, he has been married for 35 years to Georgianne Walken, lives in a comfortable house in Connecticut, is a "fish and vegetable" kind of guy, always stays at the Chateau Marmont whenever in Los Angeles (for 25 years now), exercises every day and owns a Volvo - although he does not drive it, because, as Schnabel says, "he is afraid of crashing".
Any excitement in his life, Walken admits, is due to his career. "I mean, I'm from Queens," he says, assuming the accent.
Recalling his beginnings as a movie actor in the 1978 Academy Award-winning film, The Deer Hunter, he says, "I don't particularly like to do anything dangerous. And here I was in Bangkok. I was in the jungle and in the mountains. Being an actor has taken me places that I never would have gone to . . . It's been a very interesting life."
If he sounds reflective, it's because he is. His role in Catch awakened feelings of mortality. Steven Spielberg, the film's director, had never worked with Walken. He was impressed with the actor's ability to finesse a character.
"He has some of the best natural instincts of anyone I've worked with," said Spielberg. "I really think he likes to surprise himself. He comes prepared with some basic ideas of how to play the scene, but after the cameras are rolling, his instincts kick in."
This year, Walken will star in commercial fare: Jerry Bruckheimer's Kangaroo Jack, Helldorado with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and Gigli with Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck.
Born Ronald Walken, Ronnie, as he is still called by childhood friends and family, was the middle of three boys. Their mother, who was Scottish, enrolled all three in dancing classes.
The young Walken learnt to sing, dance and act. He was hooked. "In those days being a triple threat was something to aspire to," he says.
As a young man in New York, Walken was what he called a "back-up boy" for Belgian nightclub chanteuse Monique Van Vooren. One night, before introducing him to the audience, she turned to him and said: "You know, Ronnie is OK. But I think tonight I call you Christopher. I like Christopher," and with that he was given a stage name
"I just said, 'Cool!'," he recalls, laughing, rolling the tip of his tongue on his thin, angular upper lip. "She was so gorgeous. Really hot, let's face it, that's the word. She had that European thing."
New generations of MTV fans were introduced to Walken by the 2001 Fat Boy Slim Weapon of Choice video, directed by Spike Jonze (Adaptation).
Jonze had seen Walken dance on the TV show Saturday Night Live and wrote a letter asking him to appear in the video. Walken jumped at the chance.
Even in the eyes of the MTV crowd, Walken managed to look cool tap-dancing in a business suit to a techno beat, bursting into a routine vaguely reminiscent of Fred Astaire's classic walk up a wall, ceiling and floor in Royal Wedding.
But about that time, Walken's career needed a little fine-tuning. Having starred in more than 90 pictures, he was being tagged as an actor who was usually the best thing in a terrible movie. Once represented by William Morris, he is now guided by Toni Howard and Risa Shapiro at ICM.
Although his films have included Annie Hall, Pennies From Heaven and At Close Range, he was surprised that Howard and Shapiro would accept him as a client.
"They invited me, and those are big guys! Girls, I mean," he rambles. He then falls into another awkward silence. "I was very pleased," he continues. "I was sitting at home trying to get me a job."
His new agents want him to be more selective and work mainly with big-name directors. But Walken has a hard time holding back. He lives for work.
"I don't have hobbies," he says. "I don't like to travel, although I do travel a lot to interesting places because of the movies. I don't have kids. I have a wife but she is the casting director for The Sopranos and lots of other work, so she is busy."
Besides, when he is working, he says, he has "a better lifestyle. I eat better because I want to stay thin. My mind is active because I am worried about something.
"It's just not good to sit around."
_______________________________________________________________The Guardian - January 25, 2003
Dancing in the dark
He was a baby when he got his first showbiz break in the 1940s, and then firmly schooled in the song-and-dance tradition. So how did Christopher Walken end up as a master of evil? By William Leith
When I first met Christopher Walken, in 1987, he seemed to be on the slide. He'd won an Oscar for The Deer Hunter (1978), and then he was in Heaven's Gate (1980), the most expensive flop in movie history. A year later, in 1981, he was on the boat with the actress Natalie Wood the night she drowned. (Wood and her husband, actor Robert Wagner, had been drinking and arguing.) He was becoming, in the words of the film critic David Thomson, "the ghost that haunts American film". He'd begun a sequence of small parts in good films and leading roles in, for the most part, not such good, even rotten, films. Even his superb performance as a filicidal thief in At Close Range (1986) hadn't made it a proper hit. Now he was playing Don Stevens, a not very memorable fashion reporter, in a decidedly so-so film called Deadline (1987). Why?
The 44-year-old Walken was in an odd mood. I couldn't get much out of him. His hair was thick and slightly bushy, and he had the beginnings of a sunken look to his eyes. He was a bit kooky. His eyes moved about in a way that looked sinister. As always, he was graceful and trim. When I asked him to sum up his career, he thought about it for a while, but couldn't find the words. Finally, he said, "Ah, it's all apples and bananas."
When I open the door to his suite in the Chateau Marmont hotel in Hollywood 15 years later, there is so much light in the room that Walken appears in silhouette. For a moment, he is faceless, which is how directors often introduce the Walken character in a film: a sinister man emerging from the shadows. At 59, he still moves with feline grace; he is a former dancer, after all. He's extremely good-looking, and seems to be ageing more like a beautiful woman than a man. His features are delicate, and there is a web of fine lines around his eyes. Vincent Gallo, who worked with him on The Funeral (1996), described him as "Preserved. Taxidermied. Dunked in formaldehyde. Scary." (And it was Gallo who was playing the corpse.)
"I used to be prettier than I am," says Walken, "but I think I look better now. I was a pretty boy. Particularly in my early movies. I don't like looking at them so much. There's a sort of pretty thing about me."
Walken has had a chequered career. He has had highs and lows. He hasn't stopped working; his work-rate is around five movies a year. He hasn't been able to make it as a major leading man, but he's been in more than 60 movies, usually as a villain, or at least a tortured soul. You could see him as part of a group with Dennis Hopper, Nick Nolte, Willem Dafoe and James Woods - character actors of a certain age who manage to be both evil and sexy. Of these actors, Walken is the least macho, the most graceful; he is the least gritty, but perhaps the most complex.
He has honed his art of playing small parts in good movies. He can, it has to be said, be absolutely brilliant - he is better than anybody at portraying people who are dangerous because they are weak. Who can forget his funny, but still pretty terrifying, speech in Pulp Fiction (1994) about hiding a watch up his bottom? Or his terrifying, but still pretty funny, scene with Dennis Hopper in True Romance (1993), in which he captures Hopper, taunts him, kisses him delicately on both cheeks, shoots him, and then spits on his corpse with a brutality that is almost sexual?
Yet he's also been in dozens of rather dodgy movies. He once said, "I make movies that nobody will see. I've made movies that even I have never seen." The underside of his career is a pageant of evil creeps, tortured souls, nasty killers and crooks. "Careers are not often as chosen as people think they are," he explains. "People talk to me about my choices. I don't make choices, hardly. Things happen, and you say yes or no - usually 'yes', because it's always better to do something. What's the choice? Somebody will say, 'Don't do that part, you don't need to do that part.' And I'll say, 'Why not? What am I going to do? Sit around the house? I'd much rather go to work, and see actors, and have fun."
Right now, he has several movies in the can, and is in the middle of shooting another - it sounds a classic Walken part. "I play a villain. I'm in the jungle. I'm chief of this villainous guerrilla force." When he says this, he sounds witty and self-aware, which is slightly disconcerting; sometimes he just looks through you.
And from next weekend he can be seen in Catch Me If You Can, directed by Steven Spielberg, playing Frank Abagnale Sr, the con-artist father of the charismatic young con-artist Frank Abagnale Jr, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. It's an upbeat film, based on a true story, with sadness at its core; the son turns to crime because of the failures of the father. Walken is on top form, mesmerisingly charismatic and weak, the font of the human weakness that drives the plot. When DiCaprio tells his father that he, too, is a hustler, Walken's reaction is perfect; he gives you a man who wants to cry, out of both pride and shame. It's another one of his beautiful turns.
"Yes," he says, "I thought it was a terrific movie, and I thought I was good." When he talks, he hisses and purrs, emphasising words in an odd, dissonant way. (As a child, he used to cross out punctuation in his textbooks, something he still does, obsessively, with his scripts.) "When I saw this movie, one of the things I noticed was the relationship between me and Leo. We're almost the same age. These two guys are like two juvenile delinquents. And that's very nice. These two kids being a little bit wicked, you know, the way kids are. That's why people like kids, I guess. I find that a lot of people who are interesting do have that quality. I mean, even businessmen. It's a young thing."
He ponders for a moment, giving me his peculiar stare. His demeanour is naturally cryptic; he could be thinking anything. (He once told the director Paul Schrader not to worry too much about lighting his face. "I don't need to be made to look evil," he said. "I can do that on my own.") He is, it turns out, thinking about youth. "Whenever I can, I like to look at kids' paintings. It's almost as if you cannot find a bad one. It's always interesting. Why is that?"
Walken, who was christened Ronald, after the actor Ronald Coleman, spent his own youth in Queens, New York. His mother, Rosalie, pushed Ronnie and his two brothers, Ken and Glenn, into showbusiness when they were little more than babies: Ronnie's first job was to pose naked with some cats for an ad when he was 14 months' old (which means that he's been in showbusiness for more than 58 years). "It sounds odd now, but when I was growing up, it wasn't. There were hundreds of kids who did that."
It might not be odd, but it's certainly unusual, even for an actor. He attended the Professional Childrens' School in Manhattan, where classes were organised around the kids' working schedules. It was the 1940s, the early days of television, when New York was the centre of the broadcasting world. "There were 90 live shows from New York every week," says Walken, "and actors worked like crazy." He learned to sing and tap dance; he still puts a dance routine, however small, into a lot of his movies. He danced spectacularly in Pennies From Heaven (1981), in which he played a sort of sexy pimp, and more recently there was his age-defying turn in Spike Jonze's video for Fatboy Slim's Weapon Of Choice (2001). But then, he's been doing it for decades - in The Deer Hunter, Walken's character Nick plays a last game of pool before shipping out to Vietnam, and slips into a lovely little jig with his cue; it's a hint of what Nick might have been like if he hadn't gone to war.
"God, how can I put it? I was an entertainer. I was a kid who could sing and dance. If you gave me a line, I could ... I could sell it." Walken brightens; it's as if he's waking from a torpor. "There was a term we used. It was great to be a 'triple threat'. You could sing, you could dance, and if they gave you some dialogue, you could do that. That made you much more hireable." He worked with Milton Berle, Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar - but of the three brothers, he got the least work.
Of his mother, who was born in Glasgow and who had grown up with unfulfilled stage ambitions of her own, he says, "There were a lot of these ladies who didn't have to work because their husbands did well. They were a tribe unto themselves. These ladies, they were really characters. They had these kids, and they'd take them from show to show. And they all knew each other, and gossiped." Walken says that his parents - I think he means his mother - "became immediately struck with television, and got one, the biggest one I'd ever seen. It was mesmerising - it still is - but can you imagine when it first happened?"
When Walken performs guest spots on Saturday Night Live - he has hosted the show five times, and also does comic turns - he walks the same corridors in the NBC building that he walked as a child. "I see these ghosts from when I was a little kid. It was a strange world of monkeys riding motorcycles. There was a famous monkey, J Fred Mugs, and he had his own motorcycle: he was a star!" Remembering these times, his voice takes on an old-time Broadway lilt; he sounds like a character from Broadway Danny Rose, which happens to be pretty much his favourite film.
By contrast, his father Paul wasn't very Broadway; he was a hard-working German baker. When Rosalie and the boys were in glamorous Manhattan, Paul was at the bakery in Queens. "My father loved to work. He was a very hard worker. Seven days a week. Get in the car, go to the bakery. He just loved it. On Sunday, he couldn't wait to get to the bakery. He did bread, cakes, cookies, ice-cream cakes. In the holidays, he'd bring in turkeys and hams. He did very well."
Paul once consigned Ronnie to his bedroom for a weekend when he failed a maths test; but he doesn't see his father as being overly strict. "No, no, my father was great. He was usually very enthusiastic about work." Walken gives me another of his strange looks. "You know, I really admire people who go to work. Whatever it is." It was the desire to work that made Walken drop out of Hofstra University, where he was studying English, when he was offered a part as a dancer in Best Foot Forward (1963). After that, he was a backing singer and dancer for Monique van Vooren, who told him, "I don't really like Ronnie. I think you're more Christopher." So he changed his name.
In 1963, while playing Riff in West Side Story, he met his future wife, Georgianne Thon, who was playing Graziella, Riff's girlfriend. They married in 1969, decided early on that they didn't want children, and are still together, splitting their time between a brownstone apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and a house in the country in Connecticut. When he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the suicidal Nick in The Deer Hunter, he went to bed with it. "I said to my wife, with the Oscar in my hand, 'This is a house.' And it was." Georgianne is often in town, where she works as a casting director (she casts The Sopranos); Walken is often in the country, alone with his cats and his scripts. He is not, and never has been, spectacularly wild - unlike, say, Dennis Hopper. True, he once said that vodka had been "his drug of choice"; true, he took acid with Raul Julia in the 1970s and had "a great time". But there has always been something ascetic about him; he has been linked with very few women.
His film career started late. After a few bits and pieces, he was cast as Diane Keaton's suicidal brother in Annie Hall (1977) at the age of 34. It was the first classic Walken part; his perennial role as the "tortured soul". "Annie Hall is a great movie. A lot of people saw it. And in it I play a suicidal guy. And within a year of that came The Deer Hunter. And I play another suicidal guy. And it could be as simple as that. I just got started playing ... disturbed people."
He was considered for the part of Han Solo in the first Star Wars film, before Harrison Ford got the nod. But you can't quite see it, can you? In any case, there was no shortage of disturbed people to play. He was perfect as "the malevolent Wasp". He once said, "I'd love to play a hero. I'd love to play James Bond. Nobody's going to ask me to play James Bond." True, although he did play Max Zorin, the freakish Aryan villain in A View To A Kill, a part he dispatched with relish. And Nathan D Champion, the disturbed bounty hunter in Heaven's Gate, and Brad Whitewood Sr, the filicidal criminal in At Close Range, and Robert, the creepy rich guy who kills for kicks in The Comfort Of Strangers (1990), and Don Stevens, the unappealing fashion writer in Deadline. And Dr Michael Brace, a mad scientist and Natalie Wood's love interest in Brainstorm (1983), her final film.
Did Wood fall in love with Walken? Her sister, Lana, has said, "She loved the attention she got from him. It would not have been the first time Natalie fell in love with her leading man; the great tragedy was that it would be the last time." On set, there was talk that Wood saw, in Walken, a reincarnation of James Dean, whom she idolised. Like Dean, Walken likes to horse around during takes. Louise Fletcher, who was also in the film, told Wood's biographer, "He would do something completely different just to get the energy going, like he'd drop his pants or something."
When filming ended, Wood invited him for a weekend on her yacht; her husband, Robert Wagner, was also there. The three drank a great deal of alcohol. According to Walken, there was a "small beef" between him and Wagner; according to Wagner, they had had "a friendly political debate" at a restaurant, and "continued the discussion" on the boat. In any event, Wood was found, drowned, the next morning, a distance from the boat. Walken refuses to speak publicly about her death. "There's nothing to do except be sad and keep your mouth shut," he has said. "It always sounds so mysterious; there's nothing mysterious about it. She banged her head and fell in the water and fell one way; the boat floated another. It's silly."
When I ask him to tell me about the saddest things in his life, he stifles my line of questioning. "I hope those things don't happen," he says quickly. And anyway, he does horse around in a James Dean-ish way. Lots of people, including Stephen Bach, a studio producer on Heaven's Gate, say he's great at getting other actors to relax. "Sometimes," says Walken, "in a scene, without telling the other actor, I'll pretend that I'm Elvis. I'll just pretend I'm Elvis and the other actor will not know. And it'll make me smile. Or even just smile inside. I'm doing Elvis and this guy doesn't know I'm doing Elvis. I do it when things are getting stale. I'll do it to, like, juice things up a little." We look at each other. "Or, if you're off-camera, you can substitute the word 'gorilla' for whatever it is you're talking about."
Walken says he's happy. He loves routine. "I get up early, at six or seven, and have coffee. I usually read in the morning. And then, if I have a script, I do that for a while. Then I exercise at a certain time. About noon. I like to cook, so usually, I'll be making something. And I have my script. My favourite thing is to have two scripts. It's great to study two things at the same time."
He hates the idea of not working. "When I don't have any work sometimes, a kind of thing sets in where my mind shuts down. It's almost like hibernation. It's not that I'm unhappy, but I'm not thinking anything. Then I'll go and watch television. And after an hour or two, I'll think, 'You're just sitting there watching television and it's not even interesting.' And there's nothing to do. Life becomes meaningless."
So what can we look forward to in the future? More malevolent Wasps, getting increasingly malevolent as Walken gets older. I particularly look forward to Walken as an ancient mafia boss or white-haired mad professor. His mother always used to say, "Why can't you make a nice film?" The answer is that Walken isn't so good at playing heroes. On stage, he says, he wasn't a good Hamlet, but he was a fine Iago.
Tomorrow, he'll be picked up at 5am to shoot a scene as the spiky-haired guerrilla chief. It's an important scene. This afternoon, he will look at his script and make notes. "You know," he says, talking about the process of acting, "it's really tricky. People have no idea. How do you do it? Most of the time I don't. I mean, I can't. You just do it as well as you can. And, hopefully, you did some good stuff here and some good stuff there. The best part is going home in the car at the end of the day, and thinking, 'I was good.' "
_______________________________________________________________Empire Australia - April 2002
Christopher Walken
In his own time he loves cooking and dancing. So has the screen's most intimidating villain gone soft?
Christopher Walken is unarguably an enigma. His piercing eyes, his crazy hair, and his even crazier career choices have made him one of Hollywood's most intriguing identities. Time has made Walken no less an oddball, and Empire discovers a conversation with the man can take some very strange twists and turns, starting with his love of dancing.
"I consider Pennies From Heaven, the musical, as a turning point in my career. I'm very happy to have done that because it was the last musical made by MGM. I remember I dubbed my taps on the same little parquetry floor that Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor – all those people – used."
Adding to the impression that he is actually happiest when dancing, Walken speaks fondly of the recent Fatboy Slim music video he starred in, Weapon of Choice. "It was very unexpected at my age to be in a music video. I heard the tune, it was very catchy. Spike Jonze called. I’ve done a couple of musical movies and when I was young I was a dancer in shows. I guess Spike knew about that. It was very quick to shoot. We shot it all in one night in the lobby of a hotel in downtown Los Angeles."
Walken gives the impression that he is only doing what makes him happy. These days, when he’s not dancing, he's directing, having just completed his directorial debut, Popcorn Shrimp, a short film starring the original Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio.
I went into the next room and wrote this thing in a couple of hours. A small script. I don’t know what it was. Six or seven pages. I more or less handed it to the people and said, 'You take care of it,' and they got all these nice actors. Then we shot it in six or seven hours. I must say, it was done so quickly that I just said 'Do whatever you want.’ I enjoy it when directors say that to me."
In typically quirky style, his long-term dream project is a biopic on the life and times of well-endowed porn star John Holmes, although the long struggle to get people interested seems to have worn away at his enthusiasm for that somewhat strange project.
"I’ve done a number of scripts. It’s sort of my hobby. When I’m not working, I sit around and I write these things. I spent a couple of years trying to get the John Holmes script made. Let’s face it though, getting a movie made is a miracle, I don’t know how people do it. I had a lot of lunches and a lot of people say they were enthusiastic but nothing ever happened. When I first got interested in it, he [Holmes] had recently died. There was a big article in one of the Sunday papers about him and I just thought it was an interesting story: the idea of a gift being a curse." He punctuates this with his trademark crackling chuckle.
But aside from the extracurricular projects – the most bizarre of which is, wait for it, a cooking show that he’s put together with his close friend Julian Schnabel ("We just went out with some video cameras and made a three-part thing. We bought the food, then we cooked it, then we ate it.
We had about nine hours of video which we pared down to half an hour. It was sort of amusing.") – Walken’s acting is an area of his life which shows no sign of slowing.
"I consider Pennies From Heaven a career turning point."
With a slew of sinister psycho roles under his belt as well as coming up in films like The Affair Of The Necklace, Kangaroo Jack (in which he plays a Mafia henchman chasing a kangaroo with a pouch full of money) and Gigli, the question has to be raised: does he ever wish he was offered the odd hero role, or even a romantic lead?
"I don’t know. I asked a romantic hero actor once – a wonderful actor – who always gets the girl. I asked him if he ever played villains. He said, ‘they never ask me.’ He’d said he’d love to but they never ask. I guess I could say the same. Movies are expensive to make and if it works playing the funny guy or the villain or the action hero, chances are you’ll be asked to do that again. It’s just kind of a practical business kind of thing. I think that happens."
By William Thomas
_______________________________________________________________Empire Magazine - March 2002
Which movie do you see as a turning point in your career?
SARAH COMBS, DULWICH
It would be The Deer Hunter, obviously. But I do consider Pennies from Heaven, the musical. I'm very happy to have done that because it was the last musical ever made by MGM. MGM made all these classic musicals and then around 1980, the studio was purchased by Sony and the name changed. But when I did Pennies from Heaven, it was still called MGM. I remember that I dubbed my taps on the same little parquet floor that Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor, all those people, used.
What did you think of Kevin Spacey's impersonation of you, as seen at the Oscars?
GARTH O'CONNOR, DUBLIN, IRELAND
I remember a few years ago I was sitting at home with my wife watching the Oscars. I was sitting on the couch, and suddenly I heard my voice. It's thrilling. It's interesting that a lot of guys do me. I have a friend who does me on his answering machine so when I call him I talk to myself. I don't really know what that comes from. It doesn't seem to me that I speak in a strange way. My wife says Kevin's is the best.
What made you do the Fatboy Slim video, and did you enjoy shooting it?
LOUISE, VIA E-MAIL
Oh yeah. It was very unexpected at my age to be in a music video. I heard the tune, Weapon of Choice - it was very catchy. Spike Jonze called. I've done a couple of musical movies and when I was young I was a dancer in shows. I guess Spike knew about that. It was very quick to shoot. We shot it all in one night in the lobby of a hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
Is it true that you once worked driving a bakery van?
JAMS BIGGART, WAKEFIELD
I worked in my father's bakery a lot in the back. I scrubbed things. I did various chores, I delivered cakes. I filled jelly doughnuts.
Your fan club recently held a dinner in your honour, which you attended. Is it strange meeting your fans like that?
ALEX, VIA E-MAIL
I had never gone to anything like that before. I was a little bit apprehensive, but I had a good time. They were very attractive, and bright, and nice. I was very comfortable. They had terrific taste, the food and everything was very beautifully done. I'd only seen those kinds of scenes in movies and it wasn't like that. It was very gracious.
Why do we never get to see you in any heroic or romantic roles?
JAYE, VIA E-MAIL
I don't know. I asked a romantic hero actor once, a wonderful actor - who always gets the girl - if he ever played villains. He said, "They never ask me." I guess I could say the same. Movies are expensive to make and if it works playing the funny guy or the villain or the action hero, chances are you'll be asked to do that again. It's just kind of a practical business kind of thing.
_______________________________________________________________N.Y. Screenwriter - Feb / Mar 2002
BEHIND THE LENS
Scotland, PA. writer/director Billy Morrissette
Billy Morrissette gave up a career acting in front of the camera to step behind it to write and direct his debut feature, Scotland, PA.
Many of Hollywood’s most accomplished directors owe their success behind the camera to their experience as actors in front of the camera. Screenwriter/director Billy Morrissette spent 12 years acting in film and television. His film credits include FOR THE BOYS, PUMP UP THE VOLUME and NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VEGAS VACATION, and he also appeared in numerous television series including Party of Five, Mad About You, and Family Ties.
Originally from South Windsor, Connecticut, Morrissette got the idea for an adaptation of Macbeth that takes place in a fast food restaurant from his school job working at the local Dairy Queen. He eventually shelved the idea because he was unable to raise the necessary funds to produce the project on his minimum wage salary of $3.25 an hour.
Twenty-two years later, Morrissette shared the idea for SCOTLAND, PA with his wife, actress Maura Tierney (E.R.) who thought his black comedy retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth sounded brilliant. He completed the script and presented it to Tierney’s former NYU classmate, producer Richard Shepard, who then signed on to the project.
The strength of the script eventually attracted several notable actors including Christopher Walken, Andy Dick and James LeGros. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001 and was picked up for distribution by Lot 47.
What made you decide to become a writer/director?
It was very simple. I was a bitter actor. I was a troubled little actor driving around L.A., and an idea that I thought of years ago came back to me and I decided to buy a computer and write it. I started writing and I loved it. It was really fun, but the process of making an independent film is not so fun.
The reaction that I got from people was really nice and positive and it was so thrilling not to be an actor anymore because it was so horrible, especially when you’re a bad actor (laughs).
When I was younger and I became an actor I had such passion for it, and ironically, for Shakespeare. It was the first stuff I really got into and I had such passion and then I sold my soul, I went to L.A. and I did very bad television. I did so much bad work that I totally lost my passion for acting.
Then when I started writing it was great, I loved doing it, and it made me feel like I felt years ago as an actor and in the same exact way the new passion came back. Directing was exhausting and impossible and I was scared to death and I’m going to do it again.
It’s so funny because writing is so lonely. You spend so much time alone and then directing there are thousands of people all around you. It was an amazing process. I was so lucky to be able to have the chance to do this and I’m just so happy with it. I’m happy if anybody likes my film so that I can do it again.
Christopher Walken, who was in the film said to me, ‘I was really happy about you being an actor because I find when directors are actors they can connect with actors better.’
Which is probably why so many great directors were also actors.
That was the best time for me when I was working with the actors. Because as an actor you know the needs of an actor more, you have more compassion for it and what they’re going through and what they need.
Especially with an independent film you make them sit around for five hours and then you shove them up there and it’s all so fast and we have no money and it becomes such a labor of love.
SCOTLAND, PA was in the Dramatic Competition at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. How was your Sundance experience as a first time writer/director?
I hated the competition and I loved Sundance. I loved it, all those people together. You hear all this stuff about how it’s so Hollywood now, but when you’re in that group of directors it’s all so wonderful. Everyone’s just thrilled to have their movie seen and it’s so exciting and the theaters are great and the people are great and the town is great. It was unbelievable that we were there. We couldn’t believe that we were actually there.
I wish there wasn’t a competition. I sound like a bitter writer/director because we didn’t win, but it’s too bad that in the end, rather than having a banquet that just salutes everyone, I wish we were all just films being shown and just had a party at the end. After all that you’re exhausted and you can’t help going, ‘Oh, I want to win,’ and then you’re disappointed! (Laughs.)
It was so exciting, it was such an honor and so great, I just wish awards didn’t exist.
Was your distributor, Lot 47, involved in the project after Sundance or during the festival?
Our audiences were so great to our movie and Lot 47 wanted it immediately, but what happened was the producers involved were holding off a bit and then by April [2001] we signed with Lot 47. Because of that it kind of put things behind, and Lot 47 was debating putting us out in the fall [of 2001] or in the winter [of 2002] and they chose winter.
In light of what happened in fall 2001, winter 2002 was the best choice.
I know now.
Why Scotland, Pennsylvania?
I grew up in a little suburban town called South Windsor, Connecticut, which is pretty much what I wrote the movie after. Every time somebody says, ‘Connecticut’ they sound rich and I didn’t grow up rich. Whenever I’ve driven through Pennsylvania, we live in L.A. and New York – we’ve gone back and forth for years – there are so many strangely named towns in Pennsylvania. It seemed so natural and parts of it are so rural that Pennsylvania seemed perfect.
But the film was shot in Nova Scotia.
We shot in Nova Scotia because I thought there’d be a lot of fog and then we didn’t have a foggy day. We had a lot of fog during pre-production and the sunniest time I’d ever seen during the shoot.
Why are you bi-coastal rather than simply staying in Los Angeles or New York?
There’s just no letting go. We can’t let go of New York. We just refuse to, we love it so much, my wife and I.
It’s the old story, L.A. versus New York, but we just never could let go. It’s always nice to know it’s there. It was extremely hard this year because we couldn’t get back until October and when this happened [the terrorist attacks] we never felt so far away. It was a very odd feeling.
What inspired you to write a black comedy adaptation of Macbeth?
The main reason is whenever I’ve seen the play and – please don’t take this wrong because I love Shakespeare – but whenever I’ve seen Macbeth, and it’s famous for this it fails every time. When you do the play as an actor you’re not supposed to say the word Macbeth because it’s cursed. You’re supposed to say, ‘That Scottish play,’ because it always fails. I’ve always thought that Macbeth fails because as soon as the second act is over you just want the Macbeth’s to be murdered because they are awful people and they’ve killed and you just want them dead. I think the play drags a bit because of that so I want them to be a good time and a partying couple who we kind of root for a little bit. A couple of people have told me that they actually find themselves really liking the couple. The only way to like the murderers is to make it a little fun. I swear the first time I read [Macbeth] I found it funny that everybody had ‘Mac’ in their name. It was a reaction I had and I always thought it belonged in a fast food restaurant.
Have the similarities between McBeth’s and McDonald’s caused any problems?
It’s amazing when you make a film every singles thing has to be cleared. From the beginning about McDonald’s the idea was always, ‘You would love for them to sue you,’ (laughs) which to me is not a great statement. But everybody said, ‘Oh, you want that kind of press, that’s perfect.’ I was like, ‘All right you guys, I’m not in charge of this so let’s cross our fingers.’ I think they should take our movie and put it in their Happy Meals and make little cups with Maura Tierney’s face on it.
Everybody knows how Macbeth is going to end, but somehow you are able to keep the audience wondering. How did you approach the adaptation to keep it fresh and original?
I read the play many, many times and I kept reading it over and over again and each time I did I would find things. More than anything I found it simple. I found that that story – of course it’s Shakespeare – was so perfectly structured that it was simple to adapt it. It was so simple to make it modern. One of my favorite things is the relationship between Macduff and Duncan’s son Malcolm. It’s as if he wrote it this year, there is a modern relationship between the two of them because one had just lost his father and the other one is away from his family and there’s this strange connection. I think when the play is done everybody tries to make a little something out of it. I think George Wolf at The Public Theater even made them lovers.
When I see our movie and I see the scene between Macduff and Malcolm I think, ‘Wow, isn’t that amazing.’ I’m watching this and it’s all Shakespeare, it was all there already this relationship between these two, and when he says, ‘So, Mr. Duncan,’ to Malcolm I always get little chills and think, ‘Oh, my God, this guy wrote it 400 years ago and here it is, exactly the way I think that he wanted it in the first place,’ I guess what I’m trying to say is that I found that it’s such a great play and it’s such an insanely talented man who wrote it that adapting it was a breeze to me. It came so easily to me then I stole from about twelve Columbo episodes, which also made it easier. And of course my life, all I remember in the 70’s was Bad Company and Camaros and that’s what I wanted there.
But you also managed to include so many other details from the 70’s like Rock Blocks and Fondue.
I drive my wife crazy, but those are the kinds of things that I can’t get out of my head, but I don’t remember when she told me to pick up the clothes from the cleaners yesterday. My memory has Fondue in it and things like that. It’s weird the things that stay with you.
Why did you decide to set the story in the 70’s?
There are two main things. One is when I remember a drive-thru showing up in my little town. I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember how exciting it was that we could drive-thru. My town is much bigger now, but it was a small town. Now everything is everywhere, Starbucks – we’ve crossed the country so many times because we’re bi-coastal and you could literally watch the states all become the same. Everything is everywhere. Banana Republic is everywhere; all those things now are just everywhere. Everything is so homogenized and in the 70’s I felt that still there were those little places that didn’t know about a lot of things. There still was this one fast food restaurant in the whole town. It seemed like long enough away – not to mention the fact that it was also a hard time because of the recession. I wanted the McBeth’s to be in this place that they needed to move up because nobody had any money. I wanted it to be rough. I didn’t want to get into the gas lines or Vietnam or anything, but I just wanted the feeling that everything was wrong, clothes, money, everything just was a problem.
When you were writing the script did you have your wife Maura Tierney in mind to play the role of Mrs. McBeth?
No. The funny thing is I was thinking more of a sort of Holly Hunter in RAISING ARIZONA sort of crazier, insane thing at first then I started writing it then all of a sudden I realized I’ve got Maura Tierney here in my house. It was funny that within a month or so I realized that I was writing it for her. Of course she was perfect for this – I don’t now why I was thinking bigger or odder and then all of a sudden I completely started writing it for Maura.
You originally wanted James LeGros to play Joe “Mac” McBeth, but did you have Christopher Walken in mind for Macduff?
We would kill to have him, but he always seemed so untouchable. He was in a play that closed in New York and he got the script then he called me. He said, ‘I really like the idea of playing a nice guy. No one ever gives me roles as nice guys.’ We had such a great talk and then he decided to do it. He was incredible. He was just hysterical in it.
When I wrote Macduff I always wrote it much more casually like whatever a quirky actor wants to bring to it. I always thought he could be anything. He could be younger, he could be African-American, and instead I got Christopher Walken. When we were getting him we were just out of your minds, we were so happy, then I was scared to death, and he was wonderful.
And directing Christopher Walken for your first film –
His script was full of notes and he talks about so many specific things and it’s wonderful. He does crazy things. He dances in the movie and I didn’t write that. That was the first day of shooting and he was dancing.
When you’re working with a cast that is so talented –
It makes your job easier.
Had you written screenplays before Scotland, PA?
No, I didn’t have a computer. This is the first thing I ever wrote. I was very lucky.
How did you learn the craft of screenwriting?
I have two close friends who are writers. I told them I was going to do [Scotland, PA ] and they told me to get Movie Master, which I still use and it’s about 100 years old compared to what everybody else uses. I wrote what must have been a horrible first draft and then I sat down with them and Maura and a couple of other friends. As an actor I had seen a lot of scripts so I had an idea exactly how it was done. But basically I just had a roundtable discussion with friends and they said, ‘Okay, you want to stay away from this, this and this.’ Plus I was very lucky because structure-wise I had William Shakespeare, so you get a little edge there. He helped me a lot.
One of the benefits of making a film independently is you avoid the whole development process with all the notes and the possibility of being replaced and the whole issue of studio interference.
Yes. We were in heaven since there was none of that. I would love to continue this way. I’ve heard so many horror stories about all the other stuff. It would be great to just make independent films for the rest of my life.
Is being bi-coastal or living in Los Angeles necessary for actors and writers?
If Maura weren’t on E.R. we wouldn’t live here now. We would be coming out here a lot. I’m sure anybody would tell you absolutely it is, but as a writer I would be out of here in two minutes. I don’t understand the point. I guess if you’re making studio films you have meetings, but you know, get on a plane.
People say when you’re not in L.A. you’re out of the loop.
I certainly don’t think so. There probably is that cloud over you if you’re not there in the middle of it, but it would be fine with me to leave.
Especially if you’re writing independent projects or spec scripts and you really don’t want to be a studio writer or rewriter.
Right and not doing those high-powered pitches.
When you’re writing do you think about what sells?
No, and I should.
Why do you say that?
Because I’m trying to get a film financed [laughs]. I should start selling out right now. But no I don’t. I don’t even think of actors which is really weird because everybody says, ‘What actor are you thinking of?’ and I always say, ‘I wasn’t really thinking of an actor when I wrote this.’ Besides Maura I didn’t really write for anybody. When we started talking about actors I knew exactly who I would want, but I didn’t write the parts for actors.
It seems like many of the movies coming out of Hollywood these days are about pairing this Oscar winner with that Oscar winner with no regard to whether the actor works in the part.
Yeah and you think of SNOW DOGS [laughs]. I think they’re in trouble the day the script was written. A thing I learned getting through the audition process on the other side was for this one little part, this inept cop in SCOTLAND, PA that Christopher Walken works with. I saw seven great actors who were hysterical in it and one of them walked in and was exactly what I was looking for, but I had to tell seven great actors that they’re not getting the job. Some people are just right for it and some aren’t; they’re good, but if you’re really truthful about it all, it would all be unknowns in my opinion. I hate seeing the same actors in everything.
Good writing means focusing on what the character wants rather than on writing what a name actor would want to perform.
I don’t see it any other way. It doesn’t make sense to me. That’s such an exciting thing about writing. When you start writing you start really loving these characters like you do the character when you’re acting. It’s such an exciting process when you get to know them.
I find that you definitely need a basic structure, but I find that a lot of different things happen once I understand the character. Just like in acting when you really get to know a character you can find so many elements of it. What I’m finding when I’m writing is that if I start to really get them and see what’s happening with him or her, I find it will change the story somewhat. It’s a nice process that way if they’re not working you have to kill them or get rid of them.
Do you plan to return to acting at some point?
No I’m done. It’s so exciting not to want to do it.
Even if you write a character that you really want to play?
I don’t know. Writing and directing was so much nicer. I’m thrilled to stay away from it.
Unlike most adaptations of Shakespeare you avoid using dialogue from the play, opting to include bits and pieces of more familiar lines in Scotland, Pa. Was that done to make it more accessible to a general audience?
All I wanted to do at he beginning was to get the story down. I actually was thinking about me because I’m a bit of a geek about Shakespeare because I really love it and I didn’t want to write it just for me. It’s so easy to put every reference – I think in my first draft I did a lot of that. Then I thought ‘I don’t need this. Why not be subtle about this.’ The theme was enough. Everything is there and putting it in just a little bit works so much better. Most people know the story, they know it’s about greed, they know there’s murder in it. That’s about as far as they go. Not that I was writing for a mass audience, but I didn’t want to write for only people who knew the play. I thought that was boring and I thought, ‘You know what? You know the play then who the hell cares.’
One of my writer friends and the one person whose advice I didn’t take said, ‘You’ve got a really good story here why don’t you cut out this whole Shakespeare thing.” Well, I said, ‘I’m not going that far.’ I really was trying to avoid that and in fact there are parts of the movie that were cut out that were even a little too Shakespearean. It started to get away from the story and sound a little more like Shakespeare when we really didn’t need to do that. I wanted to stay in my weird reality.
Do you have any closing thoughts or advice you’d like to share?
I would say to anybody who is thinking about screenwriting, if you don’t have one buy a computer and give it a shot. We ended up having such a great time and there are so many people you can steal from. Pick up some [Anton] Chekhov, pick up some Jane Austen and you’re set. Steal, steal, steal, that’s my motto. Steal and make it your own.
_______________________________________________________________UK Play Magazine - January 2002
Strange
Attraction
Despite playing more weirdos than the rest of Hollywood put together, Christopher Walken has become one of the most respected actors in the business.
If you are a director looking for a romantic lead, you probably won't call Christopher Walken. If you are looking for an undead philosopher with a thirst for human blood, however, you will know exactly whose phone number to dig out of your Rolodex. Vampires, psychopaths, alien abductees: Walken's underground pallor and ethereal stare have equipped him perfectly for a life on the dark side. He has played a suicidal soldier (The Deer Hunter, 1978), a damaged psychic (The Dead Zone, 1983), a Bond villain (A View to a Kill, 1985) and Batman's nemesis (Batman Returns, 1992).
His latest film, The Affair of the Necklace, sees him take on the role of Count Cagliostro, the sinister mesmerist who enchanted pre-Revolutionary France. By rights, the 58-year-old actor should be considered a victim of typecasting, little more than a lazy film-maker's shorthand for the strange. Yet while there might be an element of self-parody in Walken's work, it has never been destructive, nor has it stopped him being held in high esteem. It is rare for an actor to appear in a film such as the children's caper MouseHunt (1997) and still be hailed as a cult figure. There is little doubt that Walken's charisma and acting ability are such that he could transform a Pizza Hut commercial into a work of Abel Ferrera-like darkness. The highbrow cultural website Salon described him as "the Peter Lorre of the pre-Millennium", a character actor who transcends the limitations of a particular role to make any film his own. Driven by a fierce work ethic, Walken has no problem with the threat of typecasting. "I work," he once said, with a cheering lack of pretension, "a lot of actors don't."
Even when playing the slightest of roles, Walken always brings more than plain weirdness to a part. He can suggest a complex array of thought processes, even managing to seek out a profundity in the role of the Headless Horseman in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow (1999) - a role that required him to do little more than growl.
By examining Walken's personal life it is possible to understand what allows him to transcend the potential pitfalls and restrictions of his career path. His Scottish mother, Rosalie, belonged to an organisation called the Stage Mothers' Society and enrolled the young Walken and his two brothers in tapdancing classes, often driving them to auditions. By the early Fifties, the boys were regulars on shows such as Philco TV Playhouse and The Colgate Comedy Hour while also attending the Professional Children's School. At the age of 15, Walken added a splash of vaudeville colour to his career when he worked as a lion tamer's assistant. It is easy to attribute his unabashed work ethic to his old-fashioned stage childhood, the professional training and commitment that is a world away from the film star flightiness that is endemic in Hollywood today.
After learning how to dance in his youth, Walken always tries to inveigle a dance routine into his films - his appearances in Spike Jonze's video for Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice last year was a delight, a riot of stylish syncopation through a hotel lobby that was utterly devoid of menace. He might be considered by some to be one of the most sinister actors in the world, but he also dances, and it is this unpredictability that deepens his appeal. After all, he has been married for 32 years, owns cats and is a keen cook. Clearly, he leads a life that has little to do with the supernatural or the criminally insane.
No matter how much people think they know what to expect from Walken, after a lifetime in showbusiness he still has the ability to surprise, startle and shock. He may have once described himself as "the malevolent WASP" but, somehow, he has managed to make everyone love him.
_______________________________________________________________Daily Record - October 24, 2001
MY HEART BELONGS ONLY TO GLASGOW
by Gary Ralston
HOLLYWOOD star Christopher Walken has revealed how he would swap his A-list celebrity status to live and work alongside his family in Scotland.
The Deer Hunter and Pulp Fiction actor rates Glasgow - where his mother Rosalie was born and raised - as one of the best cities in the world.
He said: "Glasgow, I find, is a beautiful city - and fascinating culturally. It was amazing, a lot of fun. I love Glasgow. It has a bad reputation - but all the best places and people have bad reputations."
He visited Scotland to trace his family roots two years ago and still longs to return for good.
His mother, who now lives in Florida, moved to New York as a teenager and took a job in a bakery owned by the family of German immigrant Paul Walken.
They fell in love, married in 1936 and went on to have three children - Ken, Glenn and Ronald, who later changed his name to Christopher on the advice of a showbiz pal.
Rosalie was an aspiring stage actress when she arrived in the States and, although she never fulfilled her acting ambitions, she encouraged her sons at every opportunity.
She often accompanied Christopher, the middle child, and his brothers to auditions across the Hudson River to Manhattan from the family home in Queens.
Christopher, now 58, was the only one to make the big time and still cherishes his connection with his mother's homeland.
He said: "You know, a whole part of my family live in Glasgow. That' s where they came from and many of them are still there.
"My mother lived there until she moved to New York. They were mainly shipyard workers and two years ago I was over looking up aunts and uncles and other relatives and they have now been over to see us in the States. I would love to play theatre there, but there are union problems that make it difficult. I could happily live in Scotland and I don't mind being around our family."
Walken refused to elaborate further or identify his relatives by name, but adds: "They are all extremely interesting ... characters."
WALKEN spoke about his Scots past at the prestigious Deauville Film Festival in France, where he has been honoured for his services to cinema with more than 50 starring roles on the big screen to date.
His latest movie, America's Sweethearts, was released at the weekend and stars Catherine Zeta Jones, Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal and John Cusack.
Walken, who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in The Deer Hunter, plays director Hal Weidmann in the behind-the-scenes comedy about the world's most adored acting couple, who split up on the eve of the release of their new movie.
He added: "I've always been a character actor although I'm not entirely sure what that means. Sometimes you make a big movie, sometimes a little one and sometimes you do a play or television show. Sometimes you just stay home."
In particular, he has made a career from playing steel-eyed villains with psychopathic tendencies.
He added: "I am very happy to be working and if that means I'm the villain, then fine.
"When I come on, people expect the bad guy.
"Movies can be very expensive to make and they hire people they know can do something effectively.
"Movies are a business and they're hedging their bets - they take the leading romantic actor, the comic actor, the action guy.
"However, the trick is to be a bit surprising. I have a friend who tends to be cast as the hero and he complains he has never been allowed to die in a movie. I die all the time.
"Not many people know this, but I was also tested for the Ryan O'Neal role in Love Story. I wouldn't have been any good.
"I played Romeo twice, but a reviewer indicated that I was hopeless because everything I said came out sounding very sarcastic."
Walken is obsessed with work, but keeps himself fresh by deviating from the norm - he returned to his roots as a dancer to star in a Fatboy Slim video and regularly appears in low budget, independent films and in off- Broadway plays.
He and his casting agent wife Georgianne Thon have been married for 35 years. They met when they were struggling young stage actors - they don't have any children because Walken doesn't like them.
They live on a small farm in upstate New York with assorted cats and he dislikes traveling immensely and has no hobbies, except cooking.
HE is a skilled chef and does not like eating in restaurants because he does not know where the food has come from.
Like his most deranged characters, Walken almost always dresses in black and hates direct sunlight on his skin so much he has been tagged the Prince of Darkness. He said: "My life is very conservative and I live very quietly. Working is what gets me up in the morning.
"If I'm not working for two weeks, I get very disoriented and I do not know what I am doing.
"I follow the same routine every day - I get up, exercise and learn my script. I eat the same things at the same time.
"I'm serious. I do not like the unknown or the unexpected. I cannot stand being surprised, yet as an actor I like surprise. I get very upset if my bills aren't paid immediately."
The only thing that has ever got Walken uptight was stage fright, which he suffered as a kid and which he conquered by forcing himself back on stage night after night.
He recalled: "As a rule, I wouldn't recommend it. When I was a boy, we went on the principle that if you couldn't swim you would be thrown in the pool to make the best of it.
"I was thrown into the pool and they had to fish me out. I still cannot swim.
"With stage fright you keep on doing it and eventually the fear goes away. If you stick around long enough you become very hard to intimidate.
"It is very difficult to make me nervous about working these days.
"There have been so many times when I thought I was finished, but it was not true - you just keep going.
"I am scared of sickness, pollution and crazy people but, work-wise, there is nothing to frighten me."
Perhaps understandably, Walken longs for a certain normality in his catalogue of weirdos, psychos and villains - the Prince of Darkness would welcome just a little chink of light every now and again.
He said: "Maybe for a change it would be fun to play someone very ordinary - a father with a family and a job and a house and a dog.
"Do you remember Fred McMurray? He always seemed to have a pipe and slippers and his wife was making dinner. Some day, maybe, I will play that part."
Walken goes all quiet and thoughtful. Dream on.
ARE you one of the relatives Christopher Walken visited on his trip to Scotland two years ago? If so, contact the Record on 0141 309 3344. Don't worry about the cost, we'll call you straight back.
_______________________________________________________________UK Hello Magazine - October 2001
Walken Talking
The surprisingly homely life of Hollywood bad boy Christopher Walken.
By Nick Griffiths
Does this man look like a Ronald to you? Because that's his real name: Ronald Walken. In the 50s US TV series The Wonderful John Acton, he was actually billed as 'Ronnie', and only changed to Christopher in his early twenties because he realised that sounded better. Wise move. Think of another famous Ronald. Reagan? McDonald?
Christopher Walken is a man of contradictions. He is known for playing psychotics, in unsettling movies such as The Deer Hunter (his Oscar-winning role), True Romance, Pulp Fiction, The Prophecy...More recently, he was the Headless Horseman in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. The way he wears his hair, that pallor, which he maintains by staying in, those eyes. People with eyes like that shouldn't play psychotics - they should be psychotic.
Yet the real Christopher Walken is a genial man with a healthy sense of humour, who enjoys cooking - his 'TNT Prawn Appetiser' is a speciality - is fastidiously tidy ('I can't stand mess'), hates being a passenger in cars traveling at speed, who enjoys watching his cats and can't drink soda because it makes him too wired. He once asked two chaps on a New York sidewalk to turn down their loud music, and one broke his nose for him.
He actually shares beauty secrets: 'If you have red eyes from staying up too late, you should put warm, wet tea bags on them. It's very soothing.'
Christopher Walken is 58 years old; 55 of those have been spent in showbiz, and more than 30 in a happy marriage to casting director Georgianne Thon. Now he says, 'I'd love to play a guy who had a wife and children and a dog, and he didn't shoot people.'
His latest role comes closer to that than most.
In America's Sweethearts, which has been compared to Singin' in the Rain, he plays a merely oddball film director, supporting Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal and Catherine Zeta Jones. Walken so often plays the bride because the villain rarely enjoys the lead in movies.
He reckons he never earned more than $11,000 a year until the age of 35. Even these days, in Hollywood terms, he is only financially comfortable. It could have been different: were it not for Harrison Ford, he would have played Han Solo in Star Wars.
Actually, it could have been even more different than that. Those who saw his surreally classy tap-dancing performance in Fatboy Slim's award-winning video Weapon of Choice will have some clue as to Walken's origins.
Born in Queens, New York, he was encouraged into showbiz by his mother and attended the Professional Children's School. ('What do you do, son?' 'I'm a child, sir.') His forte was dancing. Young Ronald would twirl in the background of television shows starring the likes of Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Jackie Gleason and Milton Berle.
On leaving college, he joined the musical Best Foot Forward. He recalls, 'I was 19, making $55 a week, Liza Minelli sang a song for the investor, that's how we got the money to do the show. Her mother threw a 16th birthday party for her, and the cast was invited. I danced with Judy Garland.'
This guy, the one who pushes Michelle Pfeiffer out of a short skyscraper in Batman Returns, who blows out his own brains in The Deer Hunter, whose stare on this page is the essence of chill - danced with Judy Garland.
That's the beauty of Christopher Walken. He has one of those memorable heads, and a heart of gold. Just as television comedians can be unfunny in real life, so screen madmen need not be genuinely insane.
No wonder he is never out of work.
_______________________________________________________________The Scottish Daily Record - October 2001
Prince of Darkness
After years of screen violence, Christopher Walken is dying for a change. But will he ever get to play the good guy? Richard Mowe meets Hollywood's favourite psycho and finds out why he's got Scotland in his sights.
"I have a friend who complains he has never been allowed to die in a movie. I die all the time," smiles Christopher Walken. With pale, bulging blue eyes and the kind of cheekbones you could sharpen an axe on, the cadaverous actor almost always plays the villain. In over 50 movies he's run the gamut from bizarre (Pulp Fiction) to beheaded (Sleepy Hollow), from disturbed (The Deer Hunter) to deranged (Wildside).
After so much cinematic darkness, it's somehow satisfying to find that Christopher Walken really does shun the sun. When we meet on a bright day at the Deauville film festival in Normandy, the actor hides his ghostly pallor in a shady corner, shielding his eyes with a pair of dark glasses. In fact, it is only when he hears my accent that his face lights up. "You know, a whole part of my family live in Glasgow," he says, breaking out into what could pass for a smile. "It's a beautiful city - and fascinating culturally. I would love to play theatre there, but there are union problems which make it difficult. I could happily live in Scotland, though. My mother lived in Glasgow until she grew up and moved to New York but a lot of my relations are still there, mainly shipyard workers. They are all interesting... characters," he says.
On screen, of course, Walken's characters share a certain, um, family resemblance. Whether it's The Man with the Plan in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead or Caesar the Exterminator in Mouse Hunt, there's a steely, blank-eyed homicidal rage seething just below the surface. Doesn't he ever get bored of playing the psycho? "I'm very happy to be working, and if that means I'm the villain, then fine," he says, resigned to such typecasting.
But there have been brief flirtations with less terrifying roles. "Not many people know this, but I was also tested for the Ryan O'Neal role in Love Story," he confides. The romantic lead he did land, in the comedy A Business Affair, was not a success, and he got poor reviews when he played Romeo "because everything I said sounded sarcastic," he says, sounding sarcastic.
"Movies are expensive to make, so they hire people they know can do something effectively," he explains. "They take the leading romantic actor, the comic actor, the action guy and the villain. Drama is contained in basic characters. You are the memories the audience has of you, but the trick is to use that and be a bit surprising."
Off-screen, the 58-year-old actor is less keen on surprises. He and his wife Georgianne Thon, a casting agent, have been married for 35 years. "I met my wife in a touring production of West Side Story," he recalls. "She played my girlfriend." They appeared in several plays together, but by the time he broke into the film industry, Georgianne had given up acting to become a casting agent. "She hasn't got me a single role in all this time. If I hadn't been working so much, I might have developed a complex," he deadpans.
They don't have any children or pets, because Walken doesn't like them, and they live on a small farm in upstate New York. Apart from cooking (there was once a rumour he might have his own celebrity chef show but it never materialised; Walken wielding knives might have frightened the children), he claims to have no hobbies.
What? No Russian roulette? No pulling the wings off flies? "My life is very conservative. I live very quietly," he explains patiently, and clearly not for the first time. "Working is what gets me up in the morning. If I'm not working for two weeks I get very disorientated and I don't know what I'm doing. I follow the same routine every day. I get up, exercise and learn my script. I eat the same things at the same time... no, I'm serious. I don't like the unknown or the unexpected. I get very upset if my bills aren't paid immediately."
The bills have been paid more or less consistently since Walken was 10, and already a veteran of live television. He started off doing comedy with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, but his progress to fully fledged actor came by chance after a producer suggested he play one of Henry II's sons in the 1968 film The Lion in Winter. By the late '70s, the gangly actor was busily making his name in a series of knockout supporting roles. He stole the show as Diane Keaton's psychotic sibling in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977) and again as the suicidal Vietnam veteran Nick in The Deer Hunter (for which he received a best supporting Oscar) the following year. The Russian roulette scenes with Robert De Niro and John Savage were memorably chilling, but it was his performance in Annie Hall which sowed the seeds of his dark reputation. "When I did Annie Hall for Woody, that was the first time I heard the words 'scary' or 'weird'," he says. "That's what he wanted from me and that's what I gave him."
Before that, there had been several years as a song-and-dance hoofer in musicals, performing on Broadway and going on the road with shows such as West Side Story. "Until I was 25 that was pretty much what I did - dancing, mainly tap, as well as stints on Saturday Night Live," he admits, explaining his trademark penchant for showing a bit of fancy footwork in his films - and his MTV award-winning performance in Fatboy Slim's recent music video, Weapon of Choice.
Dancing is obviously still a large part of Walken's life and even when he's not on camera, he compares the dynamic between two actors to dancing. He says he likes to relax by watching old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals and confides that "when Dennis Hopper and I had that scene together in True Romance, it was just like Fred and Ginger. We knew our lines, but then he started to make me laugh, and I made him laugh, and it all got hysterical. Then I shot him in the head."
Along with his two brothers, Walken was raised by his mother, Rosalie, and father, Paul, a German, in New York. Originally christened Ronald (because his mother was crazy about the actor Ronald Coleman), when he wasn't at school or acting he would help out in the family bakery, doing odd jobs and deliveries.
Loyal to his roots, Walken says he still feels very much part of New York society. He has an extended network of family and friends in the city, both inside and outside the business. He often watches the big fights at Madison Square Garden and it's not unusual for him to find himself filming on the streets he knows so well. Last year he shot the independent heist film The Opportunists in Queens, the neighbourhood of his youth and, when he was making Abel Ferrara's King of New York, playing a ruthless cocaine dealer, he would pass the hospital where he was born every day.
More recently, Walken has broken away from New York - and bad guys. He has appeared in a stage version of Chekhov's The Seagull, voiced a falcon in the forthcoming Stuart Little 2, completed an upcoming family drama for Disney about bears and was recently in Australia coping with kangaroos in a children's film, Down Under.
His next significant appearance, however, will be as neurotic film director Hal Weidmann in America's Sweethearts, a behind-the-scenes comedy with a contemporary Hollywood backdrop. It also features Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal, Catherine Zeta Jones and John Cusack, with Walken's character holding his film hostage from the ministrations of the studio. "Hal's an interesting guy - an innovator," he enthuses. "I think it's very funny. I've never met anyone like that in Hollywood, though. Sorry to disappoint you."
Walken is known for his obsession with work. As a gun for hire he welcomes most jobs that come his way, but his personal tastes lie in the independent sector. "That's because the crews tend to be small, there are fewer distractions, and most of the time you don't have much money so you have to make them quickly," he says. "For me that means a five- or six-week stint at the most, whereas if I become involved in a big studio project I can be tied up for five or six months."
The shooting for one of these films may take relatively little time compared with a Hollywood blockbuster, but the preparation is the same for every part Walken has ever played. In fact, he puts his unnerving screen persona down to a meticulous approach to the script. "I've always been a character actor, although I'm not quite sure what that means," he says. "All my scripts are absolutely covered in notes, so any time I say anything - even 'pass the salt' - I have six subtexts, comments on what I really mean when I'm saying that. Maybe that's what gives the impression that I'm saying one thing and thinking something else."
So what has tempted him back into the limelight this time? He shrugs. "Sometimes you make a big movie, sometimes a little one, and sometimes you do a TV show. Sometimes you just stay home."
And that's when Christopher Walken suffers the jitters rather than inspiring them in others. When he was younger he used to experience very bad stage-fright, a fear that he conquered by confronting his demons and going back on stage. "As a rule I wouldn't recommend it," he says of that approach. "When I was a boy we went on the principle that if you couldn't swim you would be thrown into the deep end to make the best of it. I was thrown into the pool and they had to fish me out - and still I cannot swim.
"With stage-fright you keep on doing it and eventually the fear goes away. If you stick around long enough you become very hard to intimidate. It is very difficult to make me nervous about working. There have been so many times when I thought I was finished, but it wasn't true. You just keep going. I am scared of sickness, pollution and crazy people. But work-wise there is nothing that frightens me."
Perhaps understandably, Walken hankers after a certain normality in his catalogue of weirdos, psychos and villains. As if the prince of darkness would welcome just a chink of light. He's probably joking when he suggests, wistfully, that "perhaps for a change it would be fun to play someone very ordinary - a father with a family and a job, and a house and a dog. Do you remember those Fred McMurray films? He always seemed to have a pipe and slippers and his wife was making dinner. Some day, maybe, I'll play that part." Dream on.
America's Sweethearts is released on 19 October.
"When I was a boy we went on the principle that if you couldn't swim you would be thrown in the deep end to make the best of it. I was thrown into the pool and they had to fish me out - and still I cannot swim"
_______________________________________________________________Hotdog Magazine
The King of Newport
by Jonathan Carter
September 2001
Meeting Christopher Waken on the set of his new Brit comedy, Hotdog almost manages a conversation.
"Jesus, doesn't she look dead, huh?" says Christopher Walken as he looks at the old woman in the pink silk-lined coffin. "You got a towel?" he says to his assistant, taking off his gold-spangled jacket and the top hat. "I'm getting kind of sweaty here."
We're in a church in Newport, South Wales, filming a British comedy called Plots With A View. It stars Brenda Blethyn and the inimitable Walken as Frank Featherbed, an undertaker who's determined to put the "fun" back into funerals. Lee Evans is his sidekick, Delbert. The two of them have just been singing and dancing at the altar while the aforementioned coffin rises from its plinth, flanked by two showgirls. We're on a break while they change the lights.
It's hard work rising from the dead. The showgirls have retreated to a corner, their fake-tan faces indistinguishable against the teak paneling. They look like floating eyes. Mr. Walken, meanwhile, is sitting on one of the pews, observing. He seems tired. I ask him how he thinks it's all going? He looks at me. "I’ve seen you around on the set." There’s a pause. "It’s going good…" he says at last, fondling his silver-topped cane. "I’m almost done. I’ve been here a month."
He trails off into staccato sentences, "It's a funny movie. Good script. The actors work hard... I was supposed to do it two years ago, then it got canceled. "He looks over at the coffin and the Vaudeville trimmings. "But I guess, finally, we got it made."
So what's it like playing an undertaker? He laughs quietly to himself, "Nice, you know." He seems scary, "I'm pretty normal," he says, scarily. "I just play those kind of parts a lot. Villains and stuff... though not always."
I tell him that I liked him as the decidedly unvillainous Whitley Strieber in Communion. "I don't think too many people saw that movie," he says, surprised, "I made a lot of movies that not too many people saw." Does he mind? "No, no. It's fine. I work."
"Ready to go again, Christopher?" asks the director, as Walken peers out from beneath the lights. The star gestures to his assistant. He looks pissed off. Someone has a video camera at the back of the church. The assistant nods at a security person and the interloper is escorted from the premises.
They obviously picked the wrong time to visit God's house. They'll have to come back next week, when he's gone.
_______________________________________________________________SHOUT NY Magazine - August 2001
Picture sitting down for a chat with Christopher Walken. You were born and bred on his portrayals of hard-assess, of twisted creeps with Queens accents and, waiting for him, you're a little scared. Okay, let's face it, you're terrified. People who make contact with his stark, wild eyes do so at their own peril. Is he going to pace around menacingly and introduce himself as the Anti-Christ before popping one in your face, like he did Dennis Hopper in True Romance? Is he going to haunt you with uncannily deadpan premonitions of highway suicide as in Annie Hall? Or maybe it won't be so bad. Maybe you'll just have to play a few rounds of three-shot Russian roulette a la The Deer Hunter.
Since he's returning from a costume fitting for the Public Theater's celebrity-soaked production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull in Central Park, perhaps he'll arrive in turn-of-the-century garb, eerily saccharine. "It must be pleasant to be even an insignificant author," he might say with a smirk, echoing Peter Sorin, his Chekovian alter-ego.
Sitting in Joe's Pub on a sweltering morning in June, adrift in a sea of upturned tables, swimming in the aroma of glass-cleaner and cigarettes, the appointed hour arrives. Walken - Christopher Walken - waltzes in wearing unpretentious rehearsal gear: a black tee and black cotton pants with an elastic waist. He even took the time to put on a black blazer, which, along with a smile he wears on his stubbled face, is enough to take the edge off. Barely.
"We should have done this at a restaurant," he says, resting characteristically on his syllables. "We could put it on your expense account. Of course, then, the whole point would be to eat, not to do an interview."
It turns out Walken did a lot of eating as he grew up in Astoria, Queens. The son of a German baker, young Christopher cut his teeth on sweets and pastries, helping out - between TV gigs - at his father's bakery. It was his duty to squeeze the jelly into the doughnuts using an enormous device with a plunger and two needles. Just try psychoanalyzing that. Decades later, he doesn't much care for sweets (note the unsugared tea in his hand), but food remains more than a passion.
"I always tell people that if I disappear, I'm in Venice," he says, circuitously describing the making of the film The Comfort of Strangers, which costarred Natasha Richardson and was directed by Paul Schrader. "I lived in Venice for a couple of months. I know the streets; I know the little things. I know where to find the two Chinese restaurants. I found this place where the gondoliers eat, you know, where they just don't stop bringing food," he reminisces. "Those two-and-a-half hour lunches.
"The problem is, when I go to Italy, I can gain 15 pounds in one week. I've done it. For an actor, that's not so good. It's better, when you're an actor, to go some place where the food's not so good. Next time you see [The Comfort of Strangers], check. I'm pretty porky."
It may have continued with his brother's restaurant, the Walken Café in Astoria, but the actor's food fetish doesn't stop there. He likes to cook - "the so-called Mediterranean diet: fish, vegetables, olive oil, not too much butter" - and says he has even toyed with the idea of hosting his own cooking show.
"The thing is, I'm not a great cook," he offers modestly. "But it doesn't matter. Part of the thing about cooking shows is that it's just interesting to see somebody do something. You almost can't go wrong. If you watch one, and you time it, they do 18 minutes and the rest of it is breaks. So if you can keep people amused for 18 minutes, you've got a cooking show." This is no fleeting aspiration; he's put in the hours.
"Oh, I've got it checked out. The problem is, what if it became popular?" Walken asks rhetorically. "That would be the end of me. You know, to get famous for something on TV, that's very tricky." I inform him that he's already famous, having made over 70 movies - even winning an Oscar. "That's different, you know. I don't have my own show."
But imagine if he did. Would he draw on some cinematic forebears, like the cooking scenes from The Godfather or Goodfellas? What would he do with the rows of gleaming knives, the open flames? Actually, Walken's influences are just slightly tamer.
"Julia Childs was the best, " he gushes with the zeal of a schoolboy. "But they're all interesting, I love 'Iron Chef.' I love that. They dub it, so it's a little bit like a Godzilla movie. The Iron Chef's making seven courses and every one of them contains peaches. Mackerel and peaches. Disgusting, you know. Tofu with peaches. That's a really good show." Walken's show would be more of a variety act, though. An assistant, maybe some scantily clad girls.
"Remember the Dean Martin show with the Gold Diggers? You know, any time something wasn't interesting , these girls would run on," he recalls. "They say that was part of his shtick."
You're forgiven if you think that all of this is slightly out of character. The thing is, for all the typecasting, the 58-year-old Walken doesn't have a set character - and he's never been one to take himself too seriously. He started his career, oddly enough, in musical theater and television - at the age of three.
"My brothers and I were in show business, in the early '50s. New York was very big with live TV, you know, and we did all the things that kids did," Walken explains. "On television shows, we were more or less like furniture. Put 'em over here, put 'em over there, and so I grew up in that."
His heart, though, is in musicals and dancing. "Musicals are my education; they're what I know - both in what I did as a kid for a living, and in what I went to see," Walken recounts. "Musicals still affect the way I do things now." And if you're finding it hard to imagine Captain Koons - the Vietnam vet who hid a silver pocket-watch up his ass for two years in Pulp Fiction - singing and dancing, look no further than MTV. Walken puts in a bizarre and inspired performance, dancing off walls, in Fatboy Slim's video, Weapon of Choice - directed, of course, by Spike Jonze.
"It's a catchy little thing," Walken says of the video. "Spike Jonze called and I've done a couple of films where I've danced, like [the musical film] Pennies From Heaven, so he must have seen that."
Still, musicals were more than an education, and dancing more than a skill Walken can flaunt on MTV. Musicals inform his entire acting technique. Often, he works little dances, small flourishes, into the characters he plays. And though it may seem as though he pursues his roles through intense, method-styled outpourings, Walken describes his process in more prosaic terms.
"I'd have to say that I approach everything, movies included, in terms of not making any bones about the audience," he confides. In musicals, the audience is there, you acknowledge them, you talk to them - they're in the room, they're part of the show. I can't get that out of my head."
Sitting in a room with Walken, being part of the show, this insight clicks. When he speaks, there are more than just words - there's a subtle nod to the listener. You are under my spell. He has a way with language, for outrageous dialogue; he plays with words, chews them up, and holds them on his lips before expelling them.
"I have this theory about words," he says. "There's a thousand ways to say 'Pass the salt.' It could mean, you know, 'Can I have some salt?' or it could mean, 'I love you.' It could mean 'I'm very annoyed with you' - really, the list could go on and on. Words are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside them."
Given Walken's New York City upbringing, it might seem that performing Chekhov in Central Park would be a homecoming of sorts, a triumphant return to the stage that nurtured him in years past. Walken knew the Public Theater's charismatic founder, Joe Papp, and even starred as Trigorin in another production of "The Seagull" at the Public in 1980. Indeed, it was Papp who gave Walken some of his early breaks.
"I go way back, way back with him. And then at one point, my career was just - you know, nothing was happening. And I went to [Joe] and I said, 'Nothing's gong on, I'm collecting unemployment,' and he said, 'Don't worry, I'm gonna put you in three plays in a row,' and he did. He was an amazing guy." Walken recalls. Papp cast him in mid-'70s productions of "Troilus and Cressida," "The Tempest," and another play Walken was reluctant to mention. "A Scottish play, you know, the one whose name you're not supposed to say. "I played Him," Walken intones, referring to MacBeth.
Impressed as he is to work at the Public again with actors like Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, Walken shrugs off any intimation that he’s rekindling a spark from his youth.
"I like working in the movies. You know, I spent so much of my early life doing [theater], Summerstock, tours, and so on," he says. "I know what you mean, but it doesn't have to be a choice for me. It can be more a matter of what turns up.
"And when something great on the stage comes up, it's kind of like this. You know, it comes out of nowhere and it's very interesting and it's sort of like an offer you can't refuse," he says, pausing. "That's the way I usually do things. I just take the best thing. 'Cause I got nothing else to do. I don't have any hobbies; I don't have kids. I don't do anything else. So my theory is to just keep going."
A testament to the theory is Walken's prolific career, including collaborations with the likes of Tim Burton, Mike Nichols, Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen...the list goes on. Even if he's usually cast as something between a quiet sociopath and a tone-poet gangster, Walken has worked up quite a varied resume.
"I play a lot of twisted people," he admits, laughing with only a hint of menace, revealing a dark side that, time and again, has been so competently exploited by the director Abel Ferrara, whom the normally reserved Walken doesn't shy away from calling a close friend.
"Abel is someone who, when he comes to my house [in Connecticut], always gets speeding tickets," says Walken, who is reputed to drive very slowly on the open road. "One time, he got three tickets. He shouldn't do that, I always tell him." The two have worked together on The Addiction, The Funeral, New Rose Hotel, and most notably, King of New York.
"That's a good movie," Walken exclaims, jumping into a whole different octave. "You know, just this last weekend, it was on, and I hadn't really seen it since [we made it], and I thought, 'That's a good movie." Since he played the lead role - a drug lord who turns into an utraviolent Robin Hood, giving his proceeds to the poor - it might seem like puffery, but Walken's praise, given the eleven years that have passed since the film's release, appears genuine. "The King of New York is a really interesting gangster movie because it puts together elements that you don't normally see, like the loyalty, the love between him and this tribe. It's fascinating."
But Walken's most ironic role may be as Nick in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, for which he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. His compelling performance takes us from a star-crossed marriage proposal on the eve of war to the shell of a man playing Russian Roulette like a zombie-prizefighter in the back alleys of Saigon. It's the breadth of the role - making Nick a normal guy and then stretching him into a twisted, suicidal maniac - that hints at what Walken can do if he's given the opportunity.
One thing Walken has rarely had the opportunity to do, though, is play a romantic lead. More to the point, he's rarely had the chance to shoot sex scenes. But that doesn't mean he's not accomplished in such things - or isn't willing to experiment. He got to steam it up a bit with French actress Carole Bouquet in the oft-forgotten film A Business Affair. And in Donald Cammell's 1995 film Wild Side - lesbian love story in the form of a film-noir spoof - Walken plays the philandering husband opposite Joan Chen, who herself develops a taste for his call girl, Anne Heche. The result, in the unrated version, is that Walken and Heche share some onscreen moments that only they can fully describe. Suffice it to say that there were no body doubles involved.
"Is that the one where she sites on my face?" he asks. When asked how long that scene took to shoot, Walken replies, "We did that for a while. You remember, she ties me up with, like, a rubber hose, too." Hamming it up, a grin on his face, he continues. "It's true, they pay me for that. You have to get up very early in the morning though."
Waking up early has been a small price to pay for a career that spans more than 50 years - from high tragedy to camp comedy. It's clear hat Walken never found any other hobbies because this is what he does, this is what he loves. While he may eventually cook up a hilarious storm on TV, Walken will never leave the big screen. For him, it's a dream.
"You know, there's something about when we go to the movies, to theater - we know what we're doing," he explains. "We know we're watching people have fun, basically. That fun is contagious."
_______________________________________________________________The Washington Post - August 05, 2001
The Walken Shtick, Creepy . . . and Cool
By Alona Wartofsky
NEW YORK - A middle-aged businessman sits wearily in a hotel lobby, waiting. Music starts, his head begins to twitch to the rhythm, and suddenly he leaps into a jaunty, old-Hollywood dance number. He bounds through the lobby, prances down an escalator and briefly partners with a luggage cart. He tap-dances on a table, literally flies across the lobby -- and then, as the music begins to fade, calmly returns to his seat.
This four-minute fantasy is the brilliantly funny music video for Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice, and its star -- the only performer onscreen -- is Christopher Walken. Walken is a graceful dancer, and the choreography bears the insidiously silly stamp of director Spike Jonze. What makes the video even better, though, is that it plays off Walken's well-established sinister screen persona. The veteran actor specializes in deranged villains and psychotics, and there's something particularly unsettling about a creepy guy who breaks out a little soft-shoe now and then.
The video comes as no surprise to inveterate Walken watchers. The actor belongs to a tradition of New York song-and-dance men -- think James Cagney or George Raft -- who portrayed tough-guy gangsters in the movies. And perhaps even more than Cagney, Walken possesses remarkable range: He's a gifted comedian, a prodigiously talented stage and screen actor and an expert dancer. He is also ineffably cool. It's hard to imagine any other aging film actor being asked to solo in a hipster music video.
And he's as busy as he's ever been. He has eight films scheduled for release this year, including the current romantic comedy America's Sweethearts, in which he plays a small but pivotal role as a film director whose inspiration seems to come partly from the Unabomber. Onstage, he's doing Chekhov, portraying a creaky Sorin in the all-star production of The Seagull that the New York Shakespeare Festival is mounting in Central Park. And then there's the Weapon of Choice video, a staple on MTV and MTV2 since its premiere last spring and recently nominated for a record nine MTV Video Music Awards.
Walken, 58, is planning to attend the awards next month, and he says he may even perform. "At my age, to be nominated for a dance video, I mean, come on! It's great," he says. "They don't make musical movies much these days. I wish they did. I love musicals."
Jonze, whose videos suggest his own affinity for Hollywood musicals, devised the concept for Weapon of Choice with Walken in mind. "I always sort of wanted to film him dancing," Jonze explains. "I just love his face . . . the way it's deadpan. I wrote the treatment around that.
"There's something about him. Sometimes he's very hard to read. He's got such his own style about him. . . . When you watch him it's like watching no one else. He's got a very sharp sense of humor. Everything he did was funny."
In the past few years, Walken's funniest performances have been on Saturday Night Live, where many of his skits tap into the unsavoriness of his screen villains. "He brings all his other castings and roles to his comedy," says SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels, who counts Walken as one of the show's most prized guest hosts. "You see that face, and you associate it with lots of other things. So when he's playing light, he's that much more powerful. . . . He's very funny.
"He's a truly gifted comedian. He's just a natural," adds Michaels. "He speaks in a voice that could only be him. His sense of timing is so unique. So much comedy is about timing, and he's just endlessly surprising."
Sipping tea between rehearsals for The Seagull at the Public Theater, Walken looks like if he sat next to you on the subway, you'd probably move to another seat. His longish brown hair is slicked back, and he wears a scraggly beard. His pale blue irises have an eerie intensity, and he seems to have trouble maintaining eye contact. There's a halting rhythm to his speech that has inspired countless impersonators, including, famously, Kevin Spacey and comedian Jay Mohr. Walken paces his words like this: It's as, if, he's . . . following. The punctuation rules, of another . . . galaxy.
As he speaks, he repeatedly squeezes his tea bag between his fingers. Then he folds it precisely in half and ties the Tetley string around its center as if he's gift-wrapping it. "I'm neat," he explains. And like nearly everything else he says, this seems both perfectly pleasant and, well, disquieting.
Walken started in show business as a child actor in '50s television series like The Ernie Kovacs Show and The Colgate Comedy Hour, but the first time most people noticed him was in Woody Allen's 1977 Annie Hall. He made a brief but memorable appearance as Annie's unhinged Midwestern brother, Duane, who fantasized about swerving into the lane of an oncoming car while driving late at night.
The following year brought his Academy Award-winning portrayal of a traumatized soldier in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter. It was a riveting performance: By the film's end, the gaunt face and hollow expression of his Russian-roulette junkie seemed to represent an America that not only had lost the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, but had lost its very soul.
Over the years, people have suggested to Walken that these two roles set the tone for his movie career, but he's not so sure about that. "I don't know -- you never know. What's that theory? They say a butterfly flutters in the rain forest and it affects the weather in Northern California," he says. "It could be that I've got some sort of self-destructive" -- he interrupts himself with a convulsive laugh -- "thing happening. . . . If I made some sort of an impression early on, it was in two things where the guy didn't quite have all his marbles."
In lesser-known films, Walken has provided some of contemporary cinema's most vivid maniacs and oddballs. The charming white-suited Italian in The Comfort of Strangers, who draws a young couple into a sadistic sexual fantasy. The psychopath who rapes his driver in Wild Side. So many mobsters! The Sicilian in True Romance, who introduces himself to his victim with "I am the Antichrist and you got me in a vendetta kinda mood." The ambitious King of New York, a drug lord who lives in the Plaza Hotel and dispatches his rivals with graceful malevolence. And in The Funeral, the oldest of three brothers linked together by family business, blood and insanity.
In a role that belongs to a Walken subset that's been described as Sympathetic Weirdos, the actor played a schoolteacher who awakens from a coma to find himself beset by paranormal visions in the film version of Stephen King's The Dead Zone. Few films have made better use of Walken's otherworldly countenance. "That's the subject of the movie; that's what the movie was about. All the things that are in his face," wrote director David Cronenberg.
Walken's archangel Gabriel of The Prophecy horror series divides his time between terrorizing the humans he calls "talking monkeys" and perching gargoylelike on roofs. "I'm an angel," he snarls between yanking out his victims' still-pulsating hearts. "I kill firstborns while their mamas watch. I turn cities into salt. I even, when I feel like it, rip the souls from little girls -- and from now till kingdom come, the only thing you can count on in your existence is never understanding why."
As an actor, Walken can inhabit the misery of lunatics, but he can mock them, too, and at times he seems to be sending up his own screen psychotics. In Pulp Fiction, he spoofed the wigged-out POW, while his fanatical exterminator in Mouse Hunt seemed to riff off every homicidal maniac he's ever played. And his regular Saturday Night Live character, The Continental, is so pathologically lecherous that Walken can barely keep a straight face during the skits.
It might seem natural to assume that Walken plays deranged characters because he is in fact deranged, but he dismisses that notion. "There's confusion often [between] actors and the parts they play," he says. "I play a lot of villains for the same reason this guy plays a lot of lovers, the same reason that this guy plays a lot of funny guys, or this guy plays a lot of heroes. I play a lot of villains because I've played them before and they work. Movies are very expensive. . . . People who make movies, they're putting down a very heavy bet.
"It's sort of like if there was something wrong with your kidney, you'd go to a kidney doctor. If there was something wrong with your eye, you'd go to an eye doctor."
But why he's so good at playing bad is something he says he hasn't quite figured out. "Who knows? The Elizabethans called the profession of acting 'the mystery,'" he says. "There are actors who thrive on research and getting it all right and all that. I highly approve; I've just found that it doesn't work for me.
"Information, almost you could say, confuses me.... I just make it up."
Gonzo filmmaker Abel Ferrara, who directed Walken in King of New York, The Addiction and The Funeral, considers him one of the great actors of our time. "He's got everything: God-given talent, dedication to the work. His mind -- he's a brilliant cat. He's got it all going," says Ferrara.
"I don't think he plays psychotics, and that's why he's so good," Ferrara adds. "As much as these actors are very adamant that the script is there and the direction is there, the performance you see is coming from his imagination.
He's all those characters. "In Tim Burton's Batman Returns, Walken played evil Beethoven-haired tycoon Max Schreck. And in the director's Sleepy Hollow, Walken portrayed a different kind of monster in the wordless role of the Headless Horseman. Nobody else "can just sit there and stare at you and give you so many different feelings all at once," says Burton. "He's one of the most amazing actors. And he keeps that thing which I wish movies kept overall, which is a mystery. He's got mystery, and that's beautiful in films."
Ronnie Walken -- he later changed his name to Christopher -- grew up in Astoria, Queens, where his father owned a German bakery. His mother was a member of an organization called the Stage Mothers' Society who shepherded her three sons to tap-dancing lessons and television auditions. Though she never explicitly said so, Walken is convinced she named him after actor Ronald Coleman. Ronnie attended Professional Children's School in Manhattan; after school, if he wasn't performing, he'd help out in the bakery, washing dishes and delivering cakes.
When he was 16, instead of doing summer stock, he spent a few months working for a traveling one-ring circus. He wore a red and blue lion tamer's outfit, and after the real lion tamer finished his act, Walken would do his bit. "There was this very old lioness named Sheba, and she was completely very friendly, like a dog. I had a whip and a hat, and I'd go into the cage and Sheba would jump up on this box and I'd wave the whip at her, and she'd get up and go, 'Whraaah!' Everybody would applaud and that was it."
He attended Hofstra University as an English major, but quit after two semesters when he was offered a part in the off-Broadway musical Best Foot Forward. During the early '60s, he performed mostly in musical theater. It was during this time that he acquired the name "Christopher" (a cabaret singer he was working with thought it sounded better). He met his wife, Georgianne, while both were performing in a touring production of West Side Story; now she's a casting agent for The Sopranos.
When he turned to dramatic roles in his early twenties, he was stricken with severe stage fright. "You get over it by doing it 10,000 times. Then one day you just get over it," he says obtusely. "But that doesn't mean you do. You just keep going."
He began acting in films a few years later, and was 36 when he won the Academy Award for The Deer Hunter. In the ensuing years, he appeared in projects ranging from Cimino's epic flop Heaven's Gate to Who Am I This Time?, a poignant 1981 film for television directed by Jonathan Demme. That same year, he provided Dennis Potter's musical Pennies From Heaven with a brief tour de force: a song-and-dance striptease in which he played a smooth nightclub hustler luring a young woman into prostitution. He tippy-tapped on the bar and stripped down to his boxers, demonstrating both a lanky grace and an enviable flair for sliding along a bar the same way a child might slide down a staircase banister. For those who had become Walken fans through Deer Hunter or Annie Hall, it was a jaw-dropping performance: These days, we rarely see actors who really can dance.
He landed the job after director Herbert Ross hired Danny Daniels, a veteran Broadway hoofer, to choreograph the dance numbers. "Danny Daniels was my tap teacher when I was 12 years old at a school called Jack Stanley's in Manhattan," Walken says. "And he said to Herb Ross, 'Did you know that Christopher Walken can tap-dance?' Because who would know a thing like that?"
"Pennies From Heaven was the last of the MGM musicals," Walken notes. "I was very lucky, being born when I was, to actually be in a big musical movie."
He continues: "I made another musical that's obscure, but it's also a very good movie, called Puss in Boots. It was the children's story, and I played the cat," he says. "It's one of my better roles. It's out on video." If you can find Puss in Boots at your local video store, you'll be treated to the spectacle of Walken licking his whiskers, wagging his tail, answering to "Puss" and, naturally, dancing on a table, which has become a signature move.
Walken has appeared in nearly 80 films, two music videos (the other was Madonna's Bad Girl) and dozens of live theater productions. He and his wife divide their time between their home in Connecticut and a brownstone on New York's Upper West Side.
When he's not working, Walken pursues his hobbies. He likes to paint "big schmear paintings," which he says are abstract because he can't draw. "Big, splash, colorful. Like flowers, my paintings are like flowers. I have a whole bunch of them. . . . They're sort of cheery."
A while back, he visited a friend, artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel, who directed him in Basquiat. Schnabel laid down a large canvas on the floor. "He threw a lot of paint down, and I danced around on it. It was sort of interesting. It was red and green and blue and all that. It was a big mess, but it was an interesting mess."
Another favorite pastime is cooking, which is convenient because Walken prefers to avoid restaurants. "It's weird. I'm really very finicky about what I eat," he explains. "I sort of have to know what it is. I have to know what they did to it, you know? That's why I eat a lot of my own food, because I know."
He is an avid collector of Tupperware.
Walken also dabbles in playwriting. His most successful so far is Him, a satiric look at the afterlife of Elvis Presley that was produced at the Public Theater in 1994 with Walken in the title role. "Elvis was a big influence. He appeared in my formative, very impressionable years," he explains. "He was so sexy, you know, he was really one of a kind."
Another major influence he claims is Bugs Bunny. "He's so smart, he's so funny, he's got such a great attitude. Bugs Bunny is the spirit of New York."
Oh, really?
"Well, yes. You can't fool Bugs Bunny. That's all I have to say. He's on to everybody."
Deadpan.
There's some dialogue in Him that paraphrases these famous words by the gloomy 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire: "Today I felt it pass over me, a breath of wind, from the wings of madness."
Walken thinks he first learned that line in The Addiction, when he played an improbably philosophical vampire, and since then, he has often revisited it. Just the other day, he says, the Baudelaire passage came up during rehearsals for The Seagull, when the cast discussed the suicide of Konstantin. "I think it's a great line because it doesn't mean you're nuts. It means that you suddenly have a feeling of what it is, which is very scary. You don't have to be crazy. You just have to have a little brush with it, and it reminds you."
For an actor, perhaps, an occasional breeze of madness might not be such a bad thing. "Everything is useful in a way . . . because it gives you some sort of reference point about lots of things," he explains. "Maybe it's something that you feel you have to do in order to broaden your horizon or to become a better actor."
Walken admits to his own "sort of a midlife crisis. I don't know what it was about. But that's pretty typical," he says. "I went through a time where I . . ." -- he pauses, searching -- "I got nervous. But I got over it."
Yet it would be a mistake, he cautions, to assume that an actor can experience emotions in his own life and then merely re-create those feelings in performance. "That's not true. It's not that easy. It's not that simple. But it does give you maybe just a little bit more of a groove," he explains.
"I do I think that as an actor, you become a bit clinical about things necessarily. I notice things," he says. "I saw a fascinating thing this morning coming here. There was a guy in the street, he was a homeless guy, and he was that thing that you see in New York too often, he was walking down Ninth Avenue . . . and he was screaming. . . . He was very upset about something. And people were walking by him like in New York they do, just sort of looking."
"Then we drove about 20 blocks and we got into a better neighborhood, and there's this guy in a suit and tie, he's got an attache case and a cell phone. He was walking down the street and he is screaming into the cell phone, obviously having some big thing with somebody. . . . And it was exactly the same thing, except one guy had a cell phone and was talking to somebody.
"But the other guy without the cell phone was also talking to somebody. You just don't know who."
_______________________________________________________________Salon Magazine - October 10, 2000
Christopher Walken
No one plays the kook, the psycho, the fallen angel, the bloodthirsty ghoul better than the actor who claims he's just a regular Joe.
By Stephen Lemons
Imagine Christopher Walken having sex with a bobcat. Somehow, it's not so difficult picturing the pale, gaunt screen legend -- who looks part cadaver and part Muppet with those glassy, bulging eyes of his -- getting busy with a wild North American feline.
That's the reason Walken's skit with Tim Meadows was so funny during his appearance hosting "Saturday Night Live" on April 8. Meadows played a census taker who happens onto the apartment of a Mr. Leonard, played by Walken, an ex-con who works full time as a performance artist and keeps house with a bobcat for a wife and various plants and candy bars as cohabitants. (Don't ask.) Meadows is so nonplused by the absurd conversation that he just takes down what's said and calls it a day. Walken strolls back into his apartment to the growl of his bride, slams the door behind him and yells, "Again? We just did it!"
The evening marked Walken's fourth time hosting the show, and you could tell by the success of the various sketches why they keep asking the 57-year-old veteran actor back for more. Such "SNL" appearances illustrate the degree to which Walken has become a sort of Gen X pop culture deity. Sure, he's no Tom Cruise. He's not a blockbuster film star, like a Harrison Ford, a Mel Gibson or even a Bruce Willis, though he does play the lead on occasion. But in a way, Walken is larger than any of them because he has carved out a niche for himself that only he can fill -- that of Christopher Walken.
No one plays the kook, the psycho, the fallen angel, the deadly crime lord, the bloodthirsty ghoul better than Walken, and no one can utter the world's most bizarre dialogue with such panache, making it believable just because he said it. There's only one Christopher Walken, just as there was only one Sal Mineo or Tony Perkins. And when C.W. is gone, there'll never be another.
Walken has said that the way he looks has helped define his career. All actors rely on their bodies, but in the case of Walken much of his screen persona resides in his unusual appearance. Tall and lanky, with a high forehead and poofy hair, he does appear, well, otherworldly -- as if he just stepped off the mothership. But there's also his highly unusual manner of speaking, which has made him one of the most imitated stars around. You can hear his native Queens in his voice, but those weird, abrupt pauses and clipped sentences seem unique to the man.
"I have a certain way about me that's strange," Walken told Dark Side magazine in 1996. "Strangeness can translate into a kind of phobia in people's minds. It's fine by me. I work. A lot of actors don't."
He continued, "It started with 'Annie Hall.' There was a scene where I talked about driving myself into oncoming traffic, and then there was 'The Deer Hunter,' where I shot myself in the head. If you're lucky in films, you find an identity. When you become a dependable villain, the chances are that you will specialize in those roles."
Indeed, Walken's role as Annie Hall's suicidal brother, Duane, played for laughs in the 1977 Woody Allen comedy, set the precedent of Walken as freak show that would define his long career. When he won the Academy Award for best supporting actor, it was for his moving portrayal in "The Deer Hunter" (1978) of an American soldier in Vietnam who goes off the deep end and eventually terminates his life in a gambling den via Russian roulette as Saigon falls to the communists. Until that point he had not made much money as an actor, but winning the Academy Award changed everything.
Walken told Playboy in 1997, "We went to bed (following the Oscars and an after party), and I said to my wife, with the Oscar in my hand, 'This is a house.' And it was. I was holding our house in my hand -- I knew that's what it meant."
It meant a step up on the food chain, moneywise. From then on out, he would make enough money to keep a house in Connecticut and a brownstone on Manhattan's Upper West Side, both of which he shares with his wife of 31 years, casting director Georgianne Thon. (They met while both were performing in a touring rendition of "West Side Story" in 1969 and have been together ever since.)
"The Deer Hunter" was only Walken's eighth screen appearance, but in a sense, at the age of 35, he had been working toward this benchmark his entire life. Both of his parents were immigrants -- his father, Paul, from Germany; his mother, Rosalie, from Scotland. Walken himself, the second of three sons, was born on March 31, 1943, and named Ronald for British actor Ronald Colman. His name change would come years later, when a singer Walken was working with named Monique Van Vooren renamed him Christopher for reasons that are unclear, and the name stuck. Walken's old friends still call him Ronnie.
Walken's father baked bread for a living. His mother spent most of her time trying to get her kids into showbiz. Eventually, young Ronnie attended the Professional Children's School in Manhattan, where he rubbed shoulders with Marvin Hamlisch and Gypsy Rose Lee's son Eric.
After graduating from PCS in 1961, he attended Hofstra University for one year before dropping out to be in the musical "Best Foot Forward," with Liza Minnelli. But when he tried to make the transition to drama from musicals, he almost didn't succeed. Cast as the king of France in "The Lion in Winter," he suffered from horrible stage fright. When the producer threatened to let him go, as in the movies, Walken asked him for one last chance. He mastered his fear and went on to win a Clarence Derwent Award for best newcomer.
Walken did extensive stage work, including plays by Tennessee Williams, Shakespeare and Chekhov. And he is still highly regarded as a stage presence, having recently performed on Broadway as Gabriel Conroy in the musical based on James Joyce's renowned short story "The Dead." But the next transition for Walken was from the stage to the silver screen. It was time. Even though he was flourishing on the boards, he was making a measly $11,000 a year, by some accounts.
He snagged bit parts in movies like "Me and My Brother" (1968), with poet Allen Ginsberg, and "The Anderson Tapes" (1971), directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Sean Connery. There were other pictures, but it was the role of Duane, the brother with the thousand-yard stare and a death wish, in "Annie Hall" that brought him to the attention of many. In the 1997 Playboy interview, Walken suggests that he may have gotten the part of Nick Chevoteravich in "The Deer Hunter" because of his Duane shtick. It doesn't seem that far-fetched. By the end of "The Deer Hunter," Walken's Nick has the same dead-fish look that Duane has when he tells Alvie (Woody Allen) of his secret desire to be in a car crash.
Walken's self-annihilation binge as Nick in "The Deer Hunter" became one of the most memorable vicarious experiences of '70s film. Michael Cimino, the film's director, was at the same time lauded by critics and attacked by those on the political left who viewed the movie as revisionist. It won five Oscars, including Walken's, and spawned copycat instances of deadly Russian roulette games nationwide. Walken was now on the radar screen of all cinastes for his sensitive performance of a soldier driven mad by his Vietnam War experiences.
"I don't think it had anything to do with being about a particular war," Walken told Playboy of the film. "It had more to do with young men's romantic notions of war, the idea that war's an adventure. They think they're going to go and have a good time, get out of the house. In reality, though, they get their legs blown off."
Cimino's film, and Walken's part as the story's most tragic character, seemed to sum up the nation's pessimistic view of the Vietnam experience. The wound was still raw, and Cimino was rubbing salt in it. Most people have only a vague recollection of the film. But everyone seems to remember the Russian roulette scenes and the scenes of Nick's funeral alternating with news clips of the American evacuation from a doomed Saigon.
Walken followed up "The Deer Hunter" with a string of losers. He was a gunfighter in Cimino's colossal bomb "Heaven's Gate" (1980). Afterward, he played his first lead as a mercenary in "The Dogs of War" (1980). Reviewers were not kind; nor were they enamored with Walken's portrayal of a marvelously greasy dancing pimp in the dark musical "Pennies From Heaven" (1981). But Walken's footwork caught the attention of those unaware of his skills in that department. Starring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters, "Pennies From Heaven" was the American film version of Dennis Potter's British TV series of the same title. It's a brilliant film that deserves to be rediscovered, in part for Walken's incarnation of a petty underworld tyrant.
In 1981, while he was filming the movie "Brainstorm" with costar Natalie Wood, Walken's life took a bizarre turn reminiscent of one of his characters'. Walken was a guest aboard a yacht belonging to Wood and her husband, Robert Wagner, when Wood drowned off the coast of Catalina Island on the evening of Nov. 28. According to Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi, Wood slipped and fell into the water while trying to board the yacht's dinghy. Her cries for help were not heard by Walken or Wagner, and her body was found floating one mile south of the yacht, near an isolated cove.
Though Noguchi eventually ruled out foul play, rumors have persisted to this day. There was speculation that Wagner and Walken had been fighting, and gossip mavens posited that there was a love triangle of Wagner, Walken and Wood. In that famous Playboy interview Walken rejected the proposition that he and Wagner had been fighting. He also put forth his theory that the dinghy had been knocking against the side of the boat and Wood had gone to right it when she slipped, countering the theory that Wood was attempting to escape a heated argument.
After "Brainstorm," Walken carried on in his Prince of Strange mode, playing a man plagued by migraines and an eerie ability to see into the future in David Cronenberg's film version of the Stephen King novel "The Dead Zone" (1983). Walken, Cronenberg and King, three maestros of the macabre wrapped up in one movie! Unfortunately, the film doesn't quite live up to this confluence of dark forces. But Walken is dead-on as psychic Johnny Smith, a role that could have been tailor-made for him, though the plot is hokey at times.
Walken then played Bond nemesis Max Zorin in "A View to a Kill" (1985) and Sean Penn's lumpen father in "At Close Range" (1986), as well as a number of smaller roles. His lead as writer Whitley Strieber in "Communion" (1989) seemed to augur Walken's emergence in the popular imagination as a cult icon. He was perfectly cast as the man whose bestselling book about his alleged abduction by aliens served as the basis for the movie. However, it was in the '90s that Walken would explode as a larger-than-life figure, going well beyond the restricted existence of a character actor to become the Peter Lorre of the pre-millennium.
Two directors have helped propel Walken to his current status: Abel Ferrara and Quentin Tarantino. Ferrara may be the most influential of the pair in this regard. His direction of Walken as mobster Frank White in "King of New York" (1990) was key to giving the actor a sort of underground cachet. White is a modern-day Robin Hood/drug lord battling the cops and rival gangsters in '80s Manhattan, and though he's as melanin-deprived as his name suggests, he also possesses the qualities of what Norman Mailer called the "white Negro": That is, he retains the menace and hip of the streets while having the savoir-faire to sip champagne with the elite.
"King of New York" introduced Walken to a generation for the most part unfamiliar with his work in "The Deer Hunter." Walken's other roles with Ferrara helped solidify his standing as a one-of-a-kind presence. In "The Addiction" (1995) Walken plays an expert, Baudelaire-spouting vampire who teaches novice Lili Taylor a thing or two about the bloodsucking game. In "The Funeral" (1996) he plays the eldest of three Mafia brothers bound to one another by honor and madness. And in the futuristic "New Rose Hotel" (1998) he's a tap-dancing con artist who likes to shout "Coleslaw for everybody" in mid-debauch.
Walken's Tarantino-inspired work further ingrained his image in the minds of a generation unfamiliar with his earlier roles. Walken had only small parts in "True Romance" (1993), directed by Tony Scott with a Tarantino screenplay, and "Pulp Fiction" (1994), directed and co-written by Tarantino, but both films were influential in the '90s, and Walken's lines in each would become the source of endless fascination.
Walken's more cartoonish collaborations with Tim Burton in "Batman Returns" (1992) and more recently in "Sleepy Hollow" (1999) took Walken's self-caricature to the nth degree, though his work with Burton hasn't had the impact on his career that the Tarantino and Ferrara films have. In "Batman Returns," he is thoroughly loathsome as the megalomaniacal scourge of Gotham, Maximillian "Max" Shreck. And he's perfectly monstrous as the pre-headless Hessian Horseman in "Sleepy Hollow." The roles are novel (which, of course, isn't novel for Walken) but dead-ends as far as challenging the actor. In fact, the Hessian Horseman never speaks in "Sleepy Hollow," he just growls. "Batman Returns" was more of a hit for Burton and required a little more from Walken, but neither part came close to the roles Walken inhabits for Ferrara or Tarantino.
Other Walken roles have added icing to the cake baked by Ferrara, Tarantino and Burton. There has been Walken as mysterious seducer in Paul Schrader's "The Comfort of Strangers" (1991), as Mike Myers' rival in "Wayne's World 2" (1993) and as archangel Gabriel in "The Prophecy" (1995). Walken seems firmly cemented in our collective moviegoing consciousness as a cooler-than-thou, outr figure who might have been plucked whole from some modernist European novel.
Of late Walken has expressed the desire to play some "normal" parts, where he doesn't blow anyone away or drink anyone's blood. And in the recently released "The Opportunists," he comes pretty close by portraying an ex-con safecracker trying to do right by his family and his girlfriend, played by Cyndi Lauper. Walken does nice work, but his role lacks the intensity of his villains and nut cases. It's not so much that he's typecast as it is that those walks on the dark side of the moon are intrinsically more interesting than anything the "nice guy" characters might do.
"What you are as an actor is a reflection of what you are in real life," Walken told Interview in 1993. "And in a way, everything you do in your life is information for your acting. But the truth is that my life is alarmingly predictable. I'm a very conservative citizen. I've been married for 25 years. I have two houses, a station wagon and cats. I pay for all my bills, and people trust me. I was here for this interview right on time."
Despite Walken's protests that he's just a regular Joe, there's a depth to him that's undeniable. In a 1998 Mr. Showbiz interview, Walken explained his meticulous process of preparation: how he covers his script in notes; how he has "six subtexts" for anything he says, even "pass the salt"; and so on. Walken's description is revealing. Because if he explores six subtexts for saying something so slight, what must he do to prepare for roles like those in "The Addiction" or "True Romance"? To plumb the darkness for the multiple layers of a vampire or a psychotic, and to do so effectively, if one's to judge by the end result, suggests a certain profundity and perhaps a predilection for journeying through mental strata most of us leave unexamined.
_______________________________________________________________August 2000
Christopher Walken, Opportunist
The CrankyCritic.com interview by Chuck Schwartz
Christopher Walken: The thing about interviews is that you say something and then 20 years later they say "did you say that?" Yes. What did I mean? I'm not really sure.
So, you can make of this what you wish. We took the opportunity to talk with Christopher Walken while he was making the rounds for the indieflick The Opportunists, co-starring Cyndi Lauper. The Opportunists is the story of a blue collar auto mechanic who's done time for safecracking. He's learned his lesson but times are tough and the old "gang" has found a sweet job and this previously unknown cousin from Ireland has shown up on his doorstep. Everything his character Victor Kelly wants, including financial equality with his girlfriend (Lauper) who owns the local bar, can be his. But only if he backtracks.
Yes, we did talk Star Wars, and all the rumors flying about his part as "Darth Bane" but we also got a whole lot of background material detailing what makes this actor act. . .
Christopher Walken: An actor really is a kind of intermediary between an audience and the piece, whether it's a play or movie. I've always felt that whenever you read a play, particularly a great play, what you're really doing is . I mean you could say that every character that Shakespeare or Tennessee Williams or Chekhov or Shaw wrote, you could say that every character is them. So that when you do Sweet Bird Of Youth you're really, over the course of time, getting into Tennessee Williams' mind. As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.
CrankyCritic: Between The Opportunists and your Tony nominated role in The Dead you're really taking up an Irish twist in your career.
Christopher Walken: Yes. Exactly. To do that play you realize that you're speaking the words pretty much the way you might have heard [them] if you had had the conversation with James Joyce. You really do develop an affinity with the writer that you wouldn't if you just read it. It's the reading it over and over hundreds of times and doing it on stage when you have a little bit of a cold or when you're feeling good or upset about something it's all different angles on something that you never would investigate that carefully if you were just reading it.
CrankyCritic: Does that hold true when you're making a movie aimed at the blockbuster market?
Christopher Walken: It can. It depends on the quality of the script
CrankyCritic: So what do you look for when you're picking these small roles? What piqued your interest about The Opportunists?
Christopher Walken: It's a pretty good part. It's a small movie in terms of budget and so forth but it's a bigger part than I usually get to play. Certainly different in that he's a father and a decent person; more of what you might call a regular person than I usually play.
CrankyCritic: And you know these people...
Christopher Walken: That's my neighborhood where they shot the movie. The house that I live in in the movie is about two miles from where my parents live now. I used to pass the building that I was a baby in, regularly. I was very familiar with that. The curious thing is that the neighborhood hasn't changed that much in all those years.
CrankyCritic: Can you tell us about your character/ the Irish background?
Christopher Walken: Well, my background isn't Irish. My mother and father came from Europe. Mother from Scotland and Father from Germany and for a long time and still to this day they are the only people from their family to do that. They met here as adults, they had left as adults, and most of my family still lives in Europe. And I did grow up in that neighborhood and I am the same age as that character. A lot of it was stuff I was familiar with. If somebody showed up at my door and said "hi I'm your cousin from Germany" I'd have to say "Hi." It could be entirely possible.
CrankyCritic: But you'd check him out, just like your character does
Christopher Walken: Well, you have to ask somebody. But my first reaction would be "Hi. Come on in."
CrankyCritic: The director told us that you said to him that you could have wound up like Vic does. How did you miss?
Christopher Walken: Well, I was lucky. I grew up at the birth of television in New York City, a subway ride from Rockefeller Center where it all started to happen. I was in Queens, the train was fifteen minutes away from the center of everything. There were ninety live TV shows in New York every week. They used a lot of kids, particularly at holidays. I was pretty much immersed in that world from the time I was a kid with my two brothers and when it came time to figure out what I would do for the rest of my life it was pretty much settled. I never had to debate being a rocket scientist. I just never was suited for anything else. So here I am.
CrankyCritic: Have you filmed your role for Star Wars Episode Two yet?
Christopher Walken: Y'know, people have been telling me for six months [laughter] Really. It's very interesting and I even asked. I said maybe I am in it and they're saving it for a surprise. But I'm not in that movie and I never was. I don't know how that happened. Maybe somebody put it on the Internet or something.
CrankyCritic: That's exactly what happened
Christopher Walken: I tell you frankly that the only place I've ever heard that was by way of rumor. I've said to my agent "what's that about?" and he's said "absolutely nothing." (you wanna hear him say it? click here)
CrankyCritic: A lot of people fall into a job. Was there a part that once you finished it you "knew" this was it?
Christopher Walken: No. I think early on I knew what I was going to do and it was based a lot on familiarity but it was also because I didn't have a lot of skills. There was nothing I wanted t be. I didn't want to be a doctor. I wanted to be in show business. My father was a baker and a lot of people do what their families did and I could have done that but I wanted to stay in show business. I can tell you something that's true about my acting. I don't know if it comes through or not but I always know I'm in a movie, no matter what I'm doing. I know I'm in a movie. I know I've got a costume on. I think that that's maybe evident when you watch me and maybe that makes it OK. There's a big leftover part of my musical comedy training in everything I do.
CrankyCritic: Let's talk about that musical work. Do you wish you had been a star in a different era?
Christopher Walken: I think that if I had grown up and had been in show business and the movies twenty five, thirty years earlier, I think I would have made a lot more musical movies. I could have made a dent there. But by the time I came along, those movies weren't being made that much. They were expensive and they were out of vogue. Chances are they'll come back. I've made three musical movies which is pretty good considering that not many are made but I was lucky in other ways. I came along when independent movies were starting to boom. When videotape came so a lot of movies that I do have a kind of afterlife in video. Things where movies that I do would come and go; they still come and go but you can go rent them and see them on TV. I was kind of left out on the one hand and included on the other.
CrankyCritic: How would you rate the current state of Hollywood films and does that affect your choice of projects?
Christopher Walken: I don't choose that much. I just sort of take what's there. I don't have much else to do. I don't have a lot of hobbies. I don't play golf. I don't have any children. Things that occupy people's time. I just try to take jobs. I basically work so much because I'm lazy. [laughter]
CrankyCritic: You're known for intense, brooding roles. Do you seek to work against that?
Christopher Walken: I think if you do something effectively whether you're the lover or the comic or the action guy or the villain like I play; movies are very expensive to make. Chances are you'll get asked to play that part again. I tend to look if it's a very downbeat dark story I tend to look for the jokes. If it's a jokey story I look for the serious part. That's sort of the way I find life goes. People laugh when they're crying or the opposite.
CrankyCritic: Where is the levity you found in Vic Kelly's life?
Christopher Walken: he's a guy who's like us all. He needs a little bit of a break. He'd done some dumb things and paid. He's just looking to get out from under which I think a lot of people can identify with. He's a guy with good intentions who's made mistakes. He did some stupid things and basically he's just trying to have a nice life.
CrankyCritic: His refusal to take $2000 from his girlfriend - is that refusal because it's his girlfriend or is it pride?
Christopher Walken: Well, sure. I'm that way myself. All my life, even when I didn't have any money I never owed anybody any money because I always made a point of that. I never owned anything that I had to borrow to pay for and if I couldn't eat in restaurants I cooked my own food. I always made sure that I never owed anybody money. Even now, if I buy something, I pay for it. I never have mortgages or down payments or any of that.
Walken is currently filming The Affair of the Necklace, with Hilary Swank.
_______________________________________________________________Entertainment Weekly - March 17, 2000
The Greats
Christopher Walken
For 25 years, he's gone where other actors didn't dare. He can be frightening and funny, menacing and majestic, mad, bad, and dangerous to know. And he sings, too.
Author: Chris Nashawaty
"I found myself watching each face, each a map of life in flesh."
As the narrator of the new Broadway musical James Joyce's The Dead, Christopher Walken uses this line to describe the emotionally fraught lives of the Irish characters on stage. But take a few seconds to study the photograph on the opposite page. Walken's face isn't just "a map of life in flesh"; it's a haunting, full-relief masterpiece that would make Rand McNally both weep with joy and cower in terror.
Start with the lips. Occasionally, they'll widen into a smile. But even then, it's at the most unexpected moments--when nothing particularly funny has been said, when Walken seems to be listening to some sick joke inside his head. More often, his lips form that chilling scowl you see--the one that curls back to hurl an unscripted gob of spit in Robert De Niro's face near the end of The Deer Hunter. Now check out the eyes: penetrating, arctic, and slightly dead. In person, Walken has the thousand-yard stare of a soldier just back from combat; he seems to see right through you. Finally, there are all those lines that snake between the eyes and the lips. Those come with age. But if you look closely, you can make out the few that were etched in the late '70s when Walken was beaten up by a couple of toughs who wouldn't turn down their radio. One pounded him to the ground while the other hit him with a two-by-four.
Go back and watch an early film like 1971's The Anderson Tapes, and you'll see a downright pretty kid who started his career as a dancer. But now, at 56, Walken's weathered face is, more than anything, a map of life in flesh. It's easy to look at him and assume that he's a variation on the menacing characters he's made famous. But the fact is, Walken couldn't be more unlike the psychos, crazies, and badasses he plays. He's just so good at being bad that we think he must be a monster. He's not. Christopher Walken is a pussycat who can summon the face of a pit bull.
I. THE DANCER--ASTORIA, QUEENS
Knowing what we think we know about Walken from his movies, it's bizarre to consider that he got into show business because of Jerry Lewis. But posted on the door of his dressing room at the Belasco Theatre is a black-and-white photo of the King of Comedy with his face twisted as if the picture were snapped mid-"Hey, laaaay-dy!"
Walken met Lewis when he was 10. Growing up in Astoria, Queens, the son of immigrant bakers (his father from Germany, his mother from Scotland), Walken and his two brothers would hop on the subway to Rockefeller Center. In the early '50s, midtown Manhattan was ground zero for live TV, and he and his brothers would earn extra scratch--and witness celebrities close-up--by performing as extras on shows like Mama and Omnibus. "They used a lot of kids more or less as furniture," Walken recalls. One week, Lewis and Dean Martin were guest hosts on The Colgate Comedy Hour. "I had a scene with Jerry in a penny arcade--there were pinball machines and the things you squeeze and it tells you your passion level--and there was an arm coming out of a wall that you arm-wrestle. And that was the joke: Jerry arm-wrestled the machine and lost. I was in that."
Walken was a real ham as a kid. It's the reason he commuted to the performing-arts-themed Professional Children's School in Manhattan. "It was a great place," he says, breaking into a mischievous grin. "It was like 95 percent girls...beautiful girls. They were all models and stuff. And the other boys were usually strange--what you might call 'scientific types.' They played the violin and the cello...and I was silly and frivolous. Those were good days. What do you call them? Halcyon days? Salad days? It was like that movie where the guy gets stranded on a planet of women."
Walken trained there to be a dancer, not an actor. And less than a year into his studies at Hofstra University, he dropped out after landing a part in a 1963 Off Broadway musical called Best Foot Forward. "I just got up and left one day because that's what I wanted," he says. "It was probably for the best, because I knew I was never going to be a rocket scientist."
Years later, after Walken switched over to theater and film, the choreographer who'd tapped him for Best Foot Forward mentioned his name to Herbert Ross, who was directing the ambitious, surreal 1981 Steve Martin movie musical Pennies From Heaven. By that time, few in Hollywood knew that the guy who had won an Oscar for 1978's The Deer Hunter was actually a trained song-and-dance man. And watching Walken's show-stopping tap-dancing striptease to "Let's Misbehave," dressed as a zoot-suited Depression-era hustler, packed a sort of "Who knew?" shock value. "It was as if you found out De Niro was a chorus dancer," laughs Deer Hunter costar Meryl Streep. "But Pennies From Heaven--that's closer to the real guy. I think a lot of what Chris does as an actor comes from dance. There are very few actors who train as dancers, and he stands like Baryshnikov--with his chest open like a god. Juxtaposed with his menace and loose-cannon aspect, it just gives him this crazy beauty."
Actually, you can see the dancer in the precise and calculated way Walken moves in his films, the sometimes affected air he brings to even the smallest gestures, and even the way he views sharing scenes with other actors. Take one of Walken's most memorable performances--1993's True Romance. In a tender and tense 10-minute tango between two of our ballsiest actors, Walken, playing a suave Mob strongman, interrogates Dennis Hopper. "I remember we were being interviewed about our scene in True Romance," recalls Hopper, "and Chris said, 'I don't know whether we're great actors or not, but I started out as a dancer and I'll tell you one thing, Hopper and I really partner well together.'"
Sean Penn, a friend of Walken's for more than a decade, calls the True Romance face-off "the best pop-culture scene ever shot.... The hostility buried under the hopelessness of those guys...it's very clear what's going to happen from the beginning, and yet you're tortured in waiting, because both actors draw it out." Walken likes it too. "We danced together," he says. "When actors have that flow, and that rhythm, and that give-and-take, they feel each other like a dancer."
Still, the part of Walken that seems to have been most indelibly affected by his dance training is the unique, baroque rhythm of his speech. It's almost as if the very idea of acknowledging punctuation would be insulting to him. Take this infamous bit from Pulp Fiction, where Walken plays a returning POW telling his dead buddy's young son the story behind a gold-plated memento his father wanted him to have: "The way your dad looked at it...this watch was your birthright.... Five long years he hid this watch...up his ass."
"I think that is a definitive sign of a genuine actor," says James Foley, who directed Walken and Penn in 1986's At Close Range. "To me, a great actor is someone who begins a sentence with no pre-knowledge of where it's going to end. It's those actors that have it all mapped out who are boring." Adds Hopper: "The words don't matter to Chris. He lets them fall where they will. Sometimes it's amazing, and sometimes, honestly, it sucks." Hopper laughs. "Not very often...but sometimes it does--it just sounds awful to me. You think, 'This doesn't sound real at all, man, wow, where is that coming from?' But he trusts himself...and I really give him credit."
Over the years, Walken's, strange delivery has given Saturday Night Live plenty of fodder. But Walken still doesn't understand the fuss. "It's funny, huh? It doesn't strike me as that unusual, but it's interesting how many people do impressions of me. I have friends who do me on their answering machines. I think my rhythm is a bit like someone whose first language isn't English. I could get away with being a German commandant and not really have to do a lot of accent, because I already sound like I don't speak English that well."
II. THE ACTOR--BANGKOK, THAILAND
After banging around in obscurity for years on, off, and way off Broadway, in 1976 Walken landed a juicy, if small, part in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, as Diane Keaton's oddball brother Duane. After Walken confesses to Allen that he often has the impulse to swerve into oncoming traffic and end his life, Allen deadpans, "I have to go now, Duane, because I'm due back on the planet Earth." Two scenes later Duane is driving a petrified, white-knuckled Allen to the airport.
"Poor Duane," laughs Walken nearly 25 years later. "Somebody said that's probably why I started getting all those strange characters--because that was one of the first things I did that was seen by a lot of people. And here I was playing a suicide case... I guess one job leads to another. The next movie I did was The Deer Hunter, and I shoot myself, so it's hard to get cheery parts after that."
The Deer Hunter was Walken's breakthrough, and he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his turn as Nick--an easygoing young steelworker from a blue-collar Pennsylvania town who goes off to Vietnam with his two best friends (De Niro and John Savage) and loses his mind. "I don't think I've ever learned more in a single experience," says Walken.
For the movie's Vietnam scenes, the cast and crew spent two months in Thailand. They began on the snake and rat infested banks of the river Kwai near the border of Burma for the prison-camp scenes. Then they moved to Bangkok (which doubled as Saigon) for the film's haunting climax, in which Walken has been sucked into an underground nightmare world of Russian roulette played in a sweaty human cockfighting ring where rabid foreigners bet on men pointing loaded guns at their heads. On screen, it looks like a back alley into hell. And Walken--at that point subsisting on rice alone to shed pounds--looks like an emaciated, half-mad zombie. "Those scenes, it really was four in the morning. It was really hot in that wonderful Southeast Asian way," says Walken, getting almost misty reminiscing about his first guerrilla filmmaking experience. "That warehouse wasn't a set, it was a rice storage place...and if you wanted to take a nap, you went somewhere and slept on the floor. It was an amazing time."
Walken, fully aware that the film was his big break, was willing to try anything when the cameras were rolling. For a scene toward the end of the film when De Niro returns to Saigon and Walken is so far gone he doesn't even recognize him, director Michael Cimino says he told Walken to spit in De Niro's face. "Bob didn't know it was coming. And Chris goes, 'You want me to spit in Bob's face? I can't spit in Bob's face!' But he did it. Well, Bob almost f---ing...he got so angry he almost got out of the scene. But he knew it was working. It's actors like Chris who make scenes like that possible. He's got great courage."
Cimino adds that things became even more intense when De Niro suggested a little bit of Method acting. "At one point Bob wanted to put a live round in the gun...just to crank the intensity. And we had a whole conference about 'Okay, we're gonna do it, but we're gonna check this thing 5,000 times.' We went to a lot of extremes on that film."
It goes without saying that De Niro's loading the pistol was frightening. But you don't understand just how scared Walken was until you hear him talk about how much he hates guns. "I don't even like holding them," he says. "Whenever I hold a gun, I want to get it out of my hand as quick as possible."
Ironic, considering how many of Walken's films have him wielding the damn things. Take his role as a stylish, hair-trigger capo in Abel Ferrara's seedy 1990 crime-world flick King of New York. "The first day we were shooting, we did that scene with the Italians around the table," says Ferrara of a scene in which Walken dishes out some point-blank street justice. "And he says to me, 'I don't like pointing a gun at another actor.' And I was like, 'Oh, man, we've got to shoot a whole movie with guns and you're telling me you don't like pointing a gun at another actor?!' And then we did the scene and Chris shot that guy five times after he was dead; that wasn't in the script! He says he's afraid of guns, and then you say 'Action' and he became--how do you say it?--very efficient."
Walken's most memorable ballistic moment, however, may have been in the bristlingly claustrophobic drama At Close Range, in which he and Sean Penn play father-son thieves. It was Penn's idea to cast Walken: "It just came over me how unpredictable it would be for me to have someone that surprising in the part." But Penn was the one with the surprise up his sleeve when director Foley shot the film's climax, in which Penn holds Walken at gunpoint, itching to pull the trigger. Penn, wanting to give the scene some extra juice, persuaded Walken that the gun was actually loaded. "The goal is always to break things up and make them more effective," says Penn, "and I guess this was just more dramatic because it was a gun...so the fear on his face is real fear."
Foley believes it was Walken himself who put the fear there. "I believe Chris allowed himself to not know. He certainly knew that he could stop and ask. He allowed himself to have a question without an answer...because Sean's wacko enough. The main thing is, Chris couldn't be positive--and he didn't want to be. That's the kind of emotional calculus he uses, while other actors are just doing arithmetic."
You'd think Walken would have kicked the stuffing out of his costar after the director yelled "Cut!" But no. "[Penn] knew that I was scared of guns, and you can see it in the scene. It was a blessing. He did me a favor. I mean, that's just what good actors do for each other."
III. THE GREAT--NEW YORK CITY
"This place used to be a variety house and Houdini performed here. One of his big tricks was making an elephant disappear. And there's a big elevator under the stage that still works. It's big enough for an elephant. That's how he did it."
Christopher Walken is sitting in the empty Belasco Theatre after a recent matinee performance of The Dead. (The New York Times calls his performance "magnetically low-key.") He's got a Tupperware bowl of lettuce on his lap and he's using a pair of wooden chopsticks to conduct the quirky beats of his speech as he gives away Houdini's best-kept secrets. "I suppose I shouldn't be telling you all this...it can't be good luck."
On this stage, in The Dead, Walken doesn't do a lot of dancing, but he does sing. And listening to him is an otherworldly experience. It's a bit like watching his tap-dance number in Pennies From Heaven--you just didn't know he could do it. But Walken actually has a sensitive, mellifluous singing voice. It's almost the opposite of the swagger he brings to his more harrowing film roles. And watching him sing, you can see why his wife, Georgianne, an Emmy-winning casting agent for The Sopranos, fell for him when they costarred in a production of West Side Story 30 years ago. (He played Riff and she played Graziella.) When asked about the rare longevity of their marriage, Walken laughs, "I guess it's not a common thing now." He credits its success to the example set by his parents, Rosalie and Paul, who have been married 63 years.
"Chris, in this role, is a revelation to a lot of people," says The Dead's writer-director, Richard Nelson. "He's a man of great charm, and wit, and grace. People have seen his movies, and they forget this side of him."
To be precise, Walken has starred in a mind-boggling 70-plus movies. Everything from the staid Sarah, Plain and Tall trilogy to the cheapie horror Prophecy flicks to doofus comedies like Wayne's World 2. In fact, he never seems to stop working. He says it's got nothing to do with seven-figure paydays; he just has his father's work ethic. "My father--a wonderful man--was very, very hardworking. But he was also rather spartan in his ways. I think I inherited some of that. He was very simple. I mean, I think if he had a billion dollars, he wouldn't live any differently. He'd eat the same food and do the same things. People ask me how I choose what I do, and it's simple--I just take the best thing [that's offered]. I hardly ever like to sit at home. I don't have any children, I don't have any hobbies, I don't like to travel...I like to work. I mean, what am I going to do? Watch Court TV all day?"
Walken knows he's the first guy casting agents think of when they need someone to play creepy. But what can he do? After all, he knows he's not a creepy guy in real life: "It's just grown-ups who think I'm creepy," laughs Walken, in a very creepy way. "But kids don't. Kids love me."
"I don't get it--there's nothing creepy about him as a person," says Foley. "It's just one of these accidents of history where some of his biggest successes were a certain type of character. It's almost like if he wasn't so good at being creepy, he'd get to play fathers, and husbands, and regular guys."
That would be our loss. After all, Hollywood is crawling with a lot more future Tom Hankses than future Christopher Walkens. Nice guys are a dime a dozen; but it's impossible to think of anyone other than Walken in The Deer Hunter, or At Close Range, or even in a little-seen drama like The Comfort of Strangers, where as a kinky expatriate, Walken works his part as if it were a piece of saltwater taffy. Who else could pull off the cartoonishly fiendish Max Shreck in Batman Returns, or the bleach-coiffed Bond villain Max Zorin in A View to a Kill, or even the ink-drooling Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow, who steals the film without a single line? That's what makes Walken one of our pop-culture Greats. "He's just magic," says Penn. "I don't know if I'd want to put a word on what makes him unique...it's just 'Chris.'"
It's an hour or so before Walken has to go back on stage for his second daily performance of The Dead. And suddenly, after spending most of the afternoon talking about himself, he seems to get a little uncomfortable. His face--that once impenetrable and foreboding mask of life in flesh--seems somehow softer, warmer, less haunted as you get to know him. But before he leaves to take his regular preperformance nap, he offers a few final words.
"Not to be silly, but it's nice when you think about being an actor to think that whatever you do is kind of original. I think that no matter what I did--if I was a cook, if I was a writer, if I built houses--I would try to make it unique somehow. Give it a stamp. Even when I was a kid, I wanted to do things in a way that was unique. With a little flair, a little style. So people may say 'I can't stand him,' but at least recognize that what I do is a particular thing. You know, a wonderful eccentric actor once said to me, 'I always knew I wasn't going to be everybody's cup of tea.' And I just thought, 'That's great!'... There are people who, I'm definitely not their cup of tea. But I think that's cooler anyway."
Chris Nashawaty, The Greats: Christopher Walken For 25 years, he's gone where other actors didn't dare. He can be frightening and funny, menacing and majestic, mad, bad, and dangerous to know. And he sings, too.
_______________________________________________________________Gentlemen's Quarterly - March 2000
Christopher Walken Must Die
He must do it again and again. Because no one else has icy eyes,
Tony Perkins hair and the strangest line delivery in Hollywood.
By Andrew Corsello, GQ Senior Writer
Christopher Walken floats through the world as if through a dream, blissfully unaware that most people are frightened by him, and inexplicably unaware that he is a cult figure.
"Mystique," he repeats, when the word is applied to him - but with a peculiar dead space before the fricative: "Mess-TEE...ka."
He utters the word in the disquietingly neutral tone of a man under hypnosis. It's a Walken trademark, this tone. It is very odd and very pleasing. It takes everyday nouns - doctor, food, shoes - and makes them foreign. "'Mystique'": Something in his inspection of it - the way he manages simultaneously to punctuate the word with a period, a question mark and an ellipsis - bewilders both of you.
"People don't think I'm villainous, right?" he continues. "I mean, obviously, I play a lot of villains...."
"I think the consensus is that you probably have supernatural powers, and that you shouldn’t be fucked with," I tell him.
He responds with a slow, fish-eyed stare, absolutely unreadable.
"Sometimes I read things that say I'm 'creepy.' That - I don't know. 'Creepy' is...something without a skeleton, yes? That worries me a little. I don't mind 'strange.'"
"Otherworldly?"
"Ah, 'otherworldly,'" he says, relieved. "And I'm pale, don't you think?" he adds, sounding....contrite? Delighted?
In any case, Walken, while pooh-poohing the notion of the Walken mess-TEE...ka, chalks it up to the roles he gets - not to his Transylvanian countenance or his shock-treatment hair or anything else intrinsic to his person. He claims he's just a jolly song-and-dance man who's taken a few spooky roles - acting jobs - that fans have mistaken for the there there. He may have a point. The first time most of us saw him, in 1977, was as Diane Keaton's suicidal brother in Annie Hall ("Sometimes... I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car"), which he followed up one year later with his suicidal Nam POW in The Deer Hunter (an Oscar there). And though in the meantime he's even received an Emmy nomination for such feel-good fare and Hallmark's Sarah, Plain and Tall, we...don't care. We choose instead to iconize him for his work as Sean Penn's sociopathic father in At Close Range; the cartoon rogues in A View to a Kill and Batman Returns; the dapper, bloodthirsty hoods of True Romance and King of New York; the befanged, head-lopping horseman from Sleepy Hollow (his only line, delivered repeatedly: "ARGHHHHH!!"); and, most disturbing, the sad-eyed Euro-freak in The Comfort of Strangers ("Mascara...").
Yet though it is true that Walken evinces a number of...the characteristics common to all supremely evil people - excellent manners, worship of neatness, fear of bugs and facts - it is also true, perhaps disappointingly so, that he is on balance a sane and gentle man. He's been happily married for thirty years. He lives in Connecticut. He sleeps there - at night, in a bed, and usually for about eight hours. His days are quiet and routinized. In the morning, he drinks multiple tureen-size cups of coffee, which he sweetens with molasses. Then he reads a lot. Sometimes he paints. He travels for work, but rarely for pleasure, choosing instead to spend money on things for his house and his Manhattan apartment.
Additionally, Walken accepts any job offer that isn't "too awful," per a humble work ethic fueled not by love of fame, glory or money (not until age 35 did he earn more than $11,000 in a single year) but by fear of his own capacity to "sit around and eat spaghetti." He likes people, both generally and specifically, and hates gossip - its messiness, its interfering, littering quality. On the road, he stays in kitchen-equipped hotel rooms so that he can cook for, and clean up after, himself. (Walken, a baker's son, is an excellent cook.)
Most important, Walken tends to say sensible and thoughtful things: that "an actor's need to experience great emotion [while performing] is overrated"; that because acting is an essentially "mysterious" art, he is, as both a person and an actor, "least interesting when introspective"; that when as a boy, he was cast in a skit on Jerry Lewis's variety show, "He took my hand for some reason, and I thought, Jerry Lewis has a hand like a doctor - cool, dry, soothing."
Walken's sole venture into vanity: dual, closely linked affections for Elvis and for his own hair. Walken yank his hair once a day, hard, to loosen the scalp, stimulate blood flow to the follicles and reduce stress - a trick Anthony Perkins taught him - and thinks other men should too. In fact, Walken once revealed that this subtextual "motive" as the yellow-haired villain Max Zorin in the James Bond film A View to a Kill was "What do you think of my hair? Do you like what they did to me? That they made me look like this?" Harmless, right? And, per his ideas about acting, wholly unpretentious
Yet there is, ultimately, a reason all those spooky roles have come Walken's way, and a reason he's been so memorable in them. As easy as he is in person, Walken still carries with him, quietly hums with, that...mysterious element, that unspoken thing (of which we're only peripherally aware) that infects his every role - a queer sense of temporal displacement, of having passed into a galactic wormhole and then reemerged half a second behind the reality the rest of us occupy. Is this displacement in part the product of growing up the son of immigrants - she from Scotland, he from Germany - in Queens, New York? Who can say? What's clear is that Walken's every gesture marks him as a man who's seen things, things that would blow your rabbit ass away, things the awareness of which makes him a man doomed.
Doomed to what, though?
"Movies are expensive to make," Walken shrugs. "And if you've demonstrated you can do something, they'll keep wanting you to do it. I was in a movie a while back with a guy who's always the hero. We were getting ready to film the scene I get killed in, and he said, 'Do you always die?' And I said, 'Pretty much.' He said, sort of wistfully, "I've never died.' You could tell he wanted to, sometime."
But he won't. Just as Walken won't live. We won't let him. For no matter how powerful and supernaturally attuned he is, Walken must bow down to "Walken," that incomprehensible, blank-eyed evil, cast in human form, that has taken hold in our collective imagination - and must be destroyed. Yes, it's now a known cinematic fact, sure as the Devil: Christopher Walken must die.
That said, the most important thing you ought to know about Christopher Walken is that he takes an active disinterest in facts. "I get easily confused by facts, analysis, too much information," he says. "That's all there is to it." Walken's aversion covers not only facts about current events, science and history but also more fundamental and easily overlooked facts. Like punctuation. Indeed, Walken's loathing of punctuation is congenital, and therefore delightful and just plain weird. As a child (commuting via subway to the Professional Children's School in Manhattan), Walken used to attack his school textbooks with a Magic Marker, systematically nullifying all commas, periods, apostrophes and exclamation points. Sometimes he'd put in commas and exclamation points of his own, next to words he liked them to be next to.
Eventually, Walken's urge to incinerate punctuation on contact emerged as an indispensable "technique." Now his first encounter with a script isn't a reading but an obligatory nixing of all punctuation and stage direction. The idea: to eliminate anything that might interfere with his process of arriving at wholly original line readings. "Seeing 'he says tearfully' or 'he says fiercely' only makes me want to do the opposite," he says. "That crap is the end of acting." (Walken points out that the "great ones" - Shakespeare, Chekhov, Tennessee Williams - rarely offer instructions beyond "enter" and "exit," his favorite exception coming in act 3, scene 3 of the Bard's The Winter's Tale: "Exit, pursued by a bear.")
After properly sanitizing a manuscript, Walken painstakingly listens to it, reading his lines aloud hundreds of times - comically, tragically, in every conceivable ethnic accent, like Woody Allen, like "Marlon," like himself - regardless of their emotional content. Sometimes he'll record them and then walk around Central Park with a tape player. "I'm interested in rhythm - if it sounds right, it's right," he says. "I've known directors who during takes go like this" -- he shuts his eyes and cups a hand to his ear - "because they know that if it sounds right, chances are your face and your body also look honest."
Repeating a line of drama hundreds of times over until the words become hypnotic, lose their meaning and turn into pieces of pure music may be an inside-out approach, but it works beautifully - and perhaps only - for Walken. His line readings can be startling and even preposterous, but always manage to place quotes around words in ways that feel new - never knowing or superior. Non-English speakers hearing his halting diction in, say, At Close Range ("How you gonna pay...apartment...food...clothes?") or in person ("I was passing through Lincoln Center...people were going in a door...I walked in...a rehearsal...Pavarotti walked out...he was wearing Bermuda shorts...he looked ridiculous") would no doubt conclude they were listening to a man quietly but irritably reciting a list of extremely important groceries. The effect is most pronounced in Walken's evilest characters, the ones who simply must die. The subtle disconnect between what he says and how he says it creates a fissure, then a chasm, and then a great cavernous nothingness that he declines to fill in with a readily explained motive. "I'm the Antichrist," Walken declares in a bored, matter-of-fact, even slightly sad tone in True Romance. "You get me in a vendetta kind of mood, you will tell the angels in Heaven that you had never seen pure evil so singularly personified as you did in the face of the man who killed you." As with Robert, the gimlet-eyed sexual predator in Comfort, the chill of the character arises not from the presence but from the absence of something. Where, say, Robert DeNiro in Cape Fear is a screamer and a reveler, exuberant in his creepiness, Walken's Robert is withdrawn and just a bit sickened by his own sickeningness. That's because Walken understands the alienation of truly scary people - their vacuum centers, the way they seem to come from nothing and stand for nothing. How better to convey a sociopathic soul, utterly devoid of allegiance or reason, than with whimsical and even funny line readings?
Only in his adult life did it become clear to Walken that his aversion to concreta didn't necessarily spell career doom. (How bad were Walken's quantitative skills? Get this: As a young adult, his application for a Macy's holiday-season clerkship was rejected after he punted a basic adding and subtracting test.) Walken's intelligence, his talent, was surely formidable, but also drifty, associative, quicksilvery - the kind of intelligence that flourished when freed from "effort" and "focus." "I was once doing a scene for Lee Strasberg, and somebody backstage dropped a big box of dishes. I kept going. After, Strasberg said, 'Somebody dropped a big box of dishes in the middle of your scene and you kept going.' I said, 'Yeah, I was concentrating.' He said, 'You're the only one in the room that didn't jump -- that's not concentrating!' That was a big moment for me. I realized that concentration isn't about 'focusing.' It's about having 360-degree vision, eyes and ears open, not missing a thing."
What Walken's describing, of course, is what athletes call the Zone - the free-floating, panoramic consciousness that allows a person simultaneously to see north and south, east and west. "In my twenties, I used to go out and 'study' the kind of people I was portraying onstage - ask then how they did what they did, 'perform research,'" Walken says, rolling his eyes. "Absolutely fee-yoo-tile." His attempt to structure characters externally, rather than letting them emerge organically, from within, left Walken feeling humorless, unimaginative. Too much information damming his inner reserves of weirdness. No, Walken has never been the kind of actor who succeeds by working himself up into a "state" before taking the stage. That tack leaves too little to chance, while vapor-locking his emotions, which "become available to me in an acting sense when I'm somewhere removed, a little bored and tired." The key is drift, flow, a kind of Zen passivity that waits for artistic answers to bubble up from the subconsciousness.
Walken feels no real division between "life" and "stage" and therefore welcomes into his performances whatever happens to be in his head when the lights go up. "Life should be integrated - no actus interruptus," he says. "There are two moments that are enemies of an actor. One is when that damn thing [the clapper] goes clap! The other is when a director says 'Cut!' Such violent, violating moments. But the best directors know that. They make [the clapper] just a quiet little swipe past the camera, the idea being 'OK, whenever you're ready.' And instead of 'Cut!' they let the camera roll for twenty seconds because somebody might do something interesting." Walken, who has no children but claims to be liked by ones he encounters, also says that any stage or set that isn't a place of child's play isn't worth spit - precisely the "Who cares? Let's rock!" attitude that once emboldened him to play Stanley Kowalski for laughs. "I'm very anarchic in rehearsals," he says, "the kid who suddenly gets interested in that butterfly over there and walks away.
"I think that acting is a leap of faith," he continues. "There has to be that moment where you go, I give myself to...the spirit."
I ask Walken if he has any religious inclinations. He gives an incredulous stare, then begins wandering slowly toward the kitchen in search of yet more coffee.
"God is the only thing I fear," he mumbles, fading from the room. "God is a fact."
_______________________________________________________________New York Times - February 2000
'The Dead': Tailoring Intimate to a Larger Size
by BEN BRANTLEY
In its corn-tassel golden heyday, the American musical presented its own happy vision of a democratic society. True, its plots were usually about the willfully individual: lovers who wanted only to be alone together, comic wild cards and trouble-making malcontents.
But you could also count on moments in which the whole cast would sing together, with melding voices and synchronized smiles and movements, from the title song of "Oklahoma!" to the top-hat-and-tails finale of "A Chorus Line."
When "James Joyce's 'The Dead"' opened at Playwrights Horizons last fall, it provided a gentle but firm refutation of this tradition of optimistic harmony. Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey's adaptation of the classic short story portrayed a Christmas party during which people sang, yes, and sometimes sang together.
But what you were most conscious of was how all the characters seemed to have other things on their minds. There was scarcely a musical number during which someone didn't wander out of the room, or quietly dissolve into tears or laughter, or exchange nervous glances with someone else.
There was a sense of a current of life flowing subversively around and even over the songs that these turn-of-the-century Dubliners were performing to entertain one another. And in the intimacy of the Playwrights Horizons theater, you did indeed feel like the proverbial fly on the wall, afforded access to painfully private moments in the midst of conviviality. It did not seem the most likely candidate for a transfer to Broadway, home of the assembly-line chorus and extroverted show-stopper.
Yet now "The Dead" is indeed on Broadway and, what's more, is holding its own completely there. Under Nelson's direction, the production has achieved the deliciously improbable: it scales up understatement without shedding subtlety. And its new home, the Belasco Theater, built in 1907, has a frayed gaslight-era elegance that wraps the show into a natural embrace.
Even more than at Playwrights, you're aware of how many different individual stories are taking place simultaneously. It is no discredit to the performers to say that if one of them is singing a solo, you are just as likely to be focused on the faces of those watching (or perhaps not watching) them. And what eloquent faces they all are, even in repose.
The adaptation by Nelson (book) and Davey (music) has been tweaked here and there since the fall, in ways that are only for the better. There is still that midway moment, with a song called "Wake the Dead," pitched directly at the audience, when the show seems to violate the self-contained spirit that made it so original in its first hour, a spirit it never quite recaptures.
And it could be argued that a few of the performances, particularly those of the generally superb Stephen Spinella and Alice Ripley, have unnecessarily broadened at moments.
On the other hand, the evening's leads, Christopher Walken and Blair Brown, have merged even more deeply with their characters, a husband and wife who know each other less completely than they thought. The quiet eccentricity and inwardness of Walken's Gabriel have been made more legible without seeming less idiosyncratic, and the sensuality of Brown's Gretta is, more than ever, the evening's warming hearth.
Indeed, while this adaptation diverges in marked ways from Joyce's original tale, it captures in its very form the story's modernist essence: a sense of individuals alone, confined by their separate consciousnesses. Turning that sensibility into a compelling Broadway musical, one that is sentimental in the most profound sense of the word, remains one of the season's most astonishing and laudable accomplishments.
_______________________________________________________________Associated Press - December 14, 1999
NEW YORK -- For a guy who has built a career playing weird and whacked-out characters, Christopher Walken can be dangerously suburban.
The long and lean actor often drives around southern Connecticut in his Volvo station wagon, shopping for ingredients to go in one of his culinary treats -- usually fish and vegetables.
All very normal, conventional.
It's hard to believe that he's the same actor who put a bullet in his head in The Deer Hunter or threw Michelle Pfeiffer out of a high-rise window in Batman Returns. He seems much closer to the square 1950s family man in his nuclear fallout shelter in Blast From the Past.
He studies scripts while he cooks and mimics various people. He calls it looking for The Voice.
``It has a lot to do with ear,'' he says. ``I'm not so interested in what I'm talking about. I'm not so interested in sense. I'm interested in if it sounds right. It's almost like if you shut your eyes and listen to somebody -- do you believe (them)?''
With his rich repertoire of rhythms, his crazy-quilt of cadences that holds a lingering hint of his Queens roots, Mr. Walken seeks the voice that will guide him in doing a role. And he does it in a scattershot way.
``The way I do that is I read the script with an Italian accent, I read it like a certain kind of actor, I'll read it like Marlon Brando, I'll read it like Pee-wee Herman, I'll read it like Billy Crystal -- I'll very often try to get Woody Allen's rhythms,'' he says.
``One of my favorites -- this is going to sound strange -- but I think Bugs Bunny is one of the most interesting movie characters of all time. His rhythms, his intelligence, his attitude is very amazing. So I'll sometimes do the part like Bugs.
Mr. Walken has two roles these days: He's the Headless Horseman in Tim Burton's box-office hit Sleepy Hollow, and he's appearing off-Broadway in a musical version of James Joyce's The Dead.
His most recent TV role was as Jacob Witting in Winter's End, the third installment in the Sarah Plain and Tall trilogy of films from Hallmark Hall of Fame. The movie about a mail-order bride (co-star Glenn Close) who becomes part of a Kansas farm family at the turn of the century aired in November on CBS.
Mr. Walken, who also likes to paint, has created artwork by dancing on a canvas on which artist-friend Julian Schnabel had splattered paint. Like cooking, he creates his canvases for fun, for himself and his wife of 31 years, casting director Georgianne Thon, and friends.
``They're nothing I could make a living at,'' he says.
And that's OK because he has made a living in show business virtually his entire life. Born Ronald Walken on March 31, 1943, he was raised in the Astoria section of Queens by his German baker father and Scottish mother, who nudged her three boys into show business.
By age 3, he was a model for those calendars that had some cute toddler each month and a too-cute caption like: ``When's lunch?''
And whenever a kid was needed as an extra in the early days of live television, little Ronnie would often be there on Philco Television Playhouse, The Ernie Kovacs Show, The Colgate Comedy Hour.
Nearly a half-century later, Mr. Walken reminisces about his early TV days in a stream-of-consciousness way. ``It was like a hallucination, but it was real.''
He finds it ironic that he has been typecast as a villain or weirdo because long before he got into movies he was performing in musical theater as ``male ingenue types.'' And his first critically noticed movies had him playing a ballroom dancer in Roseland and a playwright in Next Stop, Greenwich Village.
He knows movies cost money and studios are loath to take casting risks, so he feels lucky to have found a niche, although he still says, ``I'd love to play a guy who had a wife and children and a dog, and he didn't shoot people, and ... he was funny.''
That's what he liked about his role in Blast From the Past. His character is eccentric, ``but he's also very almost Ozzie-and-Harriet-type normal.''
Since winning the 1978 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the burned-out Vietnam soldier in The Deer Hunter, Mr. Walken has played a pimp in the musical Pennies From Heaven, a Mafioso who works over Dennis Hopper in True Romance and a military man in Pulp Fiction who nervously (and hilariously) tells a boy where his late father kept a watch so it could be passed on to him.
But he's also portrayed a sensitive psychic -- not psycho -- in The Dead Zone and gentler men in such productions as Sarah, Plain and Tall.
Nonetheless, most people are surprised when they discover just how normal he is.
``I've been married over 30 years. I don't owe anybody money. I live nicely, and have cats, and I exercise every day and eat strictly -- I'm sort of a closet health fiend,'' says Mr. Walken.
_______________________________________________________________Walken Talkin'
Entertainment Weekly - August 23, 1999
He tells EW Online that singing and dancing is his true calling
Having made a career out of playing creeps and villains, Christopher Walken hardly seems like the best candidate to star in a family film. But according to the actor, who plays a loveless theater critic in John Turturro's ''Illuminata,'' (in limited release now) it's in that warm-and-fuzzy genre that he's done some of his best work.
''I made a movie of the children's story 'Puss in Boots,''' Walken tells EW Online (1988's ''Cannon Movie Tales: Puss in Boots''). ''It's a musical movie, and it's one of my best efforts. I sing and dance in it.'' The catch is, the film never made it to theaters and is currently unavailable on video. ''I make four, five, six movies a year, maybe one of them gets seen,'' Walken says, ''but that's show business.''
Still, old-fashioned song and dance holds a special place for the man most likely to play Jeffrey Dahmer. ''Musicals are really my cup of tea, and when I go to the theater, if I have a choice, I'll always go to a musical. Always. If I had been working when they were making those movies in the '30s and '40s, I might have found some kind of niche in there.''
Does that mean we can look forward to more singing and dancing from Walken? ''I think I'm kind of past it,'' he says. ''It's like athletics, it's a young person's profession.'' Still, he admits there's one Broadway role that seems custom-made for him: ''I did see Jerry Lewis in 'Damn Yankees,' and he was truly great as the Devil. You know, I could play that part, too.''
_______________________________________________________________Premire
Walken on the wild side
He used to be a liontamer, he drives too slowly and, he assures Adam Higginbotham, he’d only do a parachute jump if it took him behind enemy lines.
And his real name is Ronald.
In 1959, WHEN CHRISTOPHER WALKEN WAS 16 YEARS OLD, HE didn't quite know what he wanted to do for a living. So he joined a travelling circus
and became a lion tamer. Don't ask how. Don't ask why. The important thing is: he was there, in a circus run by a man named Tarryl Jacobs, with
boots,jodhpurs, redjacket and whip. Billed as Tarryl Jacobsj unior by the childless impresario, the young Walken would be left in the lion's cage at the end of "dad's" act, and all the lions but one would file out. Then Chris would crack his whip and the remaining beast, a tired, toothless lioness called Sheba, would wearily rise up on her podium and emit a feeble growl. The audience always gave him and Sheba a big hand.
In 1996, splayed awkwardly across an armchair in the lounge of the Chateau Marmont hotel, Walken laughs and licks his lips, illustrating the storv with
exhausted-lion and whip-raising gestures. And then he stops, considering the freakishness of the image.
"I just did it for two months. It was very weird. I was a kid. But that was interesting. That's where I come from. True story. Tarryl Jacobs -"dad" - would
take his shirt off; and... it was like lions had been chewing on him for 25 years. He wasjust shredded all over the place. And that's what he did for a living.
I don't know..... .1 guess he wasn't a very good lion tamer." Again he trails off; staring vacantly around the room. The tale, and the past it hints at, are
perhaps what leads him not to take himself too seriously.
"Absolutely. And also never to take a job like that again."
CHRISTOPHER WALKEN IS A VERYweird person. He is spooky, monosyllabic, unfriendly.
He shares many qualities with the characters he plays on screen - and they, by and large, are killers, gangsters, psychos, freaks and straight-up loonies.
Walken is the guy who blew his brains out in TIze Deer Hunter. He is the remorseless drug lord in King Of New York. He is the man who executed
Dennis Hopper in True Romance. He has an icy, alien air of distracted menace. Being in his company is like sharing a lift with Satan. He is deeply
creepy.
That, at least, is what most people believe. Including his publicist. Fotry-eight hours before the interview is due to begin, the phone rings. There is a
problem with travelling to the photo studio in Mr Walken's car. "What you have to understand," crackles the strained voice from LA, "is that Chris is a
very strange man. You know that character you see up on the screen? Well, that isn't a character. That's what he's like in real life. You can't go in the
limousine with him. I can't go in the limousine with him."
Everybody, it seems, knows that Christopher Walken is King Weird.
BUT THE MAN WHO GLIDES SMOOTHLY INTO THE LOBBY OF THE Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles has neither the demeanour of a
contract killer nor the manners of a sociopath. He is polite. He smiles. He has a sense of humour. He tells anecdotes. He has exquisite comic timing. But
there is, undeniably, something strange about him. While his personality is plainly not that of the characters you see up on the screen, his gestures and
mannerisms are: the shark's eyes that slide away from your gaze at the last moment; the blank stare into space; the thin smile that twitches on his lips
as he listens to what you have to say; the flat, disinterested voice that makes even the most sincere statements sound sardonic and threatening; the
reptilian lip-licking; the hand semaphore. All the things that go into the creation ofthe callous gangster, the psychotic angel or the demented industrialist are right here in front of you.
It's not difficult to get Walken talking. He's affable enough. But you can't really have a conversation with him. The disconcerting batter, ot pauses, stares
and off-kilter rhythms that characterise his speech make that almost impossible. Ile leaves sentences hanging in mid-air. deliver, ideas via a halting
verbal cut-up technique. and says things like "I think that's very amusing" in a way which leaves you in no doubt that what he really means is "I'll have
you killed."
AT FIRST, THE MAKERS OF THINGS To Do in Denver when you’re dead weren't sure who to cast in the part of the malevolent, paraplegic. wheelchair
-bound mafioso The Man With The Plan. He can't move. yet for whole scenes Andy Garcia's character is required to stand there and watch him -
through pages and pages of dialogue. And he must feel compelled to watch.
"He's sitting there - a head," says director Gary Fleder. "How manv guys out there can do that? Nicholson can do it. Probably Pacino. And then Chris
Walken's a guy who can do it time and time again. You can just sit and watch him speak."
Nonetheless, they hesitated to use him because he's played the captivating bad guy countless times before. In the end, they couldn't believe what they
got. "He really out-Walkens Walken," says Denver writer Scott Rosenberg. "He's just so out there."
What is it with him? The mannerisms. The look. That hair. The intensity of his evil screen presence is derived direcdy from his evervdav bearing. He is
pleasant, but the othemess of his delivery does occasionally verge on performance. When he orders a glass of grapefruit juice, it seems possible the
waiter will return offering the drink, the keys to his car, the deeds to his house, all the money in his pockets and the plea to "Just leave the kids out of it,
OK?"
"My personality," Walken suggests, "is affected by the fact that I grew up differently from most people. Strangeness equates into villainy very easily. Just as a phobic thing. If you don't know what it is, you fear it. But I don't feel strange. I really don't feel strange."
THE COMMON PERCEPTION OF what Walken is like in real life is simply the wrong way around. All the frightening alien qualities vou see in the
movies are real. The personality that informs them is not. The fact is not that Christopher Walken is like his characters, but that his characters are like
him. He doesn't mean anything by it. That's just the way he is.
And the reasons he came to be this way are not what you might expect. Walken and his contemporaries - Pacino, De Niro, Keitel -have built careers
around brutal depictions of grim reality. But Walken is the only actor of his generation who would call himself „a performer“ And he's certainly the only one
who describes himself as working in „show business“. If he's a bit odd, it's not because he suffered years of unspoken terrors on the streets of the
Bronx. It's because he's a survivor of a world long gone. Because Christopher Walken began performing at the age of three.
"I grew up in show business," he says. "And it made me different."
BACK IN LATE-'405 NEW YORK, THINGS WERE VERY DIFFERENT INDEED.
For a start, Christopher Walken wasn't even called Christopher. He was born in 1943 and named Ronald, after Ronald Colman. He had two brothers:
Glen and Ken. They lived in Astoria, Queens, where their father ran a bakery. Their mother, a vivacious, outgoing woman who might otherwise have
been a performer herself decided her sons should be in showbiz. Catalogue models as toddlers, they quickly graduated to TV, playing bit parts in the
genesis of modem television: over 90 live TV shows went out every week from Manhattan, and Ronnie was there. He was on Howdy Doody, Philco TV
Playhouse and Thle Colgate Comedy Hour.
By the time he was seven, he'd wander around the studios and find grown women dressed as cigarette packets. Or pass monkeys riding motor
scooters. By the time he was ten, he'd already appeared on screen with Dean Martin, Sid Caesar and Jerry Lewis. It was a strange place - a naive and
surreal area of conformist fantasy in which America created an image of what it wanted to be.
"In those days all TV was See the USA in your Chevrolet'," says Walken. 'It was so family- oriented and wholesome that they used kids like furniture.
The',"d have a scene and - particularly in the holidays -they'd just stick a bunch of kids in there. They just had us there because everybody loves kids. It
was an unusual childhood. but it was a great one. A total education of another sort."
FIFTY YEARS IN SHOW BUSINESS HAVE MADE CHRISTOPHER WALKEN peculiar in many ways. He has never learned to swim. He has never
been to a ball game. He's hard pushed to think of any close friends, except for his wife, who he's been married to for 27 years. He only reads the paper
on Sundays. At home, he channel-surfs on cable, looking for old black and-white movies to watch.
"I don't have any hobbies. I don't have kids.... .1 have cats. I'm not really interested in too many things except my work. Whatever the best thing in front of me is, I usually take it. Because it's either that or sitting around at home, and I can't stand that. There's no scheme to it, what I do. It's, Have I been sitting around at home for two weeks? If I'm in the house for two weeks, I would, you know... I would play... anything."
On location, Walken always shops for his own food. He puts on a baseball cap and goes down to the supermarket. He hardly ever eats in restaurants.
He doesn't want anyone else touching his food. He wants to know where it's been.
"I can't believe the things people eat. Pariticulary in this country'. The way we eat is just unbelievable. I wish this whole country would eat better. I figure a
lot of diseases would diminish, don't you?" He sighs and looks away. "Americans with fast food it's. . . too bad." But if he does go to the supermarket, he has to get someone else to take him. He has a black Cadillac from which he's had all the chrome and markings removed. It looks just like a hearse. But he doesn't like to drive it much. When he does, he drives so slowly that other motorists blow their horns at him.
"And they scream as they go by. I drive very carefully. Listen, you know, I'd rather take chances in my work. I don't need to take any other chances. You
would never get me on a motorcycle. I seriously doubt if I will ever get on a horse in a movie again. They're dangerous. There are things that are
dangerous; you shouldn't do them. I mean, I look at someone bungee jumping, and I think, There goes another ass-hole. Or parachute jumping, for that
matter. Unless you're dropping behind enemy lines, I really don't see the need for it."
He gazes around the room, and his stare comes to rest on the back of my hand, where there is an address written in black ballpoint.
"That's not permanent is it?" he asks, with concern. "People really do that to themselves, don't they?"
WHEN HE WAS OLD ENOUGH, Ronnie's mum sent him off on the subway to the Professional Children's School in Manhattan. Most of the pupils were
girls ("it was like I had 40 sisters") and those that weren't were not your average brattish stage-school wannabes. Little Ronnie went to school with Sal
Mineo, Frankie Lymon, Brandon De Wilde and Marvin Hamlisch. Marvin wrote an opera at ten and went on to become a phenomenally successful
songwriter. Walken still knows him today. Frankie was 14 when he and his group The Teenagers had a huge international hit with "Why Do Fools Fall In
Love?" But he was a heroin addict by 15; at 26, he was dead. Brandon played the kid in Shaize at ten and, one day in the men's room, taught Ronnie how
to knot a tie. But his career tailed off and he died in a car crash at 30. Sal was in Rebel Without A Cause and Giant, but hardly worked after that. He
drifted into darkness and obscurity and was stabbed to death at 37.
"It is," says Walken flatly, "a tough business."
After school, and on the weekends, Ronnie would go to the movies with his friends in Queens. He'd spend all day Saturday - from ten in the morning till
four in the afternoon at the pictures. There would be 20 or 30 cartoons, three features and a serial Charlie Chan, The Molemen or, a particular favourite,
the westernThe laughing Man. A Lone Ranger clone, the Laughing Man would walk into a saloon where the bad guys were playing poker. His knife had a
picture of him on the handle, and when he threw it into the table, it would quiver, animating the picture into a laugh. "And then he would, of course, destroy them all."
The features themselves were almost always war movies The Bridges Of Toko-Ri, Battle Cry or Pork Chop Hill. Anything with Aldo Ray was always
good. Afterwards, the kids would adjourn to a nearby vacant lot and re-enact the story, crawling around in the dirt. Ronnie usually took the Aldo Ray part:
"I was sort of heroic, sure," Walken says, somewhat defensivelv. "I was never the bad guy. I was always gonna take that hill!"
When he was 14, Ronnie saw Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show. He loved everything about him - especially his haircut. As soon as he could,
Ronnie changed his hair to be more like The King's. It's stayed the same ever since.
OF ALL THE TICS, EXPRESSIONS AND SIGNIFIERS THAT MAKE WALKEN'S characters so mesmerisingly dark, the one at the heart of the black hole of menace is The Look. In all his most outstandingly grim moments -Frank White in Kirg of New York watching his treacherous lieutenant plead
pathetically for his life; Vincenzo Coccotti in True Romance torturing Dennis Hopper; The Man With The Plan making his deep displeasure felt - he will
half smile and glance away. Mid-sentence, his eves slide sideways and amusement plays on his lips. It's as if when he looks at you he already sees a
dead man and is daydreaming about what spectacularly unpleasant things he's going to do his next victim. There's a supercomputer of evil in there
behind the eyes, calculations and machi-nations beyond anyone's understanding. It's this cold-hearted, inhuman superiority that makes him so
compelling. Mention this to Walken and he laughs. Mid-sentence, his eyes slide sideways and amusement plays on his lips. "I'm thinking about
something else. What that could be is that I get suddenly fixated on something and it will interrupt my conversation. Something will happen and I'll get distracted. But that's what actors are supposed to be like - a little like kids, you know? Distraction is good. It means you re pa~,ing attention to what's going on - the way kids are. They'll talk to you and then they go" - he stares distractedly away into space. "It's like, 'Next!"' OK, sure, sure. That's what your're like. But the characters. The machination. The superiority. Already seeing a dead man "I don't think so."
He smiles as if the thought has never occurred to him. "It's not in the characters. No. I think ifyou see that, it's me play'ing the part and
suddenly thinking about something else. And then I come back to it. Suddenly, something crosses my mind. When I go to dailies and I see that kind of thing, I think that's perfectly natural, that's the way people are. Aren't you that way? When you talkto people aren't you also thinking that you mustn't forget to pick up your laundry?"
Walken is full of this kind ofsruff If it's demystification vou want, he's your man. He prepares for a part by reading his lines in different voices -Italian,
Spanish, German, some slow, some fast, some serious passages in a Pee-Wee Herman voice - until he finds a common rhythm. He doesn't
consciously develop his characters. He's never met anyone even remotely like the people he plays.
"I grew up with people in show business," he laughs in disbelief "We did not shoot each other. Really. That's the great thing about showbiz - everybodv's
really nice."
He has no time for The Method. Hejust turns up and does it. "It boils down to: Can you act? Who cares what you think?"
The reason the set piece between Walken and Hopper in True Roniarice is so effective is that they got on well together offset. "First of all," Walken
remembers, "he made me laugh, and that was very important tant in the scene. The fact that I was really enjoying this guy, and then I shoot him anyway.
And the same is true of him - he really enjoyed telling me that story. And you could see it was delightful, don't you think? It happens to end with me
shooting him in the head. But up until then, wasn't it delightful?"
And if his characters' callousness is often so extreme that it seems funny, there's a simple reason for that, too: "I always know I'm in a movie. Having
been in show business all my life, I'd feel hypocritical telling you it was real. That's just the thing I was brought up with. My acting technique comes
directly out of musical comedy."
WALKEN WASN'T MUCH GOOD WITH ACADEMIC WORK, SO HE concentrated his teenage energies on becoming a dancer. He went on the road with touring musicals, the cast setting up home in cheap hotels up and down the country, taking their pots and pans and bohemian lifestyle with them.
And, of course, he tried lion taming for a while. Then, at 18,just out of high school, when everyone else was leaving to go and take up ordinary lives, he
spent a few days thinking about what to do. He'd drive down to the park in his car and gaze into the middle distance. Pragmatically, he thought, What do I
like to do? Well. . . nothing. But how could he earn a living? He could be a bartender. He could drive a truck.......
"I really couldn't do anything. I wasn't good in school; but I was in show business. And I thought, Well, what could I do and have more fun? Nothing. So that's what I kept doing."
Just short of completing the first year of a course in English and Drama at Hofstra University, Ronnie Walken left education behind and went to dance
OffBroadwav with Liza Minnelli in Best Foot Forward. The following year, he appeared in High Spirits and then in a brief run of the Sherlock Holmes
musical Baker Street, in 1965. This somehow led to his first dramatic role, as King Philip Of France in The Lion In Winter.
In the meantime, Walken changed his name. He'd never liked Ronnie. It sounded too dorky. Dancing in a nightclub act with one Monique Van Vooren, at the end of every night's show she would introduce himto the audience. One night she said, "You know, I don't really like Ronnie. I see you more as a
Christopher. Do you mind if I call you Christopher?" He didn't. So it was Christopher Walken who took to the stage as an actor, and danced and sang in mwical comedies -"gee golly type of things". In 1969, while they were both appearing in a summer- stock production of West Side Story, Christopher met
his 'wife.
IN THE YEARS SINCE THEN, CHRISTOPHER WALKEN HAS MADE A CAREER from being the baddest thing ever to walk across a cinema screen.
But it almost didn't happen like that at all. In 1970, he screentested for the Ryan O'Neal part in Love Story. It's difficult to imagine now. It was also, he
points out, difficult to imagine then: "That's why I didn't get the part. They knew I wouldn't be any good in it."
He shouldn't have been surprised - he'd never been able to play Romeo on stage, either. Everything he said always sounded a bit sarcastic. In the end,
his first film appearance was as Sean Connery's sidekick in the 1971 caper movie TIie Anderson Tapes. He was 28 years old.
But it would be another six years until he'd come to the attention of a wider audience: playing Diane Keaton's deranged brother Duane in Woody Allen's
Annie Hall. He's only in the film for a few moments, but in those moments, he talks fixedly to Allen, Annie's visiting boyfriend, about his urge to drive his
car into headlong traffic. "And actors tend to do things, and they stick. The romantic guy tends to play a lot of those kind of guys. The funny guy tends to
play a lot of those kind ofguys. And the frrst thing anybody saw me in, I talk about dnving into headlong traffic."
Of course, winning an Oscar for blowing his brains out in The Deer Hunter probably didn't help much either. But from that point onwards, it was spooks,
psychos and heavies all the way for Christopher Walken: The Dead Zone, Communion, A View To A Kill, Batman Returns, At Close Range, The Comfort
of Strangers, Wayne's World 2. Pulp Fiction...loonies all. And the last time he played a hero?
"Never. A famous, big movie actor said to me once, 'Do you die in every movie?' And I thought about it and said, 'Yes.' He said to me, 'D'you know, I've
never died."'
"I'm not complaining about playing villains. It's how I make my living. But I'd love to play a hero. I'd love to play James Bond," he says, and then, in a
slightly dejected register, "Nobody's going to ask me to play James Bond."
WALKEN NEVER KNOWS WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE HIS CHARACTERS ARE until he sees them on the screen. If he's produced something
particularly diabolical, he thinks to himself, Ooh, that's good. "I really do feel about it that way: Oh, that'll get 'em. Ooh, that's a good one. And if I think, Oh,
gee, that didn't work, then I get depressed."
Of all his creations, the only one who's ever genuinely frightened him is the one in Paul Schrader's The Comfort Of Strangers - an Italian socialite who
wines and dines Rupert Everett and then slits his throat. When it's brought up, it's the only point in our conversation that he looks plainly uncomfortable.
"I don't think I've ever played anyone quite as horrible in the way that it can be deeply unsettling to be in a room with somebody who is mentally disturbed.
As much as you have compassion for them, it scares me."
When he was shooting the film in Rome, he was sitting in his dressing room reading a book when he looked up and caught sight of himself in a mirror.
He reacted to his reflection as you would if you walked into a restaurant and saw someone you really didn't want to meet. "I looked up and quickly looked
away, thinking, I hope he leaves. I hope he didn't see me. But being the villain has its advantages. Since he made King Of New York, he can go pretty
much anywhere he likes in the city, no matter how bad the area. One summer Saturday night a couple of years ago, he decided to go to Times Square to
see a late show of the Hughes Brothers' ultra-violent Menace II Society.Everybody in the audience was like everybody in the movie. Street people. And they took good care of me. Just kept an eye out and made sure I was OK. 'Cause they'd seen King of New York. I'm a homeboy."
OF ALL THE MOVIES WALKEN has made, one of his favourite is also one of the most obscure: an '80s Israeli musical production ot Puss In Boots. "It's
very good. It's one of my best performances. It's a wonderful story - about a cat who gets these boots and becomes a man. In the original story he's just
a cat who stands up and talks. But in this, it was this orange- and white cat walking around, and then suddenly it would be me. I had my hair dyed red and
I had a moustache and... I really looked like a cat. I sing and dance. It was very funny."
Christopher Walken is reallv not what you expect. He is not, to put it mildly, unaware of the way people see him. When he's shootinga movie, for
instance, he'll just put on a reedy, nerdy voice before a take and say, "Is it hot in here, or am I crazy?"
"And for some reason people laugh," he adds. Sometimes he'll just announce that he's de Jerry Lewis. "And for some reason," he says. his face a mask of earnestness. "that makes people laugh also. Because of the way people perceive me, I can def- initely have fun with it."
Despite the cable channel-surfing and the working every fortnight, he has managed to write a play about Elvis, based on the stories he's clipped from
copies of The National Enquirer and Weekly World News he's bought on his Supermarket trips. And he's written a script about porn star John Holmes - a
project he wants to star in, and Abel Ferrara to direct. When Holmes died of AIDS, he had had sex with 10,000 people. was a free-base cocaine addict
and was wanted for murder. Elvis and Holmes are both men crushed by the pressures of fame, who died in middle age. Ferrara is quick to make the
link. "Walken's obsessed with Holmes," he said in 1990. "He relates to all this because that's what 33 years in show business is like."
JUST THE OTHER DAY, CHRISTOPHER WALKEN BUMPED INTO AN OLD friend in the street. They're the same age. They've known one another for years. At the time, Walken was on his way to see Things to do in DenverYou're Dead for the first time. So Walken invited the friend along, and they went to see the movie together.
Afterwards, Walken noticed his friend was horrified by what he had just seen. "Jesus Christ." he muttered, "that's the most terrible person I ever saw . . .
That's just the most terrible person I ever saw."
Christopher Walken looked back at his friend and said, very reasonably, "Well, thank you." Movieline 1
Interview with the Antichrist
When Christopher Walken won an Oscar in 1978 he looked like the Next Big Movie Star. He became, instead, a specialist in weird characters. These
days he's a virtual Cult Hero-his recent appearances in Batman Returns and True Romance, and the new Wayne's World 2 show why.
By Martha Frankel
I'm only going to say it once: Christopher Walken is the creepiest man on the big screen. Whether he's playing Russian roulette for his life (The Deer
Hunter) or having morbid clairvoyant visions (The Dead Zone) or planning the ruin of Gotham City (Batman Returns), Walken's presence is guaranteed
to raise the hair on your neck.
But just try to take your eyes off him. In this fall's True Romance, his confrontation scene with Dennis Hopper was both unremittingly horrifying and
hysterically funny. Playing an icily deadly gangster, Walken tells victim Hopper, "I'm the Antichrist," and who would argue? It's what we've all been
thinking since Annie Hall, when Walken (as Annie's brother) told Woody Allen how tempted he was to drive into the oncoming traffic.
All of which has made Christopher Walken by this point a cult hero of sorts. It's no surprise that Abel Ferrara used Walken to personify corruption in King
of New York, that Sean Penn insisted Walken play his father (a thief and unapologetic scumbag) in At Close Range, or that Mike Myers and Dana
Carvey would cast Walken as the evil music producer who becomes Wayne's nemesis in Wayne's World 2.
Nothing about Walken's collective screen persona makes me particularly comfortable when Walken invites me to his house in Connecticut. Nor does it
help that when Walken opens the door, he's dressed head to toe in black, and he's as pale as the vampire Lestat. But I am undaunted.
"I brought fresh bread," I say, holding up the bakery bag in my arms.
"Bread?" he says, his eyebrows arching to the heavens.
"Yes, I read that your father was a baker, and there's a great bakery in my town, so I brought four loaves for you."
"How sweet," he says, inviting me inside.
"Well," I say as I enter the Walken home, "I have an ulterior motive. I was hoping you'd dance:with me."
Trust me when I tell you that Walken looks like he's going to run.
"It's just that I watched all your movies, and I realized that you're the most fantastic dancer. I mean, I knew you'd danced in musicals before getting into
the movies, but when I saw you dancing in Pennies From Heaven and The Deer Hunter, and even in King of New York... you're just terrific. Once in my
life, I'd like to dance with someone who really knows what they're doing."
Walken, who has played some of the gloomiest characters in film, lets out a raucous laugh. But he doesn't agree to dance with me. Instead, we head for
the kitchen.
As Walken is cutting the bread and making tea, I tell him about my own personal Christopher Walken film festival. "In one day I watched The Deer
Hunter, Communion, The Dead Zone, Batman Returns and King of New York," I explain. "The next day, I saw Heaven '5 Gate, Brainstorm, The Comfort
ofStrangers, At Close Range and Homeboy. This was," I point out, "the most depressing group of movies ever made. I'm telling you, I almost slit my
throat."
"My God," Walken says. "I've never seen them back-to-back like that."
"You're lucky," I tell him.
"It must have been...
"Hell," I say.
Walken's wife, Georgianne (whom someone once described to me a~ 'the real deal of New York women... smart, funny, doesn't take shit") comes
bounding into the room. "You two have a good time," she says, kissing her husband on the cheek. "I'm leaving for the city."
"I asked Chris to dance," I tell her. Georgianne gives me that "lots of luck" look, and then she's gone.
"I'm sorry that I made you come all the way out here," Walken says while we're getting comfortable on the screened-in porch.
"Are you kidding? This is my dream come true. I hate doing interviews in restaurants. It's much better getting to see the way you live."
"It's pretty simple," he says, waving his arm in the air. He's right. The house is woodsy and welcoming, comfortable and lived-in.
"I could only watch the first hour of The Deer Hunter," I say. "After I saw it the first time, I used to wake up in the middle of the night, screaming. So I really
only watched the wedding scene.
"It's funny," he says. "I saw Michael Cimino the other day, and I haven't seen him in a long time. Somebody was talking about a wed-ding they had just
been to, and we looked at each other, and I said, 'We went to the best wedding.' Which I still think it is."
I tell Walken that I think one of the best things he's ever done is one of the most recent: True Romance. "I didn't know whether to laugh or hide my eyes
when you and Dennis were going at it."
"I'll tell you, Quentin Tarantino really writes the most amazing dialogue. My part was, like, four pages long. Just talking on and on. And then Dennis goes
on and on. It could have been really offensive, that scene, but Quentin is so funny and so smart that it's not."
oing from the sublime to the ridiculous, I decide to bring up the 1990 film Communion, in which Walken portrayed the real-life writer Whitley Strieber, who claims to have been abducted by-literally-little blue men who did weird things to his body.
"I live right over the mountain from Whitley Strieber," I tell Walken.
"Whitley, he's such a devil," Walken says with a laugh.
"Everybody in my hometown got totally freaked. They didn't care if Whitley got abducted by ajiens and got the anal probes, but they just wanted to make
sure it didn't happen to any of us."
"I bet. He's a fascinating guy. He's eccentric, in a way that you usually find in England and Europe where people just go about their business and nobody
pays attention. But he's an American, so it's different."
"Did the aliens really come for him?"
"I believe that he believes it. When he describes these things-and lots of people have seen them, so I'm not talking about something really private-he
really gets into it. I'm telling you, he's like a radio show. He does the sounds and the screams. Whitley has people come over to his house, people who
had the same thing happen to them, and they all agree about what the aliens looked like. And they all seem perfectly. . . well, they all have jobs."
"Let's talk about Wayne's World 2 Do you have a big part?"
"I don't think so. I play a record producer who, well, I don't want to give the movie away."
"Don't worry."
"Okay. It's not like the first one, I don't think. Wayne and Garth are in a different situation. I liked Wayne '5 World a lot. And it was done in the spirit of
'Saturday Night Live,' which I've done twice. A lot of the same people are involved. It's a brilliant group. To be in the company of those people, they are
the big guys of our time. Now I'm getting ready to do another movie ... It's called Seraph, it's about angels."
"What do you play, the devil?"
No, Martha, I play an angel."
"Years ago, I saw you off-Broadway in David Rabe's Hurlyburly. You were the most amazing thing I had ever seen onstage."
"Well, it was quite a cast. Bill Hurt, Harvey Keitel, Judith Ivey, Jerry Stiller, Sigourney Weaver..."
"That reminds me. My editor wanted me to ask you this. Who's crazier, you or Bill Hurt?"
He laughs.
"I told her that the real question is, 'Who's sicker, you or Harvey KeitWalken laughs even harder. "Harvey and Bill, they're both very nice...
"You did King of New York with Abel Ferrara, and then Harvey did Bad Lieutenant with him and..."
"Let me just say that I think Bad Lieutenant and Harvey, they were made for each other."
"You seem so natural for the theater," I say.
"The two people who used to employ me all the time are dead. One was Joe Papp. We had a great relationship. He'd call me on the phone and say, 'Do
you want to play Coriolanus?' I'd say, 'Sure.' And he'd say, 'Well, why don't you read it first?' I'd say, 'Okay, but I'll do it anyway."'
"Are you well read?"
"No. That's what makes me interesting in those parts-that I don't know them. And I haven't seen them, either. I don't know how you're supposed to do it.
Onstage I have a natural chutzpa that audiences like. I'm out there."
"I think you have to do some comedies," I tell-Walken. "Or, don't you ever get offered romantic palts, where you dance and sing and get the girl?"
"Not too much. I did those Hall-mark shows with Glenn Close [Sarah, Plain and Tall and Skylark: The Sequel to Sarah, Plain and Tall]. I played a farmer,
it was romantic, we had ~
"And millions of people saw it, right?"
„Wow! I was working in London at the beginning of the year, and you know that Agatha Christie show, The Mousetrap? It had it's 40th anniversary. That's
eight shows a week, and they estimated that in that time eight million people had seen it. That's a lot. The Hallmark ....... 80 million in one night! That
really brought it home to me. But I don't get those romantic roles in the movies."
"Did you think you would after The Deer Hunter?"
"No, no. I've been in show business since I was a kid, and I must say that I've always known what I was good for. I never thought of myself like that. I'm
very happy to work [knocks wood), and to do good work sometimes, and to get paid. To me, there are things you're good at and things you're not so
good at. For some reason, I'm good at darker characters. It has to do with how you look. I think the fact that I was raised in show business, in New York
City, in the 50’s, that's affected my personality to the point that I'm a little different. I mean, what? You come from Queens, right?"
I nod.
"It's like coming from a different country. I was in show business since I was a kid. My mind, the way it works, is in show business, always has been.
People talk to me about things-income tax, real estate, plumbing-I have no idea what they are talking about. We lived in Queens when television was
being born. New York City in the '50s, Rockefeller Center, 90 live shows a week. Sidney Lumet was directing, Paddy Chayefsky was writing. They were
all very young, and I happened to be there. Kids, they used them like furniture. I went to a professional school. With mostly girls, actually. I think that
affected my personality, too. It was like I had 40 sisters. New York in the '50s, it was something else. Then it came time for me to figure out what I was
going to do to make a living, when I was 18 and leaving home. But I had no interest in doing anything else. Acting is all I know."
"How'd you meet Georgianne?" They've been married for over 25 years.
"In West Side Story, a summer tour. She played Graziella, my girlfriend. I played Riff."
"Have you seen that movie lately?"
"No, not in a long time. Why?"
"When I first saw it I remember being aftaid of the Jets. So I show it to my two young friends, and they're hysterical. I mean, these are kids who have to
deal with the Crips and the Bloods. And here's West Side Story, and the gangs are dancing and singing... it was a hoot."
"That's funny. I guess the meaning of gang warfare has changed. When I grew up in New York there were gangs, and West Side Story is based on that.
And they were tough guys, but basically they went home at night to their mom and dad. If you had a fight with them, they wouldn't really hurt you... they'd
get you down on the ground and make you say uncle.' But I guess with automatic weapons, things have changed."
"Nobody cries as much on the screen as you," I tell Walken, referring to his performance in The Deer Hunter, The Dead Zone and a half a dozen other
films where tears stream down his face.
"It's a fault. I've had to curb it. That's the thing about movies... if you do something well, they ask you to do it again. And you kinda get stuck. I have to find some new stuff to do so then I can repeat that."
"Did you study acting after you started working in film?"
"I never was a big fan of school, to tell you the truth. I never had kids, but I suspect if I did, I wouldn't encourage them to go to school. I never liked it
myself. I was always grateful for being taught to read. I figured that once that had been done for me, that's the big thing. A little bit of adding, subtracting,
multiplying, that sort of thing. And you have to learn to write, at least a letter. But beyond that, I think people are overeducated. I think education will come
if you want it. I read what I want to read, so that's what I know about. You can't know everything, so you should concentrate on what you're interested in.
The whole concept of general education-I think it makes for vague minds."
"Where do you keep your Oscar?"
"Why? Do you want to see it?"
"Yes."I say.
Walken goes to a little room off the living room and brings out the Best Supporting Actor Oscar he won for The Deer Hunter. It's covered in a blue bag.
"I think I have to hold it," I say. "All right?"
"Sure."
"I've been practicing my speech since I was seven.
"Go ahead," he says with a smile.
"Okay. 'I want to thank the Academy and to say that I did it all by myself."' Walken laughs. "I keep it in a quiet, respectful place. I keep it's cover on, for the same reason my mother used to keep covers on everything, so it doesn't fade."
"You have a slipcover on your Oscar?"
"Exactly. My mother had slipeovers, and then plastic covers over those. As soon as you sat on them, you started sweating." He puts the Oscar on the
table between us.
"Maybe you should talk to a psychiatrist about that."
"I only have two problems. I went to a shrink once, for a brief time, and that’s what we discovered. I talk too much and I am too nice. It was just not
interesting. I said that to him and he was very gracious, he agreed with me.
I said, „You never say anything I do all he talking.' And we parted nicely. My only angst is related to work, to the specific Job, or if I'm not working. I
wonder if I’ll ever work again. That's it.
,Do you get offered a lot of work?'
,,I get offered plenty. Thera's a thing about being an actor where they are these built-in hiatuses. Even if you work a lot, you still have time when you’re not working. And in the absence of work, I really fear it. I don't know what to do with myself. So I study scripts, write a play about Elvis...“
„Yeah, I hear you're an Elvis freak."
„Well, everyone Ioved Elvis..“
,,I didn’t.“
„No?“ he says, completely shocked.
,,No. I didn't really get him.“
I thought he was terrific, and he was a great singer. I was bare right at the beginning. The first girl 1 heard about Elvis from was this girl I had a crush on in high school. So my first reaction to him was rivalry. And she showed me his picture and 1 have to admit he was a heck of a good-looking guy. Anyway, I
travel a lot and I tend to eat my own food, particularly when l'm doing a movie, because it keeps me looking a little better...“
,,Your own food?"
„Yeah, I get food from the supermarket and I eat vegetables, whatever. Even if I am in a hotel I tend to not eat other people's food. lt keeps me thin, keeps
me looking a little better. And when l'm in the supermarket, especially in small towns, you've got your choice of like six tabloids when you're checking
out. I always get all of them. And they usually average about three big stories about Elvis. So I accumulated a huge amount of these stories, I gathered
the information, weird stuft and I used it to write a play. I hope l'm not giving away my writing secrets.“
„That's how everyone else works, too," I say.
,,I figured. I don't want to give the story away, but in the play, Elvis is back And he's been taking care of himself. He doesn't eat the way he used to, and
he's older of course, but he's not really like you thought be was that's why he’s still alive You know why Elvis is dead?"
,,Because he was a fat drug addict?" I volunteer.
Walken shakes his head. „I think he's dead because he was too nice. If he'd been a little tougher, if he'd said no to those hamburgers, if he hadn't been so
afraid to go out, he might still be alive. Fame can isolate you and keep you inside the house all he time, and this is not good."
„Maybe I’ll like him this time.“
„I sure hope so."
,,What about kids . . , did you decidc not to have any, or is this to personal?"
,,No, it's something in a way that passed me and Georgianne by. By the time The Deer Hunter came out, I was 35, and up until then I had really been on
the road all the time. lt wasn't a practical idea."
,,Arc there films that have come out hat you wish you had done?"
"What do you mean? Other people's? Films I wish I was in?"
"Yeah."
"Dozens. All the time. Every week. Theater too. I moan. I'd much rather be there than watching."
"Where's your career going to go now?" I ask.
"It's always good to alter expectations. I have a kind of built-in [image] where I play these dark and twisted people, so I've sort of done that. But as I get
older, I can start to play fathers and uncles. Where before I've played these monstrous things, maybe now I can start playing people."
"So, you think you're gonna dance with me?"
"I have bad feet," Walken says. But then he sees how crestfallen I look. "Okay," he says. "We'll make a dancing exit, that's always good. It's a great way to get out of the room."
Walken goes to the stereo and puts on the Gipsy Kings. He puts one hand on his waist, one hand in the air and starts to do the conga. When we get to
the front door, he says, "Oh, God, I hope my neighbors aren't outside." We do the conga all the way to my car.
_______________________________________________________________The Chris Walken Song and Dance,
A Serious Story
July 1995 BIKINI Magazine interview
By Arty Nelson, Photos (unavailable) by Stephen Stickler
...So I find the house that Walken's renting while he's in town shooting "Nick of Time" with Johnny Depp and squeeze past what turns out to be the broken front gate. I'm standing at the door, knocking. This woman keeps walking by and I don't want to make a big deal out of it but the truth is, she isn't answering. Finally I give it a hard bang right as she passes me and she opens the door. Walken comes out in sweats with a 90-mile an hour just-got-out-of-bed turbo swirl for a hair-doo. The guy has no idea that I'm supposed to be there. The woman, Georgianne Walken, wife of at least 2 and 1/2 decades,
brews me up some instant and I wait while everyone's favorite guy, who always seems to be thinking about something else, throws on a black suit and
running shoes. We both apologize for nothing and jump in my Jeep with no doors. Walken asks that I drive easy because the LA traffic game gives him
vicious ulcers (something in Italian like "Agida") and I agree to it. LA traffic is truly something that makes life seem senseless and brutal. Down the road
for 12 minutes of pictures then back up to the house. The man hangs at home a lot. If he's not working, chances are he's at home, maybe running his two miles a day, or learning the next script. Works all the time, PR kit says he's got movies coming out like every 27 seconds. Back home, for a glass of
some homemade special formula lemon ice tea. We sit down in the living room...
ARTY: So anyways, basically, the thing about BIKINI is that we're really into dealing with the present situation, not into asking you to rehash your entire
life and career in some kind of cliched sort of way. People are like still asking you about "The Deer Hunter"?
WALKEN: Yeah, I know. In interviews I tend to get asked the same questions, but maybe that's why, because they hand out that stuff (the press clippings)... I've never seen what they give you but obviously if you read something and then everybody ends up asking you the same questions. Do you want a chair?
I'm sitting in this weird old Victorian type thing where my knees come up past my eyes but I don't want to appear out-of-sorts.
ARTY: No, I'm kind of good actually... It's interesting we were talking before and you were saying about how good the young actors are these days and
they seem so much better? Like I just saw this movie, "Straight Time" with Dustin Hoffman (based on the Eddie Bunker novel)?
WALKEN: I saw that when it came out, I loved that movie... Lou Grosbach.
ARTY: It seems like the movies today there's this schism (did I really use that word?)...
WALKEN: I don't know about the films, I'm talking about the actors.
ARTY: It's definitely two different things.
WALKEN: I think it has to do partly with the same thing that anybody begins to see when they get older... I mean it seems to me for instance that girls
today... 17-year-old girls... they're not like the girls when I was 18, you know, they just seem like Romeo and Juliet (which is it, Romeo? Juliet?)... They
seem like when they're 14 they're ready to be mothers or something... They seem more mature... and I think the actors, too... Like when I was 21, I had
my head up my ass...
ARTY: Yeah.
WALKEN: And here you got these young actors... They're sharp, they're tough, they're smart. You know, when I was that age I didn't even know what I
wanted to do... It seems people are very focused... It's probably a cyclical kind of thing with generations... But I grew up in the '50s, which had its charm
but... in America anyways... is one of the dumber times we've lived through.
ARTY: The Apex of that false American promise.
WALKEN: Sure, you see the USA and the Chevrolet... I mean, people really did try to make their homes like TV shows... I mean did Ozzy and Harriet
ever really exist? To me that was really typical. I'm sure my '50s-ness had to do with TV... 'cause it was the beginning of TV and in face me and my
brothers we... I grew up in New York and that's where TV was born. 90 live shows a week and we were in them as kids not as actors... as furniture.
ARTY: They'd just walk in the family.
WALKEN: What?
ARTY: They'd bring you on as the family?
WALKEN: Oh sure, sure.
ARTY: You weren't doing speaking parts?
WALKEN: Occasionally I'd have a line that I'd forget. My brothers were better at it than I was... much.
ARTY: Older? Younger?
WALKEN: Each.
The guy is very concise. Every interview I've ever read talks about how sort of strange he is, but it seems like hyped bullshit. He's just a guy, very aware
of where and what he's coming from. Clear.
ARTY: When did you start working in film... the '60s?
WALKEN: The first film I did, I think it was "The Anderson Tapes"... with Sean Connery. It had a lot of good actors in it. It was a sort of heist movie, and he
was the star. I played The Kid. Yeah... that woulda been the '60s I guess.
ARTY: You've never done a movie with Martin Scorcese, have you?
WALKEN: "Search and Destroy's" produced by him. I was supposed to be in "The Last Temptation of Christ" 10 years ago and I'd go over to his house
and talk about it but then it got canceled, some time after "The Deer Hunter," I guess... Then it got shelved and he made it seven years later, I guess.
ARTY: Was there a time when you lived in New York and hung with like DeNiro and Keitel and those guys?
WALKEN: No, I wasn't an actor at that point.
ARTY: You were a hoofer (I've been waiting an hour to use that word... HOOFER! Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, you name it.).
WALKEN: Yeah, I mean I do remember going to see "Mean Streets." I was in musicals at the time and I remember seeing those guys for the first time.
ARTY: So did you make a conscious decision to become an actor?
WALKEN: I was dancing in a show called "Baker Street," which was the musical about Sherlock Holmes, and some casting guy saw me, I should
remember his name, but I was asked to audition for the King of France in the Broadway production of "The Lion in Winter," which was before the movie,
with Robert Preston and Rosemary Harris. It's really so weird. I auditioned and I didn't know how to act, nothing. In fact, I was famous for blowing my
lines all the time. I'd freeze. So I got that part. That was really how I got into acting, and I nearly go fired out of town because I was the pits. But I got
through it...
ARTY: So for stage, you'd just blow your lines and go through with it?
WALKEN: It was sort of, what do you call it, a real trial time, and I did sort of come to terms with it and by the time I got to New York I was OK... I
remember I was gonna get fired, in Boston, the producer took me out to dinner and said, "Look, you're a nice guy and all that," and I said, "Gimme three
days" ... and he did.
ARTY: And that was it? He tells me about going to see Jerry Lewis in "Damn Yankees" back in New York. I tell him I just saw Jerry in "Funnybones."
WALKEN: I did not know he still made movies actually.
ARTY: I think it's the first time in a long time.
WALKEN: I mean he's so funny he cracked me up my whole life. As a matter of fact, I told him when I met him that when I was a child there used to be
something called "The Colgate Comedy Hour"... and he and Dean Martin were still together and I was a kid on that. There was a sequence where there
was a penny arcade and there was an arm that come out of the wall.. and he (Jerry) arm-wrestled with it and it beat him, and the kids would be laughing
at him, and I told him that I was one of those kids.
ARTY: And he could completely remember it?
WALKEN: No (he laughs, I make sure it's OK and then I laugh)... Oh yeah...you...
ARTY: Your hairline was different.
WALKEN: Actually, I still have the same hairline.
ARTY: So like you just pretty much eat vegetables or what?
WALKEN: I eat a lot of vegetables and I eat a lot of fish.
ARTY: I gotta tell you, I woulda pegged you for 43 (he's 52). I think you bought some time with that diet.
WALKEN: When I was a kid I was really like a pencil... I'd be on the road and I'd eat 2 pizzas and a 6 pack of beer and watch television and then I'd go to
bed and I never gained a pound. And then when I was about 43, suddenly that stopped. Then I started to jog but if you keep your weight down as you get
older, it's hard, but ah... sometimes when I finish work, I... lose my reason to live. I sit around the house and I just eat and I don't move... and in one week I
gained 10 lbs.
ARTY: Yeah, what happened to you at 43 happened to me at 19.
WALKEN: It happens... I try not to sit down much either... even around the house, when I'm learning lines or something, i try to walk around.
ARTY: Pace a little.
WALKEN: Yeah, because you're burning off, you know...So I ask the guy about a quote, something about some kind of inner emotional strength being more important than emotions on a sleeve. A core thing.
He's looking at the window.
WALKEN: I recognize it, I think Duvall said it in some interview and it was true... There has to be something inside you that is very clear and you have to
be able to convey that.
ARTY: You can't be confused when you're playing a confused person.
WALKEN: I don't think so. You can only be ambiguous. If you know absolutely what you're saying and doing, I would think for all people but especially a
performer, or an an athlete, anybody who's called on to do something in a given moment, they gotta really be 90 percent or 80 percent, you know... They
gotta almost be their best, at any given time. You know, action, cut... or whatever... 8 o'clock, 11 o'clock. If you're in a play, there is a kind of like
confidence, what is that? As I got older... there would be a very nice feeling in the wings before I went on... You stand in the wings... You hear your cue
called and you know you're about to walk out and say your first line... and there came a point where I could stand there and go, you know... cool... let's
go... and where ever that comes from... Part of your life has to be looking for that... Joe Louis used to eat, take a nap and say "Let's go to work." It wasn't
fraught with emotion. Let's go to work.
Now he tells The Dancer Story."Shut Up and Dance" is an old expression that I think means something like, "Get the fuck over yourself, Whitey."
ARTY: I think that must be the beautiful thing about theater. When the lights go up, you gotta hit it, no matter what?
WALKEN: I wrote a play and I performed it. It was about Elvis. It ran for a month in NYC at the Public Theater and there was a lot wrong with it, but I mean it had its moments... But there were times, I knew they were coming, but there was nothing I could do about it... I'm thinking, 'Oh fuck me, when I get to this part, I know they're going right to sleep, or something.' And I get there and it would go (motions downward) like that, but then I'd know that there was a moment up ahead where I could pick them back again, so they also wouldn't know that that was coming and I'd know...
ARTY: Good reviews as a playwright?
WALKEN: I got the same kind of reviews. You can tell the audience got a kick out of it and it was all right to them.
ARTY: So like, do you still audition for movies or do they just call you and ask you if you want a part?
WALKEN: Audition? Well, sometimes they call you in. They want to look at you. I'm not very good at that. I don't go in to read a scene or anything. I don't
think that does anybody any good. Good actors are hardly ever good readers.
ARTY: It's like that thing, practice heroes.
WALKEN: What's that?
ARTY: You never want to be too good in practice.
WALKEN: Well, sure, in a way... and not only that but if you're trying to impress people in an audition, you're making choices too fast. You're not giving yourself time to schmear around with it, which for me, I can only do around the house. I take the script. I like to cook, so I'll be doing something. I find with any project, a distraction is very good. There's nothing better, for instance, than to be learning two parts at the same time. I wish somebody right now would give me another job. so I could get my head out of this ("Nick of Time" with J.Depp).
ARTY: So beyond even acting, you've walked around on this planet for a couple of decades now.
WALKEN: Five.
ARTY: You said it, not me.
WALKEN: That's very hard to believe.
ARTY: What do you think of the world now in 1995 as opposed to 1975?
WALKEN: Oh I don't know... I really stay in the house a lot, that's the truth. I live in Connecticut and when I'm not working, I stay in the house.
ARTY: So are you digging where films are at, or do you not think about it in that way?
WALKEN: I don't know, I hardly see movies. I tend to go see actors. I generally go to a movie even if I don't know anything about it because somebody's in it.
ARTY: Oldman in "State of Grace" was that way for me.
WALKEN: I remember the first time I saw James Dean. It was kind of like, 'Wow, who's that guy?' Oldman was like that in "State of Grace."
ARTY: When you were growing up, who were the actors that you dug?
WALKEN: When I was growing up it was Brando and Dean.
ARTY: How about like Ray Muni? Is that his name?
WALKEN: You don't mean Paul?
ARTY: Yeah, Paul Muni. don't you think people were still kind of theater acting on camera back then?
WALKEN: Yes, sure, and the scripts were that way, too, sure. But wouldn't you like to see Jack Nicholson on stage?
ARTY: Yeah, I don't think he ever did it.
WALKEN: I'd like to see him in a play. Some sort of anything.
ARTY: I just watched that monologue in "The King of Marvin Gardens."
WALKEN: See him play Richard the Third or something.
ARTY: I was in NYC bumming around and I think you were in "Othello" at the time?
WALKEN: Did you see it?
ARTY: No, I was broke.
WALKEN: I played Iago and Raul Julia was Othello. He was good.
ARTY: How do you remember all those lines?
WALKEN: Right, exactly! People ask me, I have no idea. I don't learn lines, I just do them, over and over, and in that case, hundreds of times. I put it on a
tape recorder, stick it in my ear and walk around with it. You're mouth just starts to learn the muscle movements. Iago is the longest part in Shakespeare. Me talking at a rapid clip was, I believe, an hour and 20 minutes.
ARTY: Just your lines?
WALKEN: Just my lines.
ARTY: They had some faith in you to throw that gig your way, especially with your humble stage beginnings.
WALKEN: Right, but then, since I started, I played Romeo twice, three times, Hamlet twice. Richard the Second. I played the dreaded Scotsman. Lots of
things. Actually, it's funny. In "Lion in Winter," I had to wear tights, I was a dancer. So from that I got my first Shakespeare thing to play Romeo at
Stratford in Canada. I mean, I didn't have a lot of school and I didn't know from Shakespeare whatsoever, and I got that job. And I think it had something to
do with the tights. Stupid stuff like that.
ARTY: Well, you know, it's important to look the part. Did you actually understand Shakespeare when you did it?
WALKEN: Not at all, and I really stunk. You should see my reviews from Romeo. I was terrible.
ARTY: You took some heat for it?
WALKEN: Ohhh, because especially they were furious that an American had been invited. The guy's not only American, he can't act.
ARTY: I think fucking reviews are overrated. (Mainly because all of mine have been bad.) We talk about there not being a master shot (shot of all actors
in a scene together) in the famous "True Romance" Hopper-Walken scene.
WALKEN: And it took very little time to shoot. It was inside a trailer, and that's exactly what it was. We did the scene, the camera was pointed that way,
and then the camera was pointed this way, and that was it. They said, 'Go home.' I mean, we always were acting together, but that's all it was. There
was no master shot. I wonder why. Well, maybe the room didn't allow it.
ARTY: I'd figure if it was Tony Scott, he'd blow out the back of the trailer.
WALKEN: Well, I mean obviously he didn't want to do that. The back and forth, that's all it was. We shot it in one day. There was another small scene in
an elevator with me and my gangsters. We shot that in Pasadena, but they cut it.
ARTY: You dug the Tarantino script?
WALKEN: Oh yeah. ARTY: So now it's this "Nick of Time" thing for the next couple of months?
WALKEN: Until June.
ARTY: And then back home, unless the new gig comes along?
WALKEN: The new distraction. (He laughs.) ARTY: How long have you been married?
WALKEN: We had the 25th last February. ARTY: That's the Silver?
WALKEN: Silver, yeah. My parents have been married 65 years. My father's 95.
ARTY: So are you into this movie, "Search and Destroy"?
WALKEN: Yeah, I like the people very much. It's a nice job.
ARTY: You must have shot it like a year ago?
WALKEN: Oh, "Search and Destroy"?I thought you were talking about this new one. I only worked on "Search and Destroy" for 2 or 3 weeks. It was shot
fast, low budget. Yeah, I liked the director and the actors. Did you see it?
ARTY: I haven't seen it. I don't know that it's out yet.
WALKEN: I thought they had screenings.
ARTY: Yeah. No... You know it's funny. Now, looking back on then, it would seem that you and Scorcese and all those other guys were living downtown
and making movies together?
WALKEN: Well, we were definitely living down there but we weren't making movies, but we all know each other. I never have worked with Scorcese. I'd
love to.
ARTY: I always think of John Casales. What a great actor.
WALKEN: Well, he's gone. (The guy died years ago.)
ARTY: I know, but I mean his work.
WALKEN: Yeah.
We talk until the phone rings and then he goes and answers it.
ARTY: So do you find when you come here and you've got to find a place to live and totally uproot, is it hard to keep your own personal life going?
WALKEN: I don't have a personal life. I'm happy to say. No, I mean I have a wife, and I move around a lot, but I don't really, I like to be working. It's really
my favorite thing. I'm always grateful to be working, and if I'm working I'm pretty OK. It's the times in between when I don't really have anything to look forward to, but in my career, things come up very suddenly. This thing ("Nick of Time")... I was sitting around the house, I'd just finished a job and one
week had gone by, and I was already, you know, you get into that sort of like, nowhere place.
ARTY: Eating racks of ribs?
WALKEN: Yeah, and just like walking around and not having anything to do, you know, which I hate... and then the phone rings. So long as that keeps
happening, then I'm OK. But I don't really... I don't have kids. I don't have hobbies. I'm not very sociable. ARTY: So you had some time on your hands?
WALKEN: I don't like to drive, and I don't like sports or anything like that.
ARTY: It's probably good that you're married then.
WALKEN: Yeah, yeah, I like to have a nice place to live. I like this house, very much. I don't know where this furniture came from, but no, if this was my
house, I would take out everything, absolutely everything. The paintings, everything. I'd have it empty, a nice rug. A coffee table. Chairs. A good sound
system.
ARTY: You know, I never like the furniture in anyone's house. My girlfriend always asks me what I like and I like so little of it all.
WALKEN: No, I mean this is a nightmare. Look at this thing. (It's an antique floral-painted big chest with glass and shelves)... Jesus...
ARTY: I actually think it's kinda cool but I wouldn't want that in my house.
WALKEN: No, it's too much... like this thing here. (Points to a massive kind of hanging from the wall votive)...
ARTY: That thing's gonna drop in the next quake... not while you're here though.
WALKEN: I hope not.
We talk about the house he's renting.
ARTY: So you said you like to cook, so you just bring your own set of knives and move in?
WALKEN: My wife (Georgianne) is Polish from Chicago and Easter is like... there is nothing bigger. She's borrowed all this stuff from people she knows
and is gonna cook tomorrow. (It's Easter.)
ARTY: Kielbasa?
WALKEN: Sure and borscht she makes...
ARTY: That's the thing about a girlfriend, they acknowledge things like days and holidays, more than I would...
WALKEN: Oh absoluteley, Christmas... all that stuff. Women take it very seriously. It's nice, though. It's a healthy sign. We talk about gaining weight. He tells me he gained a lot of weight during "The Comfort of Strangers," shot in Venice.
ARTY; So, are there any roles you'd like to play that you haven't?
WALKEN: I'd like to play somebody's father and not have to shoot them... something maybe with a little kid.
ARTY: "The Champ"?
WALKEN: I think I'm a little old for that. And then he tells me that he might not do any more stage because of one thing. Camcorders.
WALKEN: We are a civilization of people taping each other. One thing leads to another and Georgianne comes back with the Easter groceries and I start
thinking that maybe it's all over. He tells me one last story as I'm packing up.
WALKEN: I used to have an agent that told me socially I was a disaster... I used to tell her that I'd be invited to a party and she'd say, 'Don't go, don't go.'
She'd always say, 'Keep the mystery, keep the mystery 'cause you're a disaster...
I thank the guy for the tea, thank Georgianne for the coffee and split...
_______________________________________________________________
By JIM McCLELLAN in FACE (June 94)
The Phantom Of Despair
Christopher Walken
OR THE PHANTOM OF DESPAIR
Of all the actors in the rising new wave of Hollywood, Christopher Walken is without doubt the most unassuming and retiring .....
In contrast to the Latin excesses of a Pacino, the almost frenzied showiness of a Nicholson or a Hoffman, or the narrow-minded brutality of a Stallone or
a Sean Penn, Christopher Walken slips into the skin of characters whom he interprets with humility, even shyness, as if he were participating in the film
purely by accident.
The memory of roles he has played remains, in the same way, hazy or confused and very few people can put his face to his name. For all that, his
presence remains unforgettable and if one had to compare him to another actor, it would be De Niro. You find in him the same apparent coldness, the
same icy stare, the same inner life behind his acting which allows a barely-disguised inner violence to show through.
Born on 31 March 1943 in Astoria, New York, Christopher Walken trod the boards from the age of ten, with the blessing of his baker father and of his
mother who was passionate about the theatre. After some fleeting appearances on television, he enrolled in a modern school in Manhattan to make stage appearances in "Best Foot Forward", a musical comedy in which he appeared with Liza Minnelli.
Anyone who knows a little about the actor will be surprised to hear of such appearances, but this experience of stage and dance helped him to overcome
an almost pathological shyness. Thus, at the beginning of the sixties, he could be seen in about 60 musicals, such as "West Side Story" which played
throughout the USA.
In 1966, he decided to give up dancing to devote himself entirely to the theatre where he received several distinctions for his performances in "Kid Champion", "The Rose Tattoo" and "A Lion in Winter".
He landed his first big film role in Sidney Lumet’s The Anderson Tapes in 1970, but he was more noteworthy in Next Stop Greenwich Village as an out-
of-step intellectual dandy. After that he was seen in Annie Hall and then in The Sentinel. His performance in The Deer Hunter earned him the Oscar for
Best Supporting Actor and Michael Cimino took him on again for Heaven’s Gate, which everyone knows suffered financial disaster.
From then on, Christopher Walken didn’t stop filming (The Dogs of War, Pennies from Heaven, Brainstorm) right up until The Dead Zone and At Close
Range, his two latest works to date in which he could give free rein to his exceptional talent.
Between films, Walken likes to return to the stage ("Hamlet", "Caligula") which is an essential passion for him.
Whether by coincidence or the deliberate wish of the directors, Christopher Walken has for a long time been condemned to roles where his characters
are a priori not very engaging, magnificent losers who find in death bound up with a suicidal gesture an illusory final redemption. From Nick, obsessed by
Russian Roulette, in the superb The Deer Hunter, the moving Johnny Smith miserably rejected by the world in The Dead Zone, or the terrifying Brad
Senior (a role which irresistibly reminds you of that played by Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter) in At Close Range, Christopher Walken always manages to confer a barely perceptible inner emotion on his performances. A mixture of calculated coldness and hidden fragility, the acting of this still
little-known actor remains constantly fascinating.
Eternally doomed to failure, beyond repair, Christopher Walken carries his slightly weary form from film to film. This phantom of despair could turn out,
unless someone notices him, to be one of the most unrecognised actors of his generation.
_______________________________________________________________Empire Magazine - December/97
CHRISTOPHER WALKEN
Lasting Impression.........
by Jeff Dawson
Speaking in a peculiar way, Christopher Walken insists: "It doesn’t seem to me that I have a peculiar way of speaking ... I hesitate a lot, but that’s
because ... I’m thinking about it."
He’s right to a degree. On paper, at least, there’s absolutely nothing unusual about Walken’s arrangement of words. It’s just that when he talks he has a
weird habit of adding extra full stops and putting emphasis in all the wrong places. But what should he care? Throw in the calculated nonchalant delivery,
the emotionless eyes and the mobster-style New York accent and Walken has carved out a niche for himself as one of the most distinctive, and oft-
imitated, modern screen personas.
"It’s great," continues Walken, harking back to this year’s Oscars when presenter Kevin Spacey got to do his Christopher Walken. "I never thought when I was starting out that actors would be doing me. There’s a guy named Jay Mohr who does me doing a commercial, and he keeps changing his mind.
Kevin Spacey did me on Saturday Night Live auditioning for Star Wars. It’s very funny."
Fortunately, the real Christopher Walken is nothing like the ghoul of popular legend. Not the antichrist of True Romance who achieved the unique
distinction of making Dennis Hopper seem well balanced. Not the monster of Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead, surely the most threatening
paraplegic ever committed to celluloid. Although the voice and twitchy mannerisms remain, they only go to enhance Walken’s wickedly droll sense of humour.
"It’s very strange, it’s nothing that I do consciously," he muses. "I don’t think of myself as dangerous or anything like that. It’s funny, even the independents usually cast me as villains and strange things."
There’s been the mainstream - Batman Returns, Wayne’s World 2; the quirky - Pulp Fiction and the three films he’s made with Abel Ferrara among
countless others. And, as Walken points out, if there is anything that has characterised his career, it’s quantity.
"I make a lot of movies," he says. "I make four, um, five, six movies a year. I do it because I really like to work. I really don’t have anything else to do.
Some of them go straight to video. They’re so obscure. I make movies that nobody will see," he says proudly. "I’ve made a number of movies that I have
never seen."
Quite what the public will make of this month’s Alicia Silverstone-produced Excess Baggage is yet unknown, but there’s Walken again, as malicious
Uncle Ray, weird as ever and with a strange red tint in his hair (like the dye job in Last Man Standing, and a variant on the weird yellow hair he had as the
Bond villain in A View To A Kill).
"This is a very big movie," he insists, lest we get it confused with some of his smaller efforts.
Actually, Christopher Walken isn’t Christopher Walken at all - he’s Ronnie Walken, a kid who grew up in Queen’s, went to stage school and, with his two
brothers, spent the 1950s as a child actor during the golden age of live TV. He appeared with the greats - Milton Berle, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis - and
forged a successful career in Broadway musicals until, at 25, he decided to change his moniker.
At 26, he got his first film part in Me And My Brother (1969), then The Anderson Tapes (1971). He didn’t do another movie for four years (Next Stop
Greenwich Village) and though he won plaudits for things like Roseland in 1977, it was his other movie that year, Annie Hall, with a cameo as Diane
Keaton’s auto-destructive brother that probably set the pattern for everything else since.
If his astounding performance in 1978’s The Deer Hunter marked him as an actor of distinction and bagged him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, his new-
found celebrity status (partying with Belushi, hanging out with Andy Warhol) was not cemented onscreen. Top billing in The Dogs of War was undone by
his turn in Michael Cimino’s disastrous Deer Hunter follow-up, Heaven’s Gate, and then came Brainstorm, during which co-star Natalie Wood drowned.
Since then, apart from the odd diversion, like the hoofing pimp in the big screen take on Dennis Potter’s Pennies From Heaven, his films have seen him
slip into the familiar haunted characters.
"I’ve had some very good parts, you know, some things that I think are always very interesting to watch, like my dancing in Pennies From Heaven, At Close Range which I did with Sean Penn and things like Pulp Fiction. I also like my angel movie, The Prophecy.
"And I still have a lot of hair," he adds, giving it a tug. "Most actors, when they watch themselves over the years, they see their hairline go back, but I’ve
been very consistent about that. This is the real thing."
This with the flicker of a smile - you’re never quite sure whether he’s just having a joke (as with his beauty tip, that his skin has never seen the sun). But when it comes down to choosing his favourite film of all, Walken’s deadly serious.
"Puss In Boots," he insists, harking back to an Israeli version of the old fairy tale. "It’s really one of my best movies. Nobody has ever seen this."
Empire ventures the hope that there is positively nothing that would keep Walken off the screen.
"It would have to be something that was either weird or so mediocre that there was no point," he replies. "For me it’s got to be almost hopeless before I will say no ..."
_______________________________________________________________
Details Magazine (December/1993)
The Devil Inside
Christopher Walken: Please send us a communication.
Where are you from? What's in your mind? And what's with your hair? Erik Hedegaard wants to know
There are lots if spooky actors in the world but none more spooky than Christopher Walken. He is enormous with spooky. It informs how he looks, how
he acts, what he says, and how he says it. Words avoid him— he speaks in sentences filled with gaps, holes, ellipses, plains, and penumbrae. His eyes
never quite meet your eyes. They are sliding to the right, to the left. During the days that Walken creeped me out with this stuff, I once brought it up with him.
His pause before answering was of unnerving length. He filled it with the multiple fracture of a toothpick and various lip gnashings. Finally, leaning forward, he dropped the toothpick bits into an ashtray and said, "I'm not silent at all. I talk like crazy. But if I don't know somebody I am very silent.
Because I am watching them— watching and listening and seeing."
He paused again. I looked at him expectantly. I felt he was on the verge of revealing to me some fine and pointed insight, an insight which would then
issue in much fresh comprehension of his personality and his talent. But he did not go on, and I was left holding a sizable bag of silence.
His biggest moments on film are fabulously dismal moments. Playing Russian roulette in The Deer Hunter, he shoots his head off and wins an Oscar.
Gunning for his kids in At Close Range, he's a dad from hell. In The Comfort Of Strangers he slices open a young man's throat as a kind of aphrodisiac.
In True Romance he seductively terrorizes Dennis Hopper, then terminates him. Over the years, Walken has also been a no-good industrialist, a really scary driver, a reluctant psychic, a drug czar, a loony drill sergeant. Most of these roles are a little surreal; if they aren't, Walken makes them so. He can't help it. It's in him, in the dandelion purr of his voice, in his trousers belted midriff high, in his unfortunate hairline and airy sidle. It's those eyes, too: sunken, green and swizzled. Mostly, though, it seems to have something to do with the Walken mind.
Batman Returns director, Tim Burton says, "You just look at him and you know there's a lot going on— yet you don't have any idea what."
The Comfort Of Strangers director Paul Schrader says, "You have that sense that there's a hidden agenda. He is saying one thing while something else is going on inside his head— it makes him seem inhabited."
Sean Penn, his costar in At Close Range, whispers, "Some people got poetry in their blood and some don't. Chris's is difficult to track. It's hard to figure out whether it;s angelic or satanic. But it certainly is poetic."
It is precisely this difficulty that has kept Walken from becoming a bigger star. As every movie mogul knows, audiences like their leading man to be understandable in an instant. "Audiences don't want real, human emotion," one director told me. "They want simplification of human emotion." Kevin Costner— now there's an actor with as much dimension as a roofing tile. Walken, on the other hand, has no unifying personality; he's all over the place.
"With Christopher Walken," says At Close Range director James Foley, "you never know what you are going to get."
Not knowing what I am going to get, I first meet Walken in Maine, where he is shooting the sequel to Sarah, Plain and Tall, the TV movie costarring Glenn
Close for which he won an Emmy nomination. In it, he's cast against type as a stoic widower and farmer who learns to open up. In a restaurant, over tea (two slices of lemon), Walken himself opens up only with difficulty. Every question, no matter how trivial, demands much hawing and staring into space.
After a while, a few things become clear, mainly that Walken has fantastic, irresistible diction, and that at all times he reeks of garlic. Also, that he will try to answer any question, no matter how silly, and that his answers, at first, tend to be serenely prosaic.
He jogs two miles a day and doesn't believe in personal trainers. At his place in Connecticut, he lets his Abyssians run wild; the idea of fixing and declawing cats is abhorrent to him. He doesn't read newspapers except on Sundays, and then only the arts, book review, and travel sections. Power lines in a vista irritate him. So do houses that smell. ("If a place has a smell, I could not live there.") He hates driving, this he can't live in L.A. He occasionally thinks that women should run the world while men do as they do in Greece: "play cards, drink coffee and wine all day, and in the morning put their suits on over their pajamas." He says he is New York street-smart but was once taken in by a smooth-talking con man in a Ponzi scheme that cost him enough money to hurt.
He also seems to enjoy making the case for how normal he is. He strikes this posture valiantly, declaiming on civic weal, on his love of cooking Italian food, on the fact that he pays his bills on time.
"One of the reasons I can play the people I do is that I have a distance from them," he says one afternoon, with loftiness. "I'm not neurotic. I don't have any paranoias. I never imagine something is happening unless it actually is. I'm positive."
He sips his tea and looks in my direction. Neither of us can think of what to say next. That is the way it is with Walken, often— the gaps. Fiddling with his lemons, he seems to repel conversation. I don't know whether to believe what he has said or not. How well does anyone know oneself? I look outside.
This part of Maine is gorgeous in a kit-built kind of way. I look back at Walken.
He is scanning the room. The lower right quadrant of his Jaw is trembling.
"We're surrounded, " he says. Rising from his seat, he gets us out of there.
"I have terrific hearing," Walken tells me later, as if to explain. "Almost like a radio, I can tune in on a particular thing and cut out other noises. I can isolate
conversations. It can be very interesting and it helps me professionally, listening to two people have a domestic discussion, especially if it's heated and emotional. But it also creates the impression that since I can do it, maybe other people can do it too. That's why to have a conversation like this in a restaurant is not comfortable. I don't know if the other people mind other peoples business to that extent. But I do."
There are other reasons why Chris Walken isn't a bigger star, One is his looks. He's handsome, but in a creepy, chemically impacted kind of way. His skin looks like cellophane smeared with canola oil. "I have this kind of Richard Nixon thing working" is how Walken sees it. His face, too, the angles there jut strangely; his upper lip is woozy. His cheekbones sheer off. He would make an excellent Beowulf, and in fact, on stage, where he has assayed major roles (Iago, Hamlet, Coriolanus) and won numerous awards, he is considered one to the great naturalistic actors.
But in his movies, he's pretty much been cast as big spooky, a circumstance partially brought about by this curse of looking like he does, his talent be damned. "As long as your career is guided by the close-up," says director Paul Schrader, "you are largely dictated to your physiognomy." "Hollywood doesn't know what to do with anything of value," spits Sean Penn.
Walken yawns and looks off. One of the points of being Walken is being able to do that and return to talking about such matters with a certain smoking jacket languor.
"I am pragmatic," he says, "I knew when I was a kid that I would never be everybody's cup of tea; as a consequence, I never tried. Career choices don't
really exist for me. I am an actor. That is what I do, and I do what comes next." Good movies, not-so-good movies, as long as the money is right, or the people right, or the location interesting, he may do it. At the age of fifty, he sees himself as a commodity.
"The one advantage that I have," he continues, "is that if you're looking for a Chris Walken type, you have got to get Chris Walken. There are not many people that can mess with me. I have a place. I own it. This means that I can work— and work for a long time"
Women I know like to imagine Chris Walken in this place that he owns. Maybe it's a sitting room. He's oiling around the edges, coming up on these women, putting his fingers to them, smooth as parachute silk. Something like that. This he may in fact do. He once told me about "cruising: the late and anchiently spidered Ruth Gordon, because from the back in toreador pants, she looked like one hot babe.
But hoe he is in movies is not how he is at most social events— say at a star-spangles Radio City benefit for the Actors' Fund a while ago. Walken was
there, along with Placido Domingo, Jack Palance, etc. and, sitting alone in the corner, Linus Pauling. Walken sees Pauling and decides that he will not leave without engaging him in talk. He makes three circles around Pauling while rehearsing a gambit about DNA. Then, arriving before the great man, he
suddenly chokes on the chain of life. "You have been here all this time," he says abruptly. Pauling looks up at Walken. "Yes." Like the rest of the Union, Maine is awash in police activity. A man is arrested for suffocating a girl and then having sex with her. The Bangor Humane Society office is vandalized, fifty-three dollars in donations swiped. A cop points to the crumpled fender of a pickup truck. "This could happen," he says morosely, "if you have an accident with a moose."
Under these circumstances, Walken seems right at home, lolling on a sun deck, sunglasses on, in a blue double-breasted sports coat over a sweatshirt
covered with what looks like crumbs.
"I am a solitary person, as an animal, " he tells me at his leisure. "There are animals who live alone and animals who live in groups, there are aggressive
ones and the ones that are as the lilies of the field."
"What kind live alone?" I ask him.
"Hunting animals."
"Do you," I ask, "have a circle of friends?"
"No."
"Who are your three best friends?"
"My wife is my best friend. I don't know anybody else that well."
Which means that you won't find Walken, Sean Penn, Bobby De Niro, and Bill Murray getting hosed together at the Baby Doll Lounge, although together
they do own the Tribeca Grill. Acquaintances, however— of them Walken has millions: actors he has acted with, directors who have directed him,
agents who have sold him, his dentist. Walken says this is because of the peripatetic life of the actor, which it may very well be.
And yet, on another fine blue-sky day in Maine, Walken and I are in his limo, he looking out of his window and I out of mine, when somehow revenge arrives as a topic of conversation. Walken warms to it quickly.
"I'll know somebody for a long time and they're irritating, but it's the sort of irritating that you can put up with," he is going on," Then one day they'll say something and somewhere in my mind I'll say 'Well, that's it, I'll never speak to you again.' A year later they'll say 'How come you don't speak to me anymore?' I never explain why. That's my revenge. I say, 'I would never tell you.'"
"That's a hideous thing to do," I say.
Walken laughs, "Yes it is. It is mean. But revenge is nice. It's very underrated and it gives me pleasure."
Shifting in my seat, I say "Do you have any other hobbies?"
"No."
"Are you handy around the house?"
"Nope."
"A fisherman are you?"
"Nope."
"A sports fan, then?"
"I have never seen a football game or baseball game in my life."
For the way he is, Walken has a simple explanation. "It comes from the fact that I've been in show business all my life. All my references, all my moves, my mind, the way I express myself, it is very reminiscent of the past. I am a foreigner in my own country because I come from another country, the country of show business. I speak that language and I have that way of dressing, of combing my hair, of moving my face. It makes me different. I am a foreigner."
Talk about being seared by experience. Imagine this: a skinny little kid, a towhead, maybe five, maybe seven, quieter than most, sensitive and shy,
reeling into some TV studio and coming face-to-face with a grown woman dressed up as a cigarette package. That'll unloosen a screw or two. A world in
which a monkey can wheel around on a motor scooter and be addressed, solicitously, as J. Fred Muggs, because that's his name and he's a star. Wacko but beautiful.
This was Christopher Walken's childhood. His father owned a bakery in Astoria, Queens, but his mother, in the early '50s thought her three sons should be on radio and TV. By the time he was ten, he had appeared on Philco TV Playhouse, The Earnie Kovacs Show, The Colgate Comedy Hour. He was a show-biz kid, a performer, the term he prefers over actor even today.
Instead of attending public high school in Queens, he went to Professional Children's School in Manhattan. Over the years, he learned to tap a mean "Me
and My Shadow," picked up a few gestures in personality class, and met so many beautiful girls that they ceased to impress him. He was a dancer.
After graduating, he spent two weeks shy of a year at Hofstra University, then left to dance Off Broadway in Best Foot Forward with Liza Minnelli, which , in 1966, led to his first dramatic role, a leading part in The Lion In Winter.
Movies started coming his way in 1972, just a few roles, most notably that of Diane Keaton's suicidal brother in 1977's Annie Hall. "I was called into an
office. Woody Allen sat there. I don't remember that he ever said anything. And then I was in his movie."
Mostly, though, Walken lead the gypsy life of a stage actor, never making more than $11,000 in any one year.
Then, thirty years after entering the business, somebody called him up to meet Robert De Niro about his new movie, The Deer Hunter. Walken was told, "He will see you." The two of them met in an office. "We didn't talk much." Naturally. But De Niro did want to know whether that was Walken he'd just seen and enjoyed in a certain play. Walken bobbed his said, about to say, "Yeah, that you did." Instead, he told the truth. He's auditioned for the part but didn't get it. De Niro only nodded, but Walken sees it as a turning point in his career. In his mind, telling the truth got him the role of Nick, a $14,000 role that ended up being worth a million to him. ("More than that," he likes to say, coolly.)
What is it about Walken that is so fascinating? Like lots of people out there, Rob Lowe is a collector of Walken stories and, telling those stories, he tends
to speak in the hissing garden-hose Walken way.
One story involves Walken and Grace Jones during the making of A View To A Kill. On a break, they swing open the door to a pub in some grimy East European village. Three toothless peasants turn around. There's Jones and there's Walken, in black leather and a spiked, powdered wig. Walken looks at the peasants, drops his jaw, and roars, "Coleslaw for everyone!"
"That kind of sums him up," says Lowe, chuckling.
Then Lowe starts talking about Walken's car. I already know about this vehicle; it's a 1987 Caddy. "I always wanted a Cadillac," Walken has said. "All my life my father was saying 'Guy's got a Cadillac!' Well, I got one. It's black. Black outside, black inside. It looks like a bullet. A black bullet. I had all the chrome taken off of it. All the chrome, except the bumpers. All the little nitch-notches, the striping— all that stuff, so it's nice."
Lowe is laughing already. "It looks like a hearse, man, but he loves that car. In Williamstown, we'd be taking a break outside, and he'd be sitting in that car
with the windows rolled up. Just sitting there. He's go sit in that car and stare straight ahead. That did a lot to dispel the rumors that he was not of this world.
"I'm a huge fan," Lowe adds. "Chris is unbelievably funny. You either get him or you never get him, and if you don't get him, you go, 'Oh, Chris Walken— isn't he a weirdo?'"
"I think it's all an act."
"An act?" sniffs Walken. "I really don't think I could be bothered. I don't really care that much what people think of me."
A lot of what people think about Walken still rests upon his performance in The Deer Hunter. The Russian roulette scenes, and the scene of him in the
hospital room unable to utter his name, blew audiences away. After his mother saw the movie, she called him up to see if he was okay.
On its heels came Heaven's Gate, Michael Cimino's disastrous Western epic, and The Dogs Of War, a soldier-of-fortune fiasco. They were followed by Pennies From Heaven, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View To A Kill, and At Close Range. Immediately preceding Batman Returns were King Of New York and McBain, both little seen and ultra violent. The same for True Romance. The unfortunate truth is that while Walken always does well in films, the films themselves rarely do well.
Or maybe it's fortunate, for one suspects that the limelight might shiver Walken to pieces, as it shivered him following the death of Natalie Wood. He was on the boat with Robert Wagner the night she drowned in 1981. The details surrounding the event were, to the public, murky. There was much lurid speculation; Walken even got some heat. For years he didn't talk about it. Now he does. But really, barring shocking revelations, such a thing as the death of Natalie Wood is not illuminating, although it is fascinating to watch Walken's hands weave through the air as he talks about the incident, roughing out the innocuous, speculative shape of the final hours of a human life.
"Laconic," "haunted," "colloquial," a stylist," "dangerous," "a certain reserve," "recessive," "hovering on the edge of something tremendous," "widely ranging in fire," "leopard ease," "flat-faced," "cold to the touch," "patent-leather lounge-lizard," "greasy magic," "drained," "packed in ice," "an animal pacing in a cage," "cartooned apathy," "a feminine delicacy without effeminacy," "ironic," "detached," "menacing vulnerability," "quirky," "nobody broods better," "unblinking stare," "world-class grin" ­ the actual language of world-class critics, used to describe Walken.
"I don't really know what the people closest to me are about or what they are thinking," Walken has told me. "The more I know people, the more surprised I am all the time."
"I don't know you, and you don't know me, and you don't know him," his wife has said to me.
Even so, under his sports coats and suit coats, he will never wear a shirt with a tie. "I don't like neckties, or any kind of strangulating object." He wears ancient brown Bally loafers that are bursting apart at the bunions and which on another person would seem wretched. To make a point, he sometimes puts his finger to his temple at such an angle that his had appears cocked. He went to a shrink once, at her home office; peeking into her kitchen he saw a mess— "dirty dishes, awful, this, that"— and stopped seeing her. "She said, You're making a big mistake.' And, of course, that's not true." He likes to think about Leonardo DaVinci writing backward. He has never had a tan. He likes to doze off to The Honeymooners or The Odd Couple. He dreams in Technicolor but cannot remember what about. During the making of Batman Returns, he wrote a one-act comedy about Elvis, and has since become addicted to the tabloid press for its stories about Elvis and UFOs.
For the gala Mann's Chinese opening of Batman Returns, Walken was the only one to wear a tuxedo; he had taken his dressing cues not from Andrew Dice Clay but from old Hollywood— from Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, and Spencer Tracey.
Some quotes make sense to him:
"I wasn't born to play this part. I was born to have a nice life and not strain myself too much." Robert Mitchum, as recalled by Walken.
"I am the author of myself."— Coriolanous, as recalled by Walken.
Here and there he has done some serious rewriting. He is not a Christopher, for example. He is a Ronnie. Ronnie Walken. Named after Ronald Coleman.
"I wasn't that comfortable with Ronnie'" Walken tells me one day, uncomfortably. "I don't know why. I didn't like the sound. Ronald, Donald, dorky."
Fortunately, in 1963, the dancer Monique Van Vooren didn't like the name Ronald either. One night while Ronnie was dancing in her nightclub act, she announced that she was going to call him Christopher. It took. Unfortunately, Walken is not altogether pleased with that name either.
"I don't really care for it," he has said. "It doesn't suit me. I need something more to the point, a little dark. Jack. Nick. Christopher looks strange on the screen. And Chris... I try not to get Chris on the screen— there's something too happy-face about it."
"Did you like yourself as a kid?" I ask him.
"I can't say I disliked myself. But I wasn't ever crazy about myself. I was sort of... indifferent."
"So how have you managed to stay married to this guy for twenty-four years?" I ask Georgianne Walken over surf and turf one night.
She laughs melodiously. "It's fun. Yes. It's different all the time."
Georgianne is a blonde, with precise lips, and a face as striking as a new coin. They met on the road, doing West Side Story; she was Graziella, he was Riff.
"It's very interesting being married to a man who is constantly playing a different person," she says. "You're always living with a different person. He never tells me what part he's playing when he's getting ready. It just descends on me one day. Very interesting." she says, smiling.
It all might have been so different. Instead of breaking out in The Deer Hunter, he might have starred in a flick about a law student who falls in love with a working-class girl who eventually comes down with leukemia and dies.
And it's a hit. He's now a leading man. He has a couple more hits. He's taking his dough and investing it in trailer parks for old people, that's the kind of guy he is. But of course he gets Bianca Jagger. Then the public's attention wavers, as it so often does with leading men. Soon he's chucking bottles at the paparazzi, punching out one of his kids, acting in Norman Mailer movies, and shacking up with a '70s icon who has fabulous hair and 12 million posters of her spread throughout the land. Eventually, the two of them are featured on magazine covers, saying anything to advance their comebacks, as the costars of some TV sitcom...which fails miserably.
It might have been this way for Walken had he won his leading-man tryout for Love Story in 1970. As it was, Ryan O'Neal got that role and that life. There is a curse to looking like Christopher Walken. There is also a blessing.
The last time I see him is in his Manhattan brownstone. It's simply furnished, with a few expensive paintings, a few cheap paintings, some very expensive chairs ("deceptively strong for how slender they are"), and a mirror screwed to the wall. After talking to him for a while, I find myself on my feet. "Come with me," I am saying, and I am touching his shoulder.
Walken gets up. "What're you gonna do?" he says.
Leading him to the mirror, I say, "Describe what you see."
"Who, me?"
"Yeah."
"Six feet, one sixty five, a lot of hair that I am told is out of control. There's a theory that my hair grows right out of my brain," Walken says, and skims away from the mirror into the kitchen.
This business about his hair being out of control "I am told" is classic Walken. It is obviously out of control. It;s Don King hair. He can see it. I can see it. He should just say it: "This hair of mine is out of control." That he doesn't... upsets me.
"So you didn't want to stand in front of that mirror, eh?" I say.
"Well, no, I mean, I felt I was done," says Walken. Then in a manner of one moderately aggrieved: "What? What? What do you want to know?"
"What? What?" I shoot back, weirdly.
The sentinel Barnardo is standing watch at Elsinore when he hears something he cannot se. "Who's there?" Barnardo asks. That is the first line of Hamlet and Walken;s favorite line of all time. "Who's there?"
"I told you what I saw," Walken says now. He says, "I saw someone dressed all in black."
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