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 II show why.
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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 II.
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's Gate, Brainstorm, The Comfort of Strangers, 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 as "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 wedding 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. lust 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."
Going 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 aliens 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 II. 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's 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 Keitel?'"
Walken 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 parts, where you dance and sing and get the girl?"
"Not too much. I did those Hallmark 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 kids ..."
"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 thing ... 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 '50s, 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're 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 afraid 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 slipcovers, 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'm 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 the 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. There's a thing about being an actor where there are these built-in hiatuses. Even if you work a lot, you still have time when you're not working. And the absence of work, I really feel it. I don't know what to do with myself. So I study scripts, I wrote a play about Elvis ..."
"Yeah, I hear you're an Elvis freak."
"Well, everyone loved 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, too. I was there right at the beginning. The first girl I 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 I 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 I'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'm in a hotel, I tend to not eat other people's food. It keeps me thin, keeps me looking a little better. And when I'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 stuff, and I used it to write a play. I hope I'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 he 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 the time, and this is not good."
"Maybe I'll like him this time."
"I sure hope so."
"What about kids ... did you decide not to have any, or is this too 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. It wasn't a practical idea."
"Are there films that have come out that 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.
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Martha Frankel interviewed Chris O'Donnell for the November Movieline.