The Chris Walken Song and Dance,
A Serious Story
July 1995 BIKINI Magazine interview
By Arty Nelson, Photos (unavailable) by Stephen Stickler

...So I find the house that Walken's renting while he's in town shooting "Nick of Time" with Johnny Depp and squeeze past what turns out to be the broken front gate. I'm standing at the door, knocking. This woman keeps walking by and I don't want to make a big deal out of it but the truth is, she isn't answering. Finally I give it a hard bang right as she passes me and she opens the door. Walken comes out in sweats with a 90-mile an hour just-got-out-of-bed turbo swirl for a hair-doo. The guy has no idea that I'm supposed to be there. The woman, Georgianne Walken, wife of at least 2 and 1/2 decades, brews me up some instant and I wait while everyone's favorite guy, who always seems to be thinking about something else, throws on a black suit and running shoes. We both apologize for nothing and jump in my Jeep with no doors. Walken asks that I drive easy because the LA traffic game gives him vicious ulcers (something in Italian like "Agida") and I agree to it. LA traffic is truly something that makes life seem senseless and brutal. Down the road for 12 minutes of pictures then back up to the house. The man hangs at home a lot. If he's not working, chances are he's at home, maybe running his two miles a day, or learning the next script. Works all the time, PR kit says he's got movies coming out like every 27 seconds. Back home, for a glass of some homemade special formula lemon ice tea. We sit down in the living room...

ARTY: So anyways, basically, the thing about BIKINI is that we're really into dealing with the present situation, not into asking you to rehash your entire life and career in some kind of cliched sort of way. People are like still asking you about "The Deer Hunter"?

WALKEN: Yeah, I know. In interviews I tend to get asked the same questions, but maybe that's why, because they hand out that stuff (the press clippings)... I've never seen what they give you but obviously if you read something and then everybody ends up asking you the same questions. Do you want a chair?

I'm sitting in this weird old Victorian type thing where my knees come up past my eyes but I don't want to appear out-of-sorts.

ARTY: No, I'm kind of good actually... It's interesting we were talking before and you were saying about how good the young actors are these days and they seem so much better? Like I just saw this movie, "Straight Time" with Dustin Hoffman (based on the Eddie Bunker novel)?

WALKEN: I saw that when it came out, I loved that movie... Lou Grosbach.

ARTY: It seems like the movies today there's this schism (did I really use that word?)...

WALKEN: I don't know about the films, I'm talking about the actors.

ARTY: It's definitely two different things.

WALKEN: I think it has to do partly with the same thing that anybody begins to see when they get older... I mean it seems to me for instance that girls today... 17-year-old girls... they're not like the girls when I was 18, you know, they just seem like Romeo and Juliet (which is it, Romeo? Juliet?)... They seem like when they're 14 they're ready to be mothers or something... They seem more mature... and I think the actors, too... Like when I was 21, I had my head up my ass...

ARTY: Yeah.

WALKEN: And here you got these young actors... They're sharp, they're tough, they're smart. You know, when I was that age I didn't even know what I wanted to do... It seems people are very focused... It's probably a cyclical kind of thing with generations... But I grew up in the '50s, which had its charm but... in America anyways... is one of the dumber times we've lived through.

ARTY: The Apex of that false American promise.

WALKEN: Sure, you see the USA and the Chevrolet... I mean, people really did try to make their homes like TV shows... I mean did Ozzy and Harriet ever really exist? To me that was really typical. I'm sure my '50s-ness had to do with TV... 'cause it was the beginning of TV and in face me and my brothers we... I grew up in New York and that's where TV was born. 90 live shows a week and we were in them as kids not as actors... as furniture.

ARTY: They'd just walk in the family.

WALKEN: What?

ARTY: They'd bring you on as the family?

WALKEN: Oh sure, sure.

ARTY: You weren't doing speaking parts?

WALKEN: Occasionally I'd have a line that I'd forget. My brothers were better at it than I was... much.

ARTY: Older? Younger?

WALKEN: Each.

The guy is very concise. Every interview I've ever read talks about how sort of strange he is, but it seems like hyped bullshit. He's just a guy, very aware of where and what he's coming from. Clear.

ARTY: When did you start working in film... the '60s?

WALKEN: The first film I did, I think it was "The Anderson Tapes"... with Sean Connery. It had a lot of good actors in it. It was a sort of heist movie, and he was the star. I played The Kid. Yeah... that woulda been the '60s I guess.

ARTY: You've never done a movie with Martin Scorcese, have you?

WALKEN: "Search and Destroy's" produced by him. I was supposed to be in "The Last Temptation of Christ" 10 years ago and I'd go over to his house and talk about it but then it got canceled, some time after "The Deer Hunter," I guess... Then it got shelved and he made it seven years later, I guess.

ARTY: Was there a time when you lived in New York and hung with like DeNiro and Keitel and those guys?

WALKEN: No, I wasn't an actor at that point.

ARTY: You were a hoofer (I've been waiting an hour to use that word... HOOFER! Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, you name it.).
WALKEN: Yeah, I mean I do remember going to see "Mean Streets." I was in musicals at the time and I remember seeing those guys for the first time.

ARTY: So did you make a conscious decision to become an actor?

WALKEN: I was dancing in a show called "Baker Street," which was the musical about Sherlock Holmes, and some casting guy saw me, I should remember his name, but I was asked to audition for the King of France in the Broadway production of "The Lion in Winter," which was before the movie, with Robert Preston and Rosemary Harris. It's really so weird. I auditioned and I didn't know how to act, nothing. In fact, I was famous for blowing my lines all the time. I'd freeze. So I got that part. That was really how I got into acting, and I nearly go fired out of town because I was the pits. But I got through it...

ARTY: So for stage, you'd just blow your lines and go through with it?

WALKEN: It was sort of, what do you call it, a real trial time, and I did sort of come to terms with it and by the time I got to New York I was OK... I remember I was gonna get fired, in Boston, the producer took me out to dinner and said, "Look, you're a nice guy and all that," and I said, "Gimme three days" ... and he did.

ARTY: And that was it? He tells me about going to see Jerry Lewis in "Damn Yankees" back in New York. I tell him I just saw Jerry in "Funnybones."

WALKEN: I did not know he still made movies actually.

ARTY: I think it's the first time in a long time.

WALKEN: I mean he's so funny he cracked me up my whole life. As a matter of fact, I told him when I met him that when I was a child there used to be something called "The Colgate Comedy Hour"... and he and Dean Martin were still together and I was a kid on that. There was a sequence where there was a penny arcade and there was an arm that come out of the wall.. and he (Jerry) arm-wrestled with it and it beat him, and the kids would be laughing at him, and I told him that I was one of those kids.

ARTY: And he could completely remember it?

WALKEN: No (he laughs, I make sure it's OK and then I laugh)... Oh yeah...you...

ARTY: Your hairline was different.

WALKEN: Actually, I still have the same hairline.

ARTY: So like you just pretty much eat vegetables or what?

WALKEN: I eat a lot of vegetables and I eat a lot of fish.

ARTY: I gotta tell you, I woulda pegged you for 43 (he's 52). I think you bought some time with that diet.

WALKEN: When I was a kid I was really like a pencil... I'd be on the road and I'd eat 2 pizzas and a 6 pack of beer and watch television and then I'd go to bed and I never gained a pound. And then when I was about 43, suddenly that stopped. Then I started to jog but if you keep your weight down as you get older, it's hard, but ah... sometimes when I finish work, I... lose my reason to live. I sit around the house and I just eat and I don't move... and in one week I gained 10 lbs.

ARTY: Yeah, what happened to you at 43 happened to me at 19.

WALKEN: It happens... I try not to sit down much either... even around the house, when I'm learning lines or something, i try to walk around.

ARTY: Pace a little.

WALKEN: Yeah, because you're burning off, you know...

So I ask the guy about a quote, something about some kind of inner emotional strength being more important than emotions on a sleeve. A core thing. He's looking at the window.

WALKEN: I recognize it, I think Duvall said it in some interview and it was true... There has to be something inside you that is very clear and you have to be able to convey that.

ARTY: You can't be confused when you're playing a confused person.

WALKEN: I don't think so. You can only be ambiguous. If you know absolutely what you're saying and doing, I would think for all people but especially a performer, or an an athlete, anybody who's called on to do something in a given moment, they gotta really be 90 percent or 80 percent, you know... They gotta almost be their best, at any given time. You know, action, cut... or whatever... 8 o'clock, 11 o'clock. If you're in a play, there is a kind of like confidence, what is that? As I got older... there would be a very nice feeling in the wings before I went on... You stand in the wings... You hear your cue called and you know you're about to walk out and say your first line... and there came a point where I could stand there and go, you know... cool... let's go... and where ever that comes from... Part of your life has to be looking for that... Joe Louis used to eat, take a nap and say "Let's go to work." It wasn't fraught with emotion. Let's go to work.

Now he tells The Dancer Story."Shut Up and Dance" is an old expression that I think means something like, "Get the fuck over yourself, Whitey."

ARTY: I think that must be the beautiful thing about theater. When the lights go up, you gotta hit it, no matter what?

WALKEN: I wrote a play and I performed it. It was about Elvis. It ran for a month in NYC at the Public Theater and there was a lot wrong with it, but I mean it had its moments... But there were times, I knew they were coming, but there was nothing I could do about it... I'm thinking, 'Oh fuck me, when I get to this part, I know they're going right to sleep, or something.' And I get there and it would go (motions downward) like that, but then I'd know that there was a moment up ahead where I could pick them back again, so they also wouldn't know that that was coming and I'd know...

ARTY: Good reviews as a playwright?

WALKEN: I got the same kind of reviews. You can tell the audience got a kick out of it and it was all right to them.

ARTY: So like, do you still audition for movies or do they just call you and ask you if you want a part?

WALKEN: Audition? Well, sometimes they call you in. They want to look at you. I'm not very good at that. I don't go in to read a scene or anything. I don't think that does anybody any good. Good actors are hardly ever good readers.

ARTY: It's like that thing, practice heroes.

WALKEN: What's that?

ARTY: You never want to be too good in practice.

WALKEN: Well, sure, in a way... and not only that but if you're trying to impress people in an audition, you're making choices too fast. You're not giving yourself time to schmear around with it, which for me, I can only do around the house. I take the script. I like to cook, so I'll be doing something. I find with any project, a distraction is very good. There's nothing better, for instance, than to be learning two parts at the same time. I wish somebody right now would give me another job. so I could get my head out of this ("Nick of Time" with J.Depp).

ARTY: So beyond even acting, you've walked around on this planet for a couple of decades now.

WALKEN: Five.

ARTY: You said it, not me.

WALKEN: That's very hard to believe.

ARTY: What do you think of the world now in 1995 as opposed to 1975?

WALKEN: Oh I don't know... I really stay in the house a lot, that's the truth. I live in Connecticut and when I'm not working, I stay in the house.

ARTY: So are you digging where films are at, or do you not think about it in that way?

WALKEN: I don't know, I hardly see movies. I tend to go see actors. I generally go to a movie even if I don't know anything about it because somebody's in it.

ARTY: Oldman in "State of Grace" was that way for me.

WALKEN: I remember the first time I saw James Dean. It was kind of like, 'Wow, who's that guy?' Oldman was like that in "State of Grace."

ARTY: When you were growing up, who were the actors that you dug?

WALKEN: When I was growing up it was Brando and Dean.

ARTY: How about like Ray Muni? Is that his name?

WALKEN: You don't mean Paul?

ARTY: Yeah, Paul Muni. don't you think people were still kind of theater acting on camera back then?

WALKEN: Yes, sure, and the scripts were that way, too, sure. But wouldn't you like to see Jack Nicholson on stage?

ARTY: Yeah, I don't think he ever did it.

WALKEN: I'd like to see him in a play. Some sort of anything.

ARTY: I just watched that monologue in "The King of Marvin Gardens."

WALKEN: See him play Richard the Third or something.

ARTY: I was in NYC bumming around and I think you were in "Othello" at the time?

WALKEN: Did you see it?

ARTY: No, I was broke.

WALKEN: I played Iago and Raul Julia was Othello. He was good.

ARTY: How do you remember all those lines?

WALKEN: Right, exactly! People ask me, I have no idea. I don't learn lines, I just do them, over and over, and in that case, hundreds of times. I put it on a tape recorder, stick it in my ear and walk around with it. You're mouth just starts to learn the muscle movements. Iago is the longest part in Shakespeare. Me talking at a rapid clip was, I believe, an hour and 20 minutes.

ARTY: Just your lines?

WALKEN: Just my lines.

ARTY: They had some faith in you to throw that gig your way, especially with your humble stage beginnings.

WALKEN: Right, but then, since I started, I played Romeo twice, three times, Hamlet twice. Richard the Second. I played the dreaded Scotsman. Lots of things. Actually, it's funny. In "Lion in Winter," I had to wear tights, I was a dancer. So from that I got my first Shakespeare thing to play Romeo at Stratford in Canada. I mean, I didn't have a lot of school and I didn't know from Shakespeare whatsoever, and I got that job. And I think it had something to do with the tights. Stupid stuff like that.

ARTY: Well, you know, it's important to look the part. Did you actually understand Shakespeare when you did it?

WALKEN: Not at all, and I really stunk. You should see my reviews from Romeo. I was terrible.

ARTY: You took some heat for it?

WALKEN: Ohhh, because especially they were furious that an American had been invited. The guy's not only American, he can't act.

ARTY: I think fucking reviews are overrated. (Mainly because all of mine have been bad.) We talk about there not being a master shot (shot of all actors in a scene together) in the famous "True Romance" Hopper-Walken scene.

WALKEN: And it took very little time to shoot. It was inside a trailer, and that's exactly what it was. We did the scene, the camera was pointed that way, and then the camera was pointed this way, and that was it. They said, 'Go home.' I mean, we always were acting together, but that's all it was. There was no master shot. I wonder why. Well, maybe the room didn't allow it.

ARTY: I'd figure if it was Tony Scott, he'd blow out the back of the trailer.

WALKEN: Well, I mean obviously he didn't want to do that. The back and forth, that's all it was. We shot it in one day. There was another small scene in an elevator with me and my gangsters. We shot that in Pasadena, but they cut it.

ARTY: You dug the Tarantino script?

WALKEN: Oh yeah. ARTY: So now it's this "Nick of Time" thing for the next couple of months?

WALKEN: Until June.

ARTY: And then back home, unless the new gig comes along?

WALKEN: The new distraction. (He laughs.) ARTY: How long have you been married?

WALKEN: We had the 25th last February. ARTY: That's the Silver?

WALKEN: Silver, yeah. My parents have been married 65 years. My father's 95.

ARTY: So are you into this movie, "Search and Destroy"?

WALKEN: Yeah, I like the people very much. It's a nice job.

ARTY: You must have shot it like a year ago?

WALKEN: Oh, "Search and Destroy"?I thought you were talking about this new one. I only worked on "Search and Destroy" for 2 or 3 weeks. It was shot fast, low budget. Yeah, I liked the director and the actors. Did you see it?

ARTY: I haven't seen it. I don't know that it's out yet.

WALKEN: I thought they had screenings.

ARTY: Yeah. No... You know it's funny. Now, looking back on then, it would seem that you and Scorcese and all those other guys were living downtown and making movies together?

WALKEN: Well, we were definitely living down there but we weren't making movies, but we all know each other. I never have worked with Scorcese. I'd love to.

ARTY: I always think of John Casales. What a great actor.

WALKEN: Well, he's gone. (The guy died years ago.)

ARTY: I know, but I mean his work.

WALKEN: Yeah.

We talk until the phone rings and then he goes and answers it.

ARTY: So do you find when you come here and you've got to find a place to live and totally uproot, is it hard to keep your own personal life going?

WALKEN: I don't have a personal life. I'm happy to say. No, I mean I have a wife, and I move around a lot, but I don't really, I like to be working. It's really my favorite thing. I'm always grateful to be working, and if I'm working I'm pretty OK. It's the times in between when I don't really have anything to look forward to, but in my career, things come up very suddenly. This thing ("Nick of Time")... I was sitting around the house, I'd just finished a job and one week had gone by, and I was already, you know, you get into that sort of like, nowhere place.

ARTY: Eating racks of ribs?

WALKEN: Yeah, and just like walking around and not having anything to do, you know, which I hate... and then the phone rings. So long as that keeps happening, then I'm OK. But I don't really... I don't have kids. I don't have hobbies. I'm not very sociable. ARTY: So you had some time on your hands?

WALKEN: I don't like to drive, and I don't like sports or anything like that.

ARTY: It's probably good that you're married then.

WALKEN: Yeah, yeah, I like to have a nice place to live. I like this house, very much. I don't know where this furniture came from, but no, if this was my house, I would take out everything, absolutely everything. The paintings, everything. I'd have it empty, a nice rug. A coffee table. Chairs. A good sound system.

ARTY: You know, I never like the furniture in anyone's house. My girlfriend always asks me what I like and I like so little of it all.

WALKEN: No, I mean this is a nightmare. Look at this thing. (It's an antique floral-painted big chest with glass and shelves)... Jesus...

ARTY: I actually think it's kinda cool but I wouldn't want that in my house.

WALKEN: No, it's too much... like this thing here. (Points to a massive kind of hanging from the wall votive)...

ARTY: That thing's gonna drop in the next quake... not while you're here though.

WALKEN: I hope not.

We talk about the house he's renting.

ARTY: So you said you like to cook, so you just bring your own set of knives and move in?

WALKEN: My wife (Georgianne) is Polish from Chicago and Easter is like... there is nothing bigger. She's borrowed all this stuff from people she knows and is gonna cook tomorrow. (It's Easter.)

ARTY: Kielbasa?

WALKEN: Sure and borscht she makes...

ARTY: That's the thing about a girlfriend, they acknowledge things like days and holidays, more than I would...

WALKEN: Oh absoluteley, Christmas... all that stuff. Women take it very seriously. It's nice, though. It's a healthy sign. We talk about gaining weight. He tells me he gained a lot of weight during "The Comfort of Strangers," shot in Venice.

ARTY; So, are there any roles you'd like to play that you haven't?

WALKEN: I'd like to play somebody's father and not have to shoot them... something maybe with a little kid.

ARTY: "The Champ"?

WALKEN: I think I'm a little old for that. And then he tells me that he might not do any more stage because of one thing. Camcorders.

WALKEN: We are a civilization of people taping each other. One thing leads to another and Georgianne comes back with the Easter groceries and I start thinking that maybe it's all over. He tells me one last story as I'm packing up.

WALKEN: I used to have an agent that told me socially I was a disaster... I used to tell her that I'd be invited to a party and she'd say, 'Don't go, don't go.' She'd always say, 'Keep the mystery, keep the mystery 'cause you're a disaster...

I thank the guy for the tea, thank Georgianne for the coffee and split...

(Thanks to Karen Pearlman for transcribing this)