August 4, 2001

3:14 PM

Cristopher Walkenlikes to paint "big schmear paintings," which he says are abstract because he can't draw. "Big, splash, colorful. Like flowers, my paintings are like flowers. I have a whole bunch of them. . . . They're sort of cheery."
posted by NortonDC (16 comments total)

And via Fark comes the retroCRUSH Christopher Walken audio library.
posted by NortonDC at 3:17 PM on August 4, 2001

Is it just me or did the "Walken is creepy/talks funny/is weird" jokes stop getting funny around the time SNL's Jay Mohr couldn't top his Skittles skit. Fark is just crazy about him, and now I'm wishing I had a Walken filter running on my machine.
posted by skallas at 3:28 PM on August 4, 2001

It's just you. The article is much more than that, especially focusing on his dancing.
posted by NortonDC at 3:34 PM on August 4, 2001

"The affinities of the masses... inspire such ennui in me... it is all I can do to summon a dissapated consumptive cough."

Get over it. Walken kicks ass.
posted by GriffX at 4:00 PM on August 4, 2001

GriffX: Indeed he does.

Though undoubtedly he only paints cheery things as a cover for his more sinister motives....
posted by shagoth at 5:59 PM on August 4, 2001

It's not you. This pop culture item's getting strained.

And the article would have been good if the writer had at least asked Walken why or how he thought he had developed his halting intonation.
posted by Joe Hutch at 6:00 PM on August 4, 2001

why or how he thought he had developed his halting intonation.

That's the only thing that's keeping Steve Buscemi from taking the Hollywood freak crown. His ugliness does blow Walken's general creepiness out of the water though.

Walken is just so 1989.
posted by skallas at 7:02 PM on August 4, 2001

One shot. One of the greatest moments in movie history, and most of all because Walken's smile is so natural, so simple, before he blows his brains out. Give this scene to any other actor and you'll see what an actor Walken is. I know it's all engraved on our minds, but this and De Niro pressing his wounded ear made we think, what event will inspire future American film makers like Vietnam did? Sad that Welles fairground scene in The Third Man is so true, but we really will need some real evil to get cinema back on its feet.
posted by Zootoon at 7:43 PM on August 4, 2001

i rather enjoyed reading more about walken. i didn't know he did painting. i wish they'd posted some photos of his work.

thanks for the link, NortonDC.
posted by bwg at 8:48 PM on August 4, 2001

"He is an avid collector of Tupperware."
posted by o2b at 10:31 PM on August 4, 2001

I'm surprised no one has mentioned hot dogs yet.
posted by brownpau at 11:17 PM on August 4, 2001

C'mon, relax. There's just a hype bubble surrounding the video awards.

I think the thing that Walken does best is this cognitive dissonance business. I can't think of any actor who could pull off the insane riff about the watch from Pulp Fiction (written for him by Tarantino, but still). Somebody else -- a DeNiro, even -- wouldn't be able to resist inopportune mugging. Walken deadpans it start to finish. People can tell he's got that control as an actor, and it comes through as wired. So soft-shoe dancing in a video? Sensitive, swishy abstract art? It's man bites dog, baby!
posted by dhartung at 11:46 AM on August 5, 2001

we really will need some real evil to get cinema back on its feet.
Don't want to hijack this thread, which is and must remain about Walken, but this theory is flawed: the Holocaust is certainly the twentieth century's most evil crime, maybe of all time, but no great "movies" came from it, only amazing "documentaries" like Shoah and Nuit et Brouillard (unless you think Schindler's List is the greatest movie ever, but then..). So filmakers don't always need evil to create great art -- otherwise only war movies would be any good
posted by matteo at 1:30 PM on August 5, 2001

filmakers don't always need evil to create great art -- otherwise only war movies would be any good

Yeah, war is always evil, and furthermore, it's the only evil.
posted by kindall at 1:49 PM on August 5, 2001

the Holocaust is certainly the twentieth century's most evil crime

Armenia? Ukraine? Cambodia? China? Rwanda? Sudan? Hiroshima? Afghanistan? Bosnia?

maybe of all time

The Assyrians? The Crusades? The slave trade? The invasion/exploitation of the Americas and Australia?

While the Holocaust was a terrible thing, it was just one of countless examples of a largely successful attempt at genocide throughout human history.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 5:55 PM on August 5, 2001

All of the things in this article propel Christopher Walken way up to the top ten of my secret boyfriend list. I don't care if he is thirty-seven years my senior.
posted by sammy at 6:00 PM on August 5, 2001