IN THE DANGER ZONE
Christopher Walken
by Chuck Pfeifer and Mark Matousek Photographs by Janusz Kawa

ItÕs nearly 30 years since Christopher Walken made his off-Broadway debut opposite Liza Minelli in Best Foot Forward, and while the career has had its detours it has also brought its just rewards, including an Oscar for The Deer Hunter and memorable roles in At Close Range and Annie Hall, among a dozen others. The quality that keeps the jobs coming is best summed up as ÒstreetÓ; Walken is the dazed (though grown-up) punk with the evil eye and the sweet underbelly - Jon Voigt after 20 in the slammer. A bakerÕs son from Astoria, Queens, Walken grew up with show-biz tunnel vision and went pro while still in his teens. Since studying with Wynn Handman and at the Actors Studio (and being named Most Promising Personality of 1966 at the age of 21 by Theater World), heÕs never stayed for long away from the stage, stretching from Shakespeare to ball ÔnÕ shuffle, or film (Next Stop Greenwich Village, Pennies From Heaven, HeavenÕs Gate, The Dead Zone). This spring Walken has had a triple bill: Biloxi Blues, The Milagro Beanfield War, and Homeboy, in which he appears opposite buddy Mickey Rourke. Looking incongruous in a black suit and hair the colour of Iggy PopÕs, the actor stopped by for a quick interrogation.

MARK MATOUSEK: Are you as mysterious as you look?
CHRISTOPHER WALKEN: I’ve heard that. No, I don’t think there’s anything mysterious about me. Maybe it’s an inherent reticence - I’ve been called taciturn. I think that if you’re quiet, there’s an automatic mystery enacted that is not necessarily indicative of anything. It’s really just “solitariness”.

MM: Often quiet people use their quietness to intrigue.
CW: Well, as an actor it’s useful and it’s not useful. There’s an expression with actors that less is more. Sometimes that works. On the other hand there are great actors who don’t go by that principle at all. Where would Laurence Olivier be with less is more? Or Groucho Marx, for that matter? I think I have a natural tendency to watch. That’s what I do best. I’ve never really participated in sports, for instance. My exercise is jogging. An observer is not a bad thing for an actor to be. .... Actually, I’ve been criticized for not being inhibited enough onstage. There I tend to be an extrovert, but not in the movies. I wish I were more of an extrovert in the movies - I might get different kinds of parts.

CHUCK PFEIFER: You seem to appeal to women almost universally. Is it for the same reason that you’ve said you think makes good movies: “the balance between the monk and the beast”? How do you think you are perceived by mainstream America?
CW: I have no idea. I suppose I’d be the last to know. The monk and the beast is from a book by Graham Greene. He says that one of the tasks a person has in life is to build the bridge between the monk and the beast. I think it’s what the Greeks called the golden mean - the balance, some kind of harmony that you find for yourself in the civilised and sensitive area between your extremes.

CP: I think women like to see vulnerability in men. That’s your appeal.
CW: People with big limits on either end are interesting too. There’s a part of me that’s very monkish, almost reclusive and spare, and there’s another part that’s excessive and chaotic. Dangerous. There’s a side that’s extremely emotional and there’s no reasoning with it, but there’s a side that’s very clear and maybe even predictable. Dependable. I’ve been married for 20 years. I live in a house. There’s a part of my life that’s very conservative. You see, I have a real sense of built-in caution that has served me well. An old friend of mine used to call it the “Chinese line.” People draw very definitive lines for themselves that are to be avoided. But the Chinese line is a big space, very broad; you can ice-skate on the Chinese line. It’s a gray area where you can come and go; you let people take liberties with you, you take liberties with them. But it is there, and you don’t want to cross it.

MM: That’s the dark side of you that people pick up on - a sense of contained wildness.
CW: It’s what I mean by the heart ruling the head. I cry very easily and laugh very easily. In a way that’s what kids have. It’s interesting to me how good actors keep their youth in a funny kind of way. I remember watching Richard Burton on the stage a couple of times. With that life - all that publicity and fame and the difficulties - he still had some kind of innocence. I mean that in the best way.

CP: Do you have any children?
CW: No, never had them. Not on purpose, just never had them. Of course, I’ve thought about children - I’m at that age - but we’ve just never had them.

MM: What are your passions?
CW: Working. When I’m good I’m very proud. When I’m bad, I feel terrible.

MM: Are you ever bad?
CW: Oh sure. I miss a lot. But sometimes I hit the bull’s-eye too. If there were different acting schools, as there are different schools of painting, I think I’d be an abstract actor. [laughs] I look at my subject in a fragmented way and when I do see the truth about something it’s obliquely, by feeling more than by reason. I never analyze myself or anybody else. I just don’t find that works in my life or anyone else’s. People do things for the most subtle and mysterious reasons.

CP: You must have very good personal discipline in your work.
CW: I feel that as an actor I’m original. And I’m happy about that. I don’t think anybody would get me mixed up with anybody else. I feel that each time I go out it’s got my stamp on it.

MM: What is the greatest misconception about you?
CW: I don’t know, but I think that movies have a lot to do with it. Onstage I tend to play comedies, but on film, for some reason, I started to play heavies and villains, dark people, disturbed people, eccentric people, and because of the cost factor producers tend to want to use you the same way over and over. Of course, it may have something to do with me and my personality. That’s just how it translates onto the screen. I grew up in showbusiness. My education and references are all from showbusiness. I don’t even call it theater or acting or anything. I’m not Evan sure I am an actor. The facts of my life are very ordinary and conservative, but I do tend to play these guys. I’d love to make a movie where there were no guns, or a comedy with a woman, jokes, a happy ending and all that.

CP: Weren’t you going to do the Jack Abbott story, about the criminal/writer whom Norman Mailer helped get out of prison? He came to New York and knifed a waiter to death in the Village.
CW: When he was on trial I asked Mailer if he could get me into the courtroom because I wanted to take a look at the guy. He said no. But I must say that I was so turned off that I never followed up on it.

MM: Do you often come across material that’s too distasteful to do?
CW: Absolutely, but for me the big question is, is it intriguing? For instance, in At Close Range, I played this horrible man, but they did a very interesting thing with that movie, and I think I did too. It was based on a real family. The man I played was evil and had been in jail. We had photographs of him, but I quickly left that alone; it was repulsive. The characters in that movie were awful, but they had also been made funny. Much more interesting than the real people.
When I look at a role, I try to find the equation that makes it true in the context of the film just as it would be true in real life. People always talk about The Deer Hunter, for instance. It became a very political movie. I saw nothing political about it. What is it that happens to real men with romantic notions about war? They think it’s adventure, that it’s fun. Then they go out and get their legs blown off. I’m sure that the equation there has been the same since the beginning of time. It has nothing to do with Vietnam, Russia, America, anything. It has to do with real men and the illusions of young men about war. That’s what it was about for me. Those were the same people you would have found in any age or time.

CP: You’ve done good work with Jonathan Demme, haven’t you?
CW: Actually, one of the things I am proud of is the work I did with him - a film called Who Am I This Time? with Susan Sarandon. It was about a guy who was supposed to be an idiot yet managed a theater company. In the daytime he worked in a hardware store and at night he’d play all the great parts - Cyrano de Bergerac, Stanley Kowalski, everybody - and he played them all the same. It was taken from a very nice story that Kurt Vonnegut wrote.

CP: I heard that in Homeboy you and Mickey Rourke did a great deal of improvisation.
CW: In the case of Homeboy, it seemed a good idea, particularly for my character, because Mickey plays someone who doesn’t say much. We’re together a lot, and if two people don’t say much then you just sit there and look at each other. So I ended up talking nonstop. The only thing that matters is whether it works, right?
It also depends on the script and how fully developed it is. In theater, improvisation is very valuable during rehearsal. But, of course, when you’re onstage you have to stick pretty much to a predictable and clear structure. For me, the rehearsal process in the theater is very much like acting for the camera. The spontaneous thing - what I call “happy accidents” - can be magic in film. The glass gets knocked over, you say something and look. It might be funny, it’s alive, it looks like it wasn’t planned. That’s spontaneous energy. Sometimes for the actor it’s the most valuable thing in a movie. In Homeboy something would happen and somebody would say something and everybody would crack up.

CP: Being a former West Pointer and combat officer, I can’t wait to see your performance as Sergeant Merwin Toomey in Biloxi Blues.
CW: In Biloxi Blues, Mike Nichols brought in a real drill sergeant who worked with us just to show us the details - what the vernacular is and so forth. He was a black guy, and he was not like any drill sergeant I ever saw in the movies. He was real nice. You could see that he was very tough, but he was extremely polite, soft-spoken, very tolerant .....

CP: You’ve just finished The Milagro Beanfield War, directed by Robert Redford. Like Mike Nichols, he’s a performer turned director. Are there great differences in their respective approaches?
CW: All directors work their own way. Redford was very meticulous. He covered the scenes very well. But the director’s approach depends on the script too. The script for Biloxi Blues was extremely concise. It’s taken from a play; the dialogue was the dialogue and there was no adlibbing - quite a different experience from, say, Homeboy. If you read the script from The Deer Hunter, You’ll see every word in the movie is from the script. That’s the way it was before the shooting and the way it stayed. I think the good directors move with the script and with the actors. Again, on Milagro Beanfield War, the script was very complete. The dialogue was the dialogue, at least as far as I was concerned. Redford shoots scenes very completely, with lots of angles and coverage.

CP: What does Nichols do?
CW: Well, Biloxi Blues is a different thing. Milagro Beanfield War is a mostly exterior movie - mountains, horseback, fields, lots of kids, - whereas the army movie took place mostly in barracks. That makes quite a difference in how the camera works.

MM: With three films out this season do you feel satisfied?
CW: Well, no, I’m always dissatisfied. Sometimes I’m very happy with what I’ve done and sometimes I get depressed that I’m not better.

MM: In the ladies’ department you’ve never failed .....
CW: I do like their company very much. I’ve always gotten along with women very well.

MM: Better than with men?
CW: Yes.

MM: Why is that?
CW: I don’t know. I’ve thought about it. I have a heavy streak of competitiveness that probably doesn’t apply to women. I get jealous of men but never of women. Professionally, I mean. Women are very honest and funny with me. I don’t know if they always are with men. With me they use their best jokes.

MM: Are you seductive?
CW: I hope so. What would an actor be without that? [laughs] I think in order to be seductive you have to be trustworthy. As far as women go I notice they’re very keen on who they can trust. I think that’s a good part of being attractive to them.

MM: So you’re a trustworthy man?
CW: Yeah. I don’t fool with anybody.

*****
Transcribed by Carolyn Hinton