Christopher Walken
Interview By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com
What can you say about Christopher Walken? He’s an Oscar winner, he’s appeared in over one hundred movies, he’s odd-looking but striking, he has a voice that’s inspired a million impressions, and he’s simultaneously an oft-villainous character actor and a brilliant comedian – proven on numerous guest appearances on Saturday Night Live. In other words, he’s completely and utterly unique, an uncannily likable gem in a land of bland leading men and skinny blondes who are a dime a dozen. Roger Ebert may have summed it up completely when he said that Walken is “one of those actors where you smile when you see them on the screen.”
That the purpose of this interview is to promote his new movie Hairspray only strengthens the point: throughout the movie, he sings and dances, yet another side of Walken that is completely endearing, but that most of us have never seen before.
Most of us, that is. Those who know him well might know differently. “Dancing is from when I was a kid,” he reveals. “When I was a kid it was very typical, the part of New York I come from, very typical for people to send their kids to dancing school. And my parents did, and a lot of people, not just people in show business. Tap class, acrobatics, the girls took ballet, you know. And I think when that’s in you from the time you’re a kid, it stays.”
In Hairspray, he plays John Travolta’s husband – and he still can’t help but laugh a little whenever he says that. In the film, Travolta dons a fat suit and a dress to play Edna Turnblad, the wife of Walken’s Wilbur and the mother of the main character. “John really is a very good dancer, so dancing with him was a pleasure,” Walken says,
Walken is one of today’s busiest actors, averaging three to four movies every year. Cynics among us might say the man lacks discretion, but he’s open about his choices. “I do turn down scripts, but I’m pretty easy,” he says with a grin. And his reasons couldn’t be simpler: “I like to work. I don’t do a lot of things, I don’t have hobbies and things, and I like to go to work.
“I also don’t really bother with whether or not it’s going to be any good,” he says bluntly. “I usually just think about who’s in it, the director of course, you know, who do you want to be with, who do you want to work with because you’re comfortable.” In this department he found Hairspray to be just the ticket. “Adam Shankman’s a wonderful director, I didn’t know him, but, he’s not only good at what he does, he has a very nice atmosphere on the set. And stuff like that. I have done movies sometimes just on account of the location. ‘Oh yeah, I’d like to go there.’”
For Hairspray, which is set in 1962, it wasn’t the location that drew Walken, but the period. “For me, the movie’s a lot about a very important time… When this movie was happening, I would’ve been right out of high school, and it was a fascinating time in America, with Vietnam. Cars had big things. People really did do a lot of
“And then there was all the racial strife, and the segregation,” he continues. “And people really did march in the thousands, singing. That’s not [only] this movie, people really did do that. I suppose a lot of the things go on today, but it’s a different context. I don’t think ten thousand people march and sing at the same time, you don’t see that anymore.” Does he think people have changed? “No, we’re still the same people, we’re just doing things differently. Maybe it’s the internet. You know.” He smiles and shrugs.
One of the benefits – or, depending on how you look at it, one of the detriments – of being such a unique guy is that everyone’s obsessed with doing an impersonation of you. More than any other working actor today, people just plain love doing Christopher Walken impressions. Walken himself is well aware of this phenomenon and when it’s brought up, he lets out one of his bemused grins that only he can pull off. “I think it’s really cool,” he says. “My wife says that Spacey is very good.” (You can judge for yourself in the first thirty seconds of this clip.) “I have a friend who has me on his answering machine,” Walken says. “I mean, him doing me. So when I call him, I’m talking to myself. And there’s another guy, I shouldn’t say this, but, he may just be sitting around the house, and he decides to call people as me, and says, let’s say, rude things.” He chuckles. “And then they call me and say, ‘how could you say a thing like that.’”
Since the beginning of his career largely consisted of playing villains or troubled souls, Walken clearly enjoys his belated stature as a funny guy,
And what made him choose this one? “Wonderful actors. A guy named Dan Fogler, he was in a play in New York, Spelling Bee, got a Tony, I think. He hasn’t done a lot of movies, I think he’s very good…he’s genuinely funny.”
Walken’s comedic skills likewise seem to come naturally. Contrary to what one might expect, he doesn’t try a lot of different things on set and gives a pretty consistent performance from take to take. “I do everything the same way. I’m much more probably needy about my lines than other people. I need to have my lines, I need to know them. I’ve always got a problem if they come at the last minute and if they change them, which in the movies happens a lot. That’s kind of my nemesis.”
But surely he must be dynamite at improve, right? One imagines he could make a conversation about eating a ham sandwich hilarious. “Oh but that’s different. I believe you can’t improvise unless you know exactly what you’re doing. And you know, if you know exactly what you’re doing, then absolutely. If I’m playing a scene with somebody and we all know exactly what’s going on, then, very often, [improvisation] happens. A lot of the movies that I do, you can see that: people start just, you know, blowing jazz.” Let’s hope he keeps blowing jazz for many years to come.
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