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You like to work dancing into all of your movies. Did you insert the dancing scene in Around the Bend into the movie?
It happened years ago. There’s always a lot of stuff in movies that make the gag reel, and it started with me doing that just goofing around. And then people started asking for it. And this time it was in the script ahead of time, it said “dances around the campfire.” I’m starting to think it’s been enough, that I need to stop doing it, because people are talking to me more about that than the movie. I think I’ve overdone it. I have to stop.
What’s the kick for you about acting? What really does it for you? What gets you up in the morning?
There is a thing when you’ve finished shooting and you go into the car and you think “Hey, I really did a good one today. That was good.” That’s a great feeling. When I did that scene with Dennis Hopper in True Romance I had met him, but I didn’t really know him. We did that scene in one day. Nobody said anything and afterwards, we went to this interesting Hollywood place and we’re sitting there and he says “we did a good scene today” and I said “yeah…”
Is there a way you can make sure that happens?
Naw, you get lucky…
Well, there have been many scenes that you’ve been able to pull off that same thing. Pulp Fiction, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter– there have been so many. Have there been any other scenes that you’ve done where you’ve really been surprised by the reactions?
Well, the big scene ends up being the one you never knew was going to happen. That’s the great thing about the movies. Something spontaneous happens and the camera is there to capture it. You can look at it as many times as you want. So you just never know and then something will happen.
You remember in True Romance I had a bodyguard, played by James Gandolfini (aka Tony Soprano), who’s now very famous, but in that particular scene he doesn’t say anything. I didn’t even know him. We were there for one day and I thought “who is this big guy?” But after the scene he says to me “Chris - you know… you should take your hankerchief and you should dip it in the fishtank and wipe the blood off.” And I thought, that’s a great bit. So stuff like that happens. That’s what he would have done if he had played me in that scene.
I read somewhere that you had once worked briefly as a lion tamer. What was that like?
Yeah, I did that one summer as a teenager. It was a privately owned circus, a tent, that worked the Northeast coast. In those days they had that. There was a guy named Terrell Jacobs and he owned the circus and he was the featured thing. He had these lions and he had this idea for a bit where he had this kid dressed identically as him who would walk into the ring with this old lion. So I’d go in like this (Walken rares back in fear of an imaginary lion) and that was it. He did that as kind of a show thing. He didn’t have any kids.
Who could ask for a job like that? I just answered an ad in a trade publication. In those days they had those where they told you all the jobs you could get – “come to the Pocanos for $35 dollars a week.” I used to go to all that stuff.
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If you look back over four decades of work in the movie business, what do you see as the highs and what do you see as the lows?
You know, making movies is really an optimistic thing. You have to be. When you’re making a movie in the morning you’ll be talking with the other actors in the movie trailer and you’ll ask them – “So you went to the dailies last night? How’d it look?” and it’s always “Fabulous, it jumped off the screen.” Always, no matter what the movie is.
Do you laugh about that stuff?
No. They really mean it. And you want to hear it. You never hear anybody say “The dailies - nothing worked. It was boring.” You’ll never hear that.
That's the Chris Walken we know and are scared shitless of...
So how did “Around the Bend” turn out?
Well you know, when I saw this movie I was all by myself in the theater. It’s not a good way to watch a movie. The audience tells you a lot. But I think that I’ve been surprised that movies that I thought were going to be a big deal weren’t. Like Gigli, frankly. It’s very surprising when a thing like that happens. Everybody’s making the movie, you think you’re making something terrific.
Or like a little movie a made 20 years ago. There was no money to make it. Nobody got paid, nobody was in it. Everybody in it was relatively unknown. But it’s a movie that people still say hi to me about – The King of New York. It’s just a little movie and nobody thought that would be anything. That it would have hit the video shelves or something.
You’ve worked with an incredible array of directors. What’s your preferred actor/director dynamic?
Well, directors do a lot, but one of the things that the good ones do is that they’re very good at casting. It may not be an actor that can do a lot of things. It may just be an actor that’s very specifically good for that part. But with most of the directors I never talk to them about anything. And actors, too. Everybody thinks that actors sit around and talk about what’s going on and motivation and they don’t. Actors talk about restaurants, girls and movies.
Do you believe in the benefit of study and research?
I’m a big studier. I go off the words. I have the script at home on the table and I go over it hundreds and hundreds of times. I do it with different accents and suddenly something starts to sound right. It’s like listening to people talk. Some people you believe them when they’re talking. I believe that you don’t have to know what you’re talking about. But you have to believe that an actor knows what he’s talking about.
So I take the script and I know exactly what I mean when I’m saying everything. That’s why I need to know my lines. There are people where you can say “Here’s two pages, we’re doing them today.” I’d be lost.
There are a lot of actors who, for example, play a historical figure, and they go out and do all of this research for motivation…
I used to do that sort of thing…because they told me to. There are people who do that to tremendous advantage, but I quickly found out that it didn’t do me any good. I’d have all this interesting research, but when it came down to my performance, it didn’t help me one bit. So I don’t do that anymore. I just try to make it sound like I’d believe it.
What do you think the industry is like for you today versus the time of “The Deer Hunter”?
You know I’ve been lucky, because I’ve had all this time to make these mistakes. I had 30 years of experience before I started to get into movies. I tested for things early on that I didn’t get and I was so disappointed but in retrospect I was so lucky I didn’t get them.
I tested for Star Wars as Han Solo. Can you imagine? I wouldn’t be here now. It would have been the end of my career and the end of Star Wars. I tested for Love Story. If I’d gotten that part, I’d have been out of here….
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Written by Richard Sharp
[1] [2]
009: Christopher Walken
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