Christopher Walken: Greetings from Planet Showbiz

Q: What movies have you seen more than any other?

A: Spartacus and Broadway Danny Rose. That's my double bill.

Q: What's the worst movie ever made?

A: I'm not going to say, but I think I was in it.

Q: What's your favorite dying scene?

A: It's in a very obscure movie called Lucky Luciano. When this gangster gets shot in the end, it takes place on a street where there are 50 feet of garbage cans lined up, and he knocks every one of them over, falling down and getting up. It's the longest death scene I ever saw. It's hilarious.

Q: When did you have your first sexual experience?

A: Oh, I must have been 19.

Q: If you could have changed one thing about that first sexual experience, what would it be?

A: It would have been successful.

Q: Is there any lie you've told girls you'd like to retract?

A: I promise I won't come.

Q: Why didn't you like high school?

A: I wasn't learning anything. I remember once I was failing in math and my father locked me in his bedroom for a whole weekend. My mother brought food and it was left outside the door. Him and me, we worked all day, we went to sleep, we got up and we did it again for two-and-a-half days. And I passed. And to this day I'm very good at certain things with numbers, with money, figures, estimates.

Q: So you got more than reading out of school.

A: School was boring most of the time. It finally was a social event where you hit on girls.

Q: Were you successful at that?

A: No, not at all.

Q: That's why you hated school. If you'd been successful hitting on girls you'd have loved it.

A: Tell that to the commissioners. I've always been lousy at striking up a conversation. If I walk up to a strange woman and strike up a conversation, I probably make her nervous. [Laughs] It just doesn't work out. I finally walked up to a girl once and I said to her, "Would you like me to go away?" She just looked at me in a scared way.

Q: Maybe your professional reputation preceded you.

A: The good thing about being an actor is if they know who you are-- you don't have to introduce yourself.

Q: And if they don't know who you are, you get to do what you do best--act your way into their hearts.

A: It's true, part of it is tenacity--and I do have that. I've always been that way. My father's like that. My mother's like that. My whole family's like that. Very aggressive people--but in a good way. My father was a baker, and he was like a terror to the people who worked for him. But he worked hard, and I believe in that. People don't work hard enough.

Q: Did your father discipline you?

A: My father never laid a hand on us. Never. But my mother, I have a feeling he would nod at her and she'd give us a whack. But when I was growing up, there was more of that "spare the rod and spoil the child" type thing. All my friends used to regularly get a whack from their mothers. Now everything has changed. I came from a neighborhood where if you got in a fight with a kid and he beat you up, basically what would happen is this: he'd throw you on the ground and get your arm behind your back and he'd say, "Say Uncle." When you finally said it, he'd let you go and you'd shake hands. That's how dopey it was then. Nowadays, they take out a nine millimeter and shoot you and your whole family.

Q: Have either of your parents criticized you about the films you make?

A: My mother, absolutely. She always says to me, "Why can't you make a nice film?"

Q: She probably still has memories of your childhood years on live TV.

A: Absolutely. She'd tell me how to read my lines. In TV they used kids as furniture almost. They'd say, "OK, put a bunch of them over here." It would be holiday shows mostly, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving. I worked with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin on _The Colgate Comedy Hour _when I was 10.

Q: What were your favorite TV shows as a kid?

A: Kids' shows didn't interest me that much. Maybe because I was there and saw it happening. I worked on the same floor as Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody. J. Fred Muggs, the chimp, used to drive his miniature motorcycle up and down the halls of the eighth floor at NBC. You know the movie My Favorite Year? They show some of that kind of stuff, but I actually remember the Chesterfield or Lucky Strike girl with the woman's legs coming out the bottom of a life-size package. I remember Mr. Peanut with a hat on.

Q: Was it like a hallucination?

A: Except that it was real. It was its own kind of life, and that's what I mean about the planet Show Business.

Q: Did your opinion of TV change after you appeared with Glenn Close in Sarah, Plain and Tall?

A: TV's very tricky. When Sarah, Plain and Tall _came out I was in London where the Agatha Christie play _The Mousetrap was celebrating its 40th anniversary. They estimated eight million people had seen it. Glenn Close called me and told me that 80 million people in America had seen Sarah in one night. That's what being a TV actor is. Mary Tyler Moore, James Garner, Johnny Carson, those people who have been on TV a long time, that's really amazing. Henry Winkler is one of the best TV actors I ever saw. The Fonz? [Lee] Strasberg loved him--he used to talk about him in class.

Q: Was Strasberg a good teacher?

A: I found him rather severe. He had humor, but you rarely saw it. Elia Kazan was the best acting teacher I ever saw. He says such simple things. At the Actor's Studio there were these people who'd [act like] some kind of Delphic mysteries were being imparted. Such seriousness. I said to somebody once, "Please, I'm getting a headache." She said to me, "You just don't understand." I haven't been there in 10 years for that reason.

Q: Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect show had a topic that asked: does showbiz make you an asshole or do assholes go into showbiz? How would you have responded?

A: That's a terrible question. I thought he was intelligent. I know a lot of successful people in show business and that's the last word I'd call them. Most people in show business are bright.

Q: How bright were you when you got taken in a Ponzi scheme?

A: Boy, did I. It was my fault for not paying attention. My wife, thinking she was doing me a favor, got me involved in it. A typical stock thing out of Chicago. The guy was my wife's mother's boss. I had my lawyer go to Chicago and check him out, and he seemed very legit. I would send him a chunk of money and two weeks later he'd send me back maybe a third. So it looked like I was making a big profit, but basically all they do is send you back some of your own money. And I lost hundreds of thousands. At the time it was all the money I had. I was a real jerk.

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