Christopher Walken
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Sep 28, 2004
I got to interview Christopher Walken in person and of course, the most important thing about the man is that he starred in the David Cronenberg film, The Dead Zone. We got a chance to talk a little bit about that. Walken walked into the room and seemed like he was almost surprised to be there. He was dressed in like a sweat suit and he smelled a bit musty. But that’s not right to complain about because he’s 61 years old and when you get that age things happen to your body that you can’t control. One thing that Walken can control though is the way his career is going. From big budget Hollywood films like The Rundown to his latest little independent film, Around the Bend, Walken always delivers the goods.
Around the Bend stars Walken of course, Josh Lucas and Michael Caine. It’s about four generations of men who are suddenly brought together by the chance to uncover the truth about their family’s past. After the great-grandfather passes away, the son shows up out of the blue to take them all on a road trip across America to fulfill his father's wishes. It’s a journey that takes them to a world full of surprises, some comic, some dramatic, and all of them personal.
Check out the website for Around the Bend
Daniel Robert Epstein: What made you want to sign on for Around the Bend?
Christopher Walken: It was a good job for a lot of reasons. It was a different kind of part. He was a father and a grandfather and, of course, it had Mike Caine. It just was a good job. A big, juicy part. Isn’t that what they say? Not only that, but I do a lot of these parts where I’m in the movie a little bit and here’s a role where I’m in most of it.
DRE:
Did you know Michael Caine before this?
CW:
I did know him a little bit just socially. I’d met him a couple of times at people’s house, for dinner and stuff.
DRE:
Did you talk about other actors or directors you’ve had in common?
CW:
No, actors never talk about that stuff.
DRE:
Do you think your image is softening? This is your second dad, following Catch Me If You Can.
CW:
Oh, that’s true. For a long time I’d never played fathers and uncles. I guess I’m getting old enough now.
DRE:
Were there things you drew on from your own experiences, from your own relatives, that you saw yourself using in portraying this character?
CW:
Not really. His day really was sort of like mine. He’s of the 70’s, rock and roll. I lived through all that. I had the bellbottom pants.
DRE:
How about the paisley shirt?
CW:
Sure. There was a scene in the movie that was cut. That van is established in another version as mine. That was my car. I showed up and I went into the van, and it was full of all these old clothes, including my wife’s. There was a lot of going through stuff and remembering. That didn’t end up in the movie, but the clothing I wear… when I show up I’m in this drab stuff, and then I get back into my old 70’s stuff, which still sort of fits. It’s a little tight.
DRE:
The film’s story is very cathartic for your character. He’s the one with the most skeletons in his closet. What do you draw on to bring it out?
CW:
Well, acting is pretending. I don’t know how these things work. I study the script and I try to make it sound like I mean it. He says that he’d been a musician. Well, there are certain parallels in my life. I was in musical comedy when I was a kid. I used to go to rock concerts and I went to Studio 54. I was very much a part of that. I saw Woodstock when it came out. As a matter of fact I used to go to Woodstock before it was famous. So all of that was quite familiar to me but like you say, for him things didn’t work out. In fact, he escapes from a jail hospital, so he’s had some bumpy times.
Actually, my best friend had a VW van. A lot of people had that van, and what a great car it was. I remember, we used to put six people in the thing and go up to the mountains. It got 400 miles on a gallon of gas. That was a great little car. The thing about that though was if you were alone in it and you were going over the George Washington Bridge it was always like ‘Whooom’ [he makes a swaying gesture]. It was not good in the wind.
Actually, my best friend had a VW van. A lot of people had that van, and what a great car it was. I remember, we used to put six people in the thing and go up to the mountains. It got 400 miles on a gallon of gas. That was a great little car. The thing about that though was if you were alone in it and you were going over the George Washington Bridge it was always like ‘Whooom’ [he makes a swaying gesture]. It was not good in the wind.
DRE:
Denzel Washington said that during one take while filming Man of Fire you grabbed him by the head and gave him a big kiss. Is that the kind of thing you do to keep things loose and to surprise people?
CW:
Yeah, sure, sure. That wasn’t in the movie. You do takes, and you do lots of different things. Denzel is a lot of fun.
DRE:
But is it also to keep everyone a little off balance?
CW:
I have the feeling about movie acting that one of the tricks is to offer the editor as much stuff as you can. You’ll do a take and there’s a lot in it that doesn’t work, but maybe there’s something that does. That’s the great thing about movies. If it’s really lousy, probably they’ll cut it out. So it’s important to take those chances, and do things like the thing I did with Denzel. There’s lots of stuff I did with Denzel that isn’t in the movie. You make a movie and then six months later they’re sitting in a dark room and looking at all this film and they’ll think, “We’ll use that.”’ Offering an editor that variety is much better than doing take after take that’s more or less the same.
DRE:
Were there more scenes in Around the Bend that got cut out, that we might see on the DVD?
CW:
Oh, sure lots of stuff. There’s a big scene, actually and I miss it between me and Josh, where I explain to him what my life was like with his mother. It’s a very interesting scene. It was good, but sometimes in movies it’s good, but they can’t use it. It makes the movie too long or it doesn’t really matter. When you make movies there are all sorts of stuff that you wish they had kept in.
DRE:
Do you take a serious critical approach to movies when you look at them later on?
CW:
Usually it’s OK. I’m very lucky in that when I do, if I think, “Well, that was false,” and I think, “Well, you sort of nailed it.” Then if I see that the next day in dailies it’s almost invariably what I thought. If I thought it was fake, it is. If I think it worked, it does. So I think I have a good sense of that.
DRE:
How did you come together with [Around the Bend director] Jordan [Roberts]?
CW:
This is his first movie. My agent sent me the script. A lot of people from this movie are from the same agency. Then Jordan came to my house, actually. That’s pretty unusual. Sometimes I make movies, and I’ve never met the director before shooting.
DRE:
The relationship between your character and the one of your grandson was very interesting because it seemed like he was trying to make up for the time he’d lost with Jason.
CW:
Well, I noticed that it was interesting with my own father and his grandkids. They say when you get older you get back into your childhood a little. I must say, I’ve never had kids, but that little boy thought I was hilarious. It was very, very funny being around him. He was so spontaneous. He’d get absolutely wild sometimes. They’d have to take him and calm him down. His mother was there. He’d sometimes get hysterically laughing. He’s a very funny kid. He’s not in the movie as much as he might be; it’s a good thing maybe.
DRE:
Was it in the original script that Michael Caine’s character knew you were dying?
CW:
Sure. There is a kind of mystical aspect to all of this, in that he gets done with what he’s going to do and he just dies. So there is a big Grim Reaper aspect to that. [Caine’s character] says, “OK, I’m done. My dog is going to die,” and dog dies. He says to me, “you’re going to die, but you’re not ready. You’ve got to do this thing first.”
DRE:
Interesting that when you get to the big revelations, Turner and Josh’s character don’t sit and hash it over endlessly, like in so many Hollywood movies.
CW:
It was a big issue. We talked about it for a long time. We had meetings and rehearsals. That was a big problem. How do we explain what I did to him? We finally decided that there was no explanation. He was having a bad time and he did something terrible. That happens to people.
DRE:
You’re apparently a sex symbol to a lot of women in their 20’s…
CW:
Oh, yeah?
DRE:
Is this the first you’ve heard of it?
CW:
I’d heard about the older ladies, but that’s OK.
DRE:
The word is you’ve gotten sexier as you’ve gotten older. So what kind of people approach you?
CW:
I’ve been married for 35 years so I have to be careful. Not only that, but I live I the country and to tell you the truth I don’t see people much. When you make a movie the days are really long. When I get up it’s dark. The days I was talking about, rock and roll and Studio 54, I was very social. I think I almost maybe exhausted myself.
DRE:
Will Ferrell is turning into a huge star and he wrote the Cowbell sketch. What was that like on the page?
CW:
You never know when you do things whether they’re going to catch on. I did that sketch like I did lots of sketches because I’ve been on Saturday Night Live five or six times. I knew it was funny, but I’ve traveled all over the world and people in Australia will say to me, “You know what this salad needs? It needs a little more cowbell.”
DRE:
You mentioned knowing when you’ve nailed it or missed. What happens when you nail it and some other element ruins the take?
CW:
It happens all the time. You do a terrific take and a plane goes over. Or you do a terrific take and the sound guy comes up and says, ‘Your microphone was showing, so we can’t use that.” That’s very frustrating. But that’s show business.
DRE:
So how do you nail it again and again?
CW:
You don’t. Usually, if I think, “Boy that was it” and the guy says, “I’m sorry, we can’t use that,” I’ll never get it that way again. That’s just part of making movies. Making movies is sort of like a miracle. I don’t know how it gets done. Everybody does all these things and it’s so difficult to put everything together, and then it starts to rain.
DRE:
Do you think you’re underappreciated as a comedic actor?
CW:
Nah, I’ve done a lot of comedy. As a matter of fact, before I got into movies, that’s all I did. I was a musical-comedy actor.
DRE:
But you had a live audience there. Is it easier to do a performance for two-hours straight through, maintaining the continuity?
CW:
In a way it is that’s true. I’ve always said the audience is the unmentioned character. Anytime you do a play there’s another character in it, and that’s the audience. The audience tells you a lot. I did some interviews this morning and people were saying this movie has a lot of humor. When I saw the movie I was sitting all alone in a theater and I couldn’t tell that because I was sitting by myself. You really need an audience to tell you that.
DRE:
This year happens to be the 20th anniversary of The Dead Zone. Did they actually shoot a gun to make you tense up during the psychic scenes?
CW:
That’s right; we did that to make my reactions more convincing. They turned the sound off and they fired a gun. You can’t fake that kind of instinctive reaction to a loud noise. David was wonderful. He’s a wonderful director. I see him occasionally. He never ages.
DRE:
He’s got a painting in his attic!
Will you ever direct?
Will you ever direct?
CW:
I’ve never done it. I don’t think I’d be good at it. I can’t articulate anything. I could say, “Yeah, good” or “Do it again.”
DRE:
How about writing?
CW:
Or course. All actors write. I’ve never met an actor who didn’t have a play or two tucked in his pocket.
DRE:
How about writing an autobiography?
CW:
I would do that, but I don’t think yet. In a way, when you write the memoirs, unless you intend to write a series of them it’s like signing your own death certificate. Somebody said, “I’d write my memoirs, except I can’t remember anything.”
DRE:
Do you feel like you have a lot to settle before your time is up?
CW:
No, I’ve never done anything terrible to anybody. But I would think that what Turner did would be a terrible thing to live with.
DRE:
What would you say about your career?
CW:
I was in show business as a kid. I wasn’t an actor, but I was in show business. I’ve done a lot of things. Musicals occupied me for a long time. I became an actor. Then I was a stage actor. Then I started making movies. I still do a play once in a while. One of the hardest things about being an actor is to stick around, to stay viable. It is. You can easily get lost.
DRE:
And probably doing SNL didn’t hurt?
CW:
That, and doing MTV, the Fatboy Slim thing. It’s just to do something different every once in a while.
DRE:
You’ve got the reputation for playing quirky guys. Ever just want to do a Ward Cleaver kind of character?
CW:
Oh, absolutely, I would love to do that. You mean like be a dad and have a dog? I’d love to do that. Have a house, kids and have the kids say, “you know, Dad, what should I do?” I’d say, “You know, son, just do the right thing.”
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
