The Passion of Christopher Walken

Another Separated at Birth. I have always thought that these soulful photos from the 1928 silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc (starring Renee Jeanne Falconetti) resemble a young Christopher Walken, doe eyes, eerie gaze, great cheekbones and all. The fact that Walken looked almost feminine seems ironic in light of the fact that he aged into something more like deeply weathered shoe leather. 

I've seen people claim that the very young Walken (who is plastered all over the internet, being a child star from birth) looks like Scarlett Johansson, and it's somewhat true: the bow-shaped lips and Scandinavian-looking facial structure are congruent. I've also seen him compared to Jon Voight, and that one I can get on-board with because I have mistaken him for Voight more than once. They've aged similarly, the way a peach ages. When the juice goes out, the skin shrivels. Blonde men are thin-skinned like women, and are more likely to suffer this fate. But his twinkly ironic smile still flashes like a searchlight, igniting his enigmatic face most delightfully.

I don't know if there is a Walken biography out there - no doubt if there is, it would be inadequate to cover the incredible breadth and depth of his career, which he is so deceptively nonchalant about. He talks as if it fell into his lap. Well, maybe it did, but he'd be the first. 

I'm re-reading a massive bio of Marlon Brando by Peter Manso - well over 900 pages, and this was written before Brando died! Another couple hundred could have been added, and maybe was. This is the sort of book where the binding falls apart, where it makes a welt in your lap when you read it.

We need that sort of book on Walken, because his career is vastly more varied and detailed than Brando's, without being derailed by chasing after social issues which always looked a little like publicity stunts. Sacheen Littlefeather, indeed. A time and a place.

I don't know, however. He is a chameleon and seems to skate over things, perhaps for self-protection. I have seen only one picture of him with his wife, a tiny woman who barely comes up to his shoulder, and his pose with her is so protective he seems to enfold her. He takes any old work now, just takes it because it's all he has, seemingly. He gives the same interviews over and over again, same questions, same answers. Though he is a crack dancer and has had moments of brilliance in this long and wide career, this huge map spreading out in every direction, he has also been in some turkeys - quite a lot of them - just for something to do. I winced a bit to see him in a Superbowl ad for some kind of car, in which he did a blatant parody of himself. This, when he despises scriptwriters who try to "Walkenize" his part.

But at least he didn't self-destruct like all those other child stars did, which is pretty amazing. He got married just once when he was very young, stayed that way, and doesn't talk about it. This is a definite sign of sanity. And no drastic visions, so he isn't likely to be hitched to a pole and set on fire any time soon.

Kitten or ice cream? (an animation)

Ginger ninja

 

 

Mad About the Boy: the lost lyrics

SOCIETY WOMAN:

I met him at a party
Just a couple of years ago
He was rather over-hearty and ridiculous

But as I'd seen him on the screen he cast a certain spell
I basked in his attraction
For a couple of hours or so
His manners were a fraction too meticulous

If he was real or not I couldn't tell
But like a silly fool I fell

Mad about the boy
I know it's stupid to be mad about the boy
I'm so ashamed of it
But must admit

The sleepless nights I've had 

About the boy
On the silver screen

He melts my foolish heart in every single scene
Although I'm quite aware
That here and there
Are traces of the cad 

About the boy

Lord knows I'm not a fool-girl
I really shouldn't care
Lord knows I'm not a school-girl
In the flurry of her first affair

Will it ever cloy
This odd diversity of misery and joy
I'm feeling quite insane and young again
And all because I'm mad about the boy

SCHOOL GIRL:

Home work, home work
Every night there's homework
While Elsie practices the gas goes pop
I wish, I wish she'd stop

Oh dear, oh dear
Here it's always, 'No dear
You can't go out again, you must stay home
You'd waste your money on that common Picturedrome
Don't shirk—stay here and do your work.'

Yearning, yearning
How my heart is burning
I'll see him Saturday in Strong Man's Pain
And then on Monday and on Friday week again

To me, he is the sole man
Who can kiss as well as Coleman
I could faint whenever there's a close-up of his lips

Though John Barrymore is larger
When my hero's on his charger
Even Douglass Fairbanks Junior hasn't smaller hips
If only he could know
That I adore him so

Mad about the boy
It's simply scrumptous to be mad about the boy
I know that quite sincerely
Houseman really
Wrote The Shropshire Lad about the boy

In my English prose
I've done a tracing of his forehead and his nose
And there is, honour bright
A certain slight
Effect of Galahad about the boy

I've talked to Rosie Hooper
She feels the same as me
She says that Gary Cooper
Doesn't thrill her to the same degree
In Can Love Destroy?

He meets with Garbo in a suit of corduroy
He gives a little frown
And knocks her down
Oh dear, oh dear, I'm mad about the boy

COCKNEY:

Every Wednesday afternoon
I get a little time off from three to eleven
Then I go to the picture house 

and taste a little of my particular heaven

He appears
In a little while
Through a mist of tears
I can see him smiling
Above me
Every picture I see him in
Every lovers' caress
Makes my wonderful dreams begin

Makes me long to confess
That if he ever looked at me
And thought perhaps I was worth the trouble to
Love me
I'd give in and I wouldn't care
However far from the path of virtue he'd
Shove me!

Just supposing our love was brief
If he treated me rough
I'd be happy beyond belief
Once would be enough

Mad about the boy
I know I'm potty but I'm mad about the boy!
He sets me 'eart on fire
With love's desire
In fact I've got it bad about the boy!
When I do the rooms
I see his face in all the brushes and the brooms!

Last week I strained me back
And got the sack
And had a row with dad about the boy
I'm finished with Navarro, (He thrills me to the marrow)
I'm tired of Richard Dix, (I sit through all his tricks!)
I'm pierced by Cupid's arrow
Every Wed-nes-day, from four to six!

'Ow I should enjoy
To let 'im treat me like a plaything or a toy
I'd give my all to 'im
And crawl to 'im
So 'elp me God, I'm mad about the boy

TART:

It seems a little silly
For a girl my age and weight
To walk down Piccadilly
In a haze of love

It ought to take a good deal more to get a bad girl down
I should have been exempt, for
My particular kind of fate
Has taught me such contempt for
Every phase of love

And now I've been and spent my last half-crown
To weep about a painted clown

Mad about the boy
It's pretty funny but I'm mad about the boy
He has a gay appeal
That makes me feel
There may be something sad about the boy

Walking down the street
His eyes look out at me from people that I meet
I can't believe it's true
But when I'm blue
In some strange way I'm glad about the boy

I'm hardly sentimental
Love isn't so sublime
I have to pay my rental
And I can't afford to waste much time

If I could employ
A little magic that would finally destroy
This dream that pains me
And enchains me

But I can't because I'm mad about the boy

Words and music by Noel Coward

Cartoon Harold Lloyd!

A few snippets from cartoons, previews and other animated features.

Bottoms up!

Harold toasts the New Year. What will 2019 bring? Walls or bridges?

Christopher Walken Lost Cartoon - He sings! He dances!

As a neophyte Walkenite (almost), I found this animation both entertaining and mysterious. This may well be a rotoscope, a technique by which a live subject can be traced or filled in (somehow) with animation. Rotoscoped Walken? Why not. I'm finding out more about him, and it's a weird enthusiasm because I am not entirely sure I like him. There is this tough-guy shark-eyed quality there, though who knows how much of that is the actor in him. His dancing can be inspired, but it's more often loose-shanked and spread-eagled and not always very graceful. His incredible spin in Pennies from Heaven is not quite matched anywhere else, and too often he does a cornball '70s shuffle with disco arm-rotations, as in the ludicrous alien-dances in Communion.

That said, he has a seductive side, eyes that almost seem to be kohl-rimmed like Valentino's, which usually indicates uncertain sexual orientation. No one ever says this of Walken, but how can you miss the arrows of intimacy firing out of his unsettling Nordic-looking gaze? Death-rays or love-rays or something-rays seem to emanate, with the sense he could pull you in if only he wanted to.

It's said Walken works too much, and I think it's true. He does not save himself, and in fact I sometimes think he will appear in any old crap because he doesn't know what else to do with himself. The "accent" - his odd way of speaking - can just about disappear, as when he narrated a quite good piece about his idol Gene Kelly for TCM, or just sproinggg out of control like a defective door-hinge, as in when he's improvising on the creatures in his back yard - the "grahndd-hahhg", the "yewje ruc-coons", the "hum-ming-baeds" (and if you slow down Walken's speech, as I have often done, you notice an odd precision of consonants, a very clear and almost crisp punctuation which is one of the things that makes his slice-and-dice style of speech so unique).

Then again. He's not ageing very well, and looks loose and jowly, as most heavy smokers do when they age (yes, he's one of those, I'm afraid). The very young Walken looks like a freakin' girl. I mean it! He couldn't help it, I guess, but he looks like somebody's jailhouse punk with those Clara bow bee-stung lips and the big, innocent eyes. Makes you wonder about him, it really does. He has one wife, that anybody knows about, one house, never goes out (except to look at the hum-ming-baeds), makes movies and makes movies and plans to keep on making movies until he dies.

So do I like him? Do I find him shocking when I dredge up yet another clip of him blowing somebody's face off? Does it get tiresome to see him interviewed one more time with all the same questions and all the same answers, safe, safe? And playing crappy old Grandpa shit? Like has nothing to do with it. I sort of fell in. It was fascination, I know.

Je t'ai rencontré simplement
Et tu n'as rien fait pour chercher à me plaire
Je t'aime pourtant
D'un amour ardent
Dont rien, je le sens, ne pourra me défaire.
Tu seras toujours mon amant
Et je crois en toi comme au bonheur suprême.
Je te fuis parfois, mais je reviens quand même
C'est plus fort que moi… je t'aime !

Lorsque je souffre, il me faut tes yeux
Profonds et joyeux
Afin que j'y meure,
Et j'ai besoin pour revivre, amour,
De t'avoir un jour
Moins qu'un jour, une heure,
De me bercer un peu dans tes bras
Quand mon cœur est las,
Quand parfois je pleure.
Ah ! crois-le bien, mon chéri, mon aimé, mon roi,
Je n'ai de bonheur qu'avec toi.

Turkey trot: Harold walks his prize turkey home

 From the delightful domestic comedy Hot Water.

Abbey Road: the animation

"I've made a huge mistake"

Walken dance in 24 frames

Mad about the boy

Snowball fight, Clydesdale-style