One of Leonardo DiCaprio's most memorable experiences making films.
Click image to enlarge
|
"I actually had a scene with
him [Walken] where it was one of my most memorable experiences
making films – I remember, and I don't know if you remember the
scene, but – the scene where I come back to see my dad and he's
talking about my mom and all of the sudden he (DiCaprio wincing in
pain; he falters)... he like kind of hyperventilates. (Again he
mimics Walken clearing his throat). And I was sitting there across
the table from him while he was doing that, and it was completely
unexpected. It wasn't in the script. It was his own... completely
his own doing.
I thought the man was having a heart attack in front of me. I
honestly was about two seconds away from saying, 'Cut! There's
something wrong with Chris!'
It's a testament how he is as an actor. I was blown away. It is [one
of those times] where you have a cinematic experience like that,
where you are so forced into the world where you think that it's
actual reality." -- Leonardo DiCaprio, IGN FilmForce, Dec 2002. |
Scotland, PA. writer / director, Billy Morrissette, had cause to sweat a little.
Click image to enlarge |
"Christopher Walken called me and said, 'It's a good script and I like
the dialogue, but the ending is f***ing stupid.' He scared the
hell out of me. He didn't arrive until the twelfth day of filming,
and I did not sleep until then. He had a zillion notes about what
he wanted to change. I could see everybody watching me sweat.
But he was actually really great and very funny." -- Billy
Morrissette, Movieline, Feb / Mar 2002. |
Johnny Galecki, co-star in Suicide Kings, talks about working with Walken.
Click image to enlarge
|
"Walken is incredible; he's
mesmerizing. He's just such a unique talent. I just tried
to absorb as much as I could from him...He approaches his films as if
they're his first one. It's as if everything relies on this one
film. He has not become comfortable or lazy or overconfident in
any way. There was certainly a paternal feeling with Walken both
onscreen and off which we were only too happy to be a part of...
"[Walken] likes to kind of think aloud and lets you
know where his thoughts are and where he's at in a scene either mentally
or emotionally and lets you know where he's going with it. A lot
of those thoughts that he spoke aloud became lines and were left in
the movie and gave us the freedom to do the same. In every scene
there is some ad-libbing at the very least." -- Johnny Galecki, The Diamonback,
1997. |
Abel Ferrara, on directing King of New York.
Click image to enlarge |
"The first day we were shooting,
we did that scene with the Italians around the table. And Chris
says to me, 'I don't like pointing a gun at another actor.' And
I was like, 'Oh, man, we've got to shoot a whole movie with guns and
you're telling me you don't like pointing a gun at another actor?!'
And then we did the scene and Chris shot that guy five times after he
was dead; that wasn't in the script! He says he's afraid of guns,
and then you say 'Action' and he became -- how do you say it? - very
efficient." -- Abel Ferrara, Entertainment Weekly, 03-17-2001. |
Chris talks about being frightened by Sean Penn on the set of At Close Range.
Click images to enlarge
|
"[Sean Penn] Really scared me. You
can see it on the screen, because he did it very quickly. In the
middle of the take, he ran off the set and I heard him say to the propman,
'Give me the other gun.' When he came back I was concerned that
this wasn't the gun he had left with. Who knows? He's acting
like some crazy actor and pointing it at my face, and it really scared
me. It was near my eye. It was an empty gun - he knew exactly
what he was doing. He just wanted to scare me, which is what he
did. I got mad afterward and yelled at him, then I said thank
you. It's great when actors do that for each other. It's very
generous." -- Christopher Walken, Playboy magazine, 1997.
"…but I understood that it was a good thing to do.
All good actors do that. I did exactly the same thing to Matthew
Broderick when I pointed the gun at him in Biloxi Blues, on his
take. I set it up with the prop man beforehand. He was this
guy from New York who was sort of like a gangster and he had another
gun in his back pocket. I said to him, "When I say 'Give me the
other gun,' say to me, 'No, Chris,' and then I'm going to say to you,
'Don't argue with me, just give me the other gun' - ‘Oh’ - and then
he reluctantly gave me the other gun. He enjoyed doing it.
Matthew didn't know what was going on. I think I actually
threw the other gun down and took it from him. It was exactly
what happened to me a couple of years earlier." -- Christopher Walken, Film Comment,
August 1992. |
It was destiny to make Homeboy with Mickey Rourke.
Click image to enlarge
|
"Mickey Rourke and I were in Heavens
Gate together; he had this tiny part and I was playing whatsisname.
We were sitting up there in the mountains talking about...dinosaurs.
And I told him about this thing I had read in some science magazine,
that there's a theory that dinosaurs really never disappeared at all.
That in fact all they did was get smaller and smaller, their scales
turned into feathers and they flew away-and that in fact dinosaurs are
still with us, there just birds. And Mickey said, ‘That's interesting,’
and he started telling me about this movie that he was going to do someday
about a boxer and it was called Homeboy. You know,
I remember also he told me at the time, ‘There's this guy, the fighters
manager, and your gonna play this part.’ I said, ‘Okay Mickey,
lets go.’ So almost ten years went by and there we were making
it. And I said to him, ‘Why don’t I tell that story about the
birds and dinosaurs?’ He said, ‘Right.’ And there is that
scene at the beach with all the seagulls, talking about dinosaurs.
It's completely disconnected from anything going on in the movie, but
I think it's one of the things in the movie...It's real. Here
are these two guys who are really kind of victims, talking about the
origin and destiny of dinosaurs." -- Christopher Walken, Film Comment,
August 1992. |
How Max Schreck got his molars - Batman Returns.
Click image to enlarge |
"It's an example of what a really
good director [Tim Burton] is. At the beginning of the shoot I
was standing with him, waiting for them to light the set, and I said
that in The Great Gatsby, Gatsby and Nick Carraway are having
lunch with the gangster Meyer Wolfsheim, and Nick notices that Wolfsheim
is wearing cuff links made out of human molars. Burton calls over
his assistant and says, 'Get him cuff links made out of human molars.'
Within half an hour the guy comes back with them, and I wore them throughout
the movie. It's something the audience wouldn't know, but Burton
knew it would be good for me to have them." -- Christopher Walken, Playboy
magazine, 1997. |
Chris describes playing Cyrano in Who Am I This Time.
Click image to enlarge |
"It was really hammy, but I did try
to knock their socks off. That was the last thing we shot.
They had an auditorium full of local people, in the small town out side
of Chicago. They were invited, given sandwiches or something,
and we just had the curtain go up, I made my entrance as Cyrano, and
I think we shot it in one take. They were like kids in a high
school audience, thrilled to be there. It was perfect. I
don't know if they would have continued to be that way, but...it was
sort of like the real thing, like an amateur production of Cyrano." -- Christopher Walken, Film Comment, August 1992. |
Walken, discussing the Russian roulette scene in The Deer Hunter.
Click image to enlarge |
"At one point Bob [DeNiro] wanted
to put a live round in the gun...just to crank the intensity.
And we had a whole conference about 'Okay, we're gonna do it, but we're
gonna check this thing 5,000 times. We went to a lot of extremes
on that film.
"I don't even like holding them. Whenever I hold a gun, I want to get it out of my hand as
quick as possible." -- Christopher
Walken, Entertainment Weekly, 03-17-2001. |
Fears while filming the helicopter scene for The Deer Hunter.
Click image to enlarge |
"We got in the helicopter, the camera
was hand held, and John Savage was behind me and the door was wide open
and there was no safety belts or anything. The helicopter took
off and went right up, I think a thousand feet-up as high as the Empire
State Building. I was looking out this door and I said, 'John,
grab my belt, hang on to me, do not let go whatever happens' - I couldn't
believe I was sitting there, next to this open door without even a rope
around me or anything. And the camera was rolling...I thought
if the helicopter tilted sideways, I'd be gone." -- Christopher Walken, Film Comment,
August 1992. |
|
