Christopher Walken Genesis Magazine Interview (1979) By: Fred Robbins When Christopher Walken won this year's best supporting actor oscar, for his portrayal of a war-shattered Vietnam soldier in The Deer Hunter, his victory paralleled the 1975 Academy Awards outcome which saw Robert De Niro emerge as a major new star. In 1975, De Niro copped the best-supporting-actor award for his show-stealing performance in that year's best picture, The Godfather II, while best-actor nominee Al Pacino fell short for his role in the same movie. This year, ironically, it was De Niro himself who was nominated but passed over for the best acting prize, in Deer Hunter while both the movie and his supporting performerÐ the up-from-the-minors Chris WalkenÐ picked up the coveted Academy statuettes. Oscar trivia aside, Hollywood's star-spotters are expecting big things from thirty-six-year-old Christopher Walken. He's now seemingly poised on the brink of ÒovernightÓ stardomÐ but in fact the Broadway-bred actor has been in show business for over twenty years. Raised in Astoria, Queens, Walken won his first Broadway acting role at the age of fifteen. He worked steadily as a dancer in musicals before he made his film debut playing a youthful ex-con in Sean Connery's 1971 heist movie, The Anderson Tapes. In between off-Broadway acting assignments that gained him an Obie, Walken turned in several eye-catching performances in ÒlittleÓ films such as Next Stop Greenwich Village, and Roseland, and a cameo in Woody Allen's 1977 smash, Annie Hall. Veteran Oscar-handicappers weren't surprised when Christopher Walken was nominated for the 1978 Academy Award; they knew he was a comer and, like the pre-Godfather Robert De Niro, was primed to catapult into leading-actor status. In fact, Walken's screen personality is very much a WASP version of the De NiroÐ Al Pacino mold: a ballsy man of action whose intelligence and sensitivity make him catnip to women. This was the type of character, Nick, that he portrayed in The Deer Hunter Ð the first topic which interviewer Fred Robbins took up when he talked to the young Oscar-winner. GENESIS: You must be very proud. WALKEN: I am. Well, I'm very happy about being in this movie. GENESIS: Did you think it was going to have the impact it has had? WALKEN: Yes, I did. I wasn't sure about what it would mean to me personally, as an actor, but I knew, practically from the moment we started, that it was going to be a great movie. I can't really say that I've ever thought that before, either in acting on stage or in the few films I've made. It's really the first time I was convinced that I was involved in something that was going to be very important. GENESIS: What made you think that? After all, scenes are filmed out of continuity; how could you have such an overall view of its enormous impact? WALKEN: Well, I think it was self-evident in a way. First of all, it was the script, which was very powerful. And then there was the company, the actors and the directorÐ just that combination of people was very impressive. And once we began there was an atmosphere around the set; it was always very charged. GENESIS: How was the ensemble playing developed in The Deer Hunter among a group of actors who had not worked together before, but who became an actual, believable family, as portrayed in the film? WALKEN: Well, Michael Cimino, the director, was faced with the problem of creating this group of people who would give the audience the impression that they'd been together all their lives, from the time they were children. So one of the things he did, which was very intelligent, was to cast a lot of theater actors, particularly from New York. There is a sort of camaraderie between actors, and I think it transferred onto film, giving the impression that we'd all been together for a long time. And it's true, there is a terrific sense of ensemble playing. Robert De Niro is a very generous actor, and he gave everybody a lot. GENESIS: What was the toughest thing in doing this role? Well, there were physical difficulties, certainly, when we go to Thailand and the River Kwai, and did a lot of the work in the water. But when I think back on it, it was all so exotic and interesting that it's hard to remember it being difficult. I'll never forget it as one of the most stimulating times I've ever spent. GENESIS: The war footage was so realistic, you guys actually seemed physically wasted. You actually filmed in the river? WALKEN: Yes, The River Kwai, in the jungle. There was everythingÐ tigers! There was a tiger in my room one night. I was trying to look like a prisoner of war so, of course, I didn't eat much. In Thailand, they have thirty different kinds of bananas. I became a banana expert. And it did help me loose weight. I was very healthy, actually, in that section. I was probably in better shape than I've ever been in my life. GENESIS: Did you do your own stunts? WALKEN: Yeah. They had stunt men, but they felt, in certain cases, that it would be more authentic if we did it ourselves. The scenes where you see Robert De Niro and John Savage fall from a helicopter into the Kwai are the real thing. They were very high, and the river was muddy; you couldn't see what was underneathÐ it could have been a tree or a rock. It's a river that moves quickly, so if there was a tree down thereÐ you can check it, but in thirty seconds it will be there. They fell from very high; it was, I'd say, fifty feet. GENESIS: When you see the film, Chris, can you be detached from it at all? Can you have an objective view? WALKEN: Yes, to me, the filmÐ especially since I have a certain distance on itÐ I watch very much as a spectator: often surprised about things that happen. The overall effect to me is very powerful, very emotional. And I find that it happens with people who talk to me about the film, too: often their voices shake a bit and they begin to say something and they have to stop because they're upset. GENESIS: That they have seen what American guys have gone throughÐ the degradation to which that part of the world sank when they resort to madness like Russian roulette? WALKEN: Well, many people, of course, see the film in a political way, but I feel it's about young men who go to war in the same sense that young men have always gone to war. I don't see a particular war when I see the film. The story needed a catastrophe and in this case it was this war, but it's really about these people and what happens in a catastrophe. So I find it hard to think about in terms of Òour boys in VietnamÓÐ it seems to me much more universal than that. GENESIS: Did you have any special emotions, yourself, in relation to the Vietnam War? WALKEN: No; I felt then as I feel now that the film is about these particular young men and the catastrophe of war. It is Vietnam because it has to be identified for the story. But, in fact, it's bigger than that; it's not so topical as that. I wasn't there. I have a brother who was there. I knew about the war the same as most Americans, through the newspapers and television. There's a quality of being in that part of the world, so far away, which is hard to describe. You feel very, very isolated and alone. Which is something that you probably wouldn't think ofÐ I certainly didn'tÐ until you go there. It was a quality of life for the soldiers that people don't mention to often. GENESIS: Did your brother tell you about the war, to prepare you for the part? WALKEN: No, he never spoke of it. He mentioned it actually for the first time after he saw the film. He said to meÐ he loved the film and that he was so impressed that we brought out the fact that in a war like that there are two kinds of casualties: the kind that you immediately see, like John, with his leg shot off; and then there's the more subtle, hard-to-identify casualty of the man whose mind and spirit have been damaged, like my character. He was very impressed with the clarity that the picture made about that. GENESIS: Could we delve into the relationship of brotherly affection of the De Niro character to yours, Nick, and to John Savages? Is this typical of the macho guys of the middle or working class? WALKEN: When we went among these Russian-American people in Cleveland to research our roles, it was very impressive to see the passion that they have which is sort of unusual in the generally restrained, slightly distant behavior if most people we know. We have sort of a coolness to our lives, particularly in New York, which is a way of preserving our spaceÐ of having a little privacy. But among these people, who are so close and so passionate, you would see men weep when describing something emotional. And they were physically very demonstrative, You'd be in a bar and, to make a point, they'd hit the barÐ and you'd see the glasses jump up in the air. These are dramatic people; they're ideal vehicles for a story like thisÐ a big, strong, emotional story. (More)