10 Things You Never Knew You Always Wanted to Know About Christopher Walken

 
Recently I started thinking about celebrity biographies I'd like to read.  Among the front-runners: Bill Murray and Christopher Walken.  Amazingly, neither one has a published biography -- authorized or unauthorized.  Murray has written a paean to golf, called Cinderella Story (Three Rivers, 2000).  It has plenty of the actor's trademark wry humor, but it reveals very little about the man or his films.

Christopher Walken hates golf.  That's one of the many things I learned from reading Robert Schnakenberg's Christopher Walken: A to Z (Quirk Books, 2008).  Schnakenberg's book is not a biography, so I'm not going to review it as a biography.  Instead I'm going to do what the author does... Provide a list of random facts.  This is not necessarily a cop-out, because.... well, Christopher Walken is pretty random.  I've always believed that, if I met him in real life, he would be just like his performance in the SNL "Census Taker" skit...



We all know that Christopher Walken speaks without punctuation, which has made him one of the most often-imitated actors of all time, and we all know that Christopher Walken can dance (see Pennies from Heaven and that famous FatBoy Slim video), but here are a few things you might not know about Christopher Walken...

Random Fact #1.  Christopher Walken's name isn't really Christopher.  It's Ronald.  When Ronald was about 25 years old, he decided that Christopher sounded more "romantic."  In later years, he thought about changing his name again -- to something "more to the point, a little dark"... like Jack or Nick or Max.  He has played three different characters named Max -- in A View to a Kill (his turn as a James Bond villain), Batman Returns and Kiss Toledo Goodbye.

Walken.  Max Walken.

Random Fact #2.  Christopher Walken credits Jerry Lewis (who he met during a 1953 appearance on the Colgate Comedy Hour) with inspiring him to become an actor.  He credits Elvis Presley with inspiring his hair.

 
Random Fact #3.  Christopher Walken loves Bugs Bunny.  Quote: "He's so smart, he's so funny, he's got such a great attitude.  Bugs Bunny is the spirit of New York.... You can't fool Bugs Bunny.  That's all I have to say.  He's on to everybody."

Random Fact #4.  Christopher Walken was originally considered for the role of Han Solo in Star Wars.  Other near-misses: Deckard in Blade Runner, Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ, Dave Kujan (Palminteri's role) in The Usual Suspects, Jack Byrnes (DeNiro's role) in Meet the Parents, and Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean.  He also tried in vain for years to get a John Holmes biopic off the ground -- with himself in the lead role, of course.



Random Fact #5.  Christopher Walken doesn't like restaurants because he doesn't like people touching his food.  As a result, he is an accomplished chef.  He even had his own cooking show in 1999, called Cooking with Chris.  Since then, he has occasionally posted cooking videos on the Internet.  Or, rather, a friend has posted them... because Christopher Walken doesn't own a computer and apparently doesn't know much about the Internet.  At one point he speculated about charging Internet viewers "to take hits, or something like that."  I don't know about you, but I'd love to "take hits" with Christopher Walken.



On a related note...

Random Fact #6.  Christopher Walken smells like garlic.

Random Fact #7.  Christopher Walken loves cats.  "They're so interesting," he says, "and not only that, they're low maintenance."  In 1988, he played a singing cat in Puss in Boots, which he privately regards as "one of my best movies" even though "nobody has ever seen this."  In 2001, he wrote a forward to a book called the KISS Guide to Cat Care, a "handbook to feline husbandry" that had nothing to do with the heavy metal band.  In his younger days, he also worked as a lion tamer in a New York circus.  Yup.



Random Fact #8.  Christopher Walken hates guns.  Seriously.  Frank White hates guns.  Who knew?  He's also hates neckties. 

Random Fact #9.  Christopher Walken was once a moon-worshipper.  Now, he uses this old rumor as a gag.  "Sometimes when they call for me to be on set, I'll stand outside my trailer and look up at the sky for a long time.  A really long time.  Finally, someone will ask, 'What are you looking at?'  Next thing you know, you have ten people standing looking up at the sky for no particular reason.  Then I'll just casually walk off."  I'm not sure if this has any bearing on his performance in Sleepy Hollow, which he claims was based on Lon Chaney Jr.'s performance in The Wolf Man.

Random Fact #10.  Christopher Walken wants to make a zombie movie, or so he told Conan O'Brien in a 2003 interview.  I'd like to think that if Christopher Walken wants to make a zombie movie, somebody in Hollywood will make that happen... as a public service.  This needs to happen. 

Random Fact #11.  Unlike Bill Murray, who feels that being loved by fans is a bit of a burden ("It's a lot of pressure," he explains, because "you're expected to love back, and hell hath no fury like a fan scorned!"), Christopher Walken seems to like the constant attention.  He says, "If I walk down the street and nothing happens... I get sad.  And, then, you know, like a miracle, an angel, somebody will say, 'Hey, Chris!'  And then I go, "Ah!  Well, it's okay.'"  So, by all means, if you see him... give the man a shout-out.

Now, how to conclude this post?  Hmmmm.

How about... a bedtime.... story...

Hollywood Stairs

Our latest weekend excursion was into the heart of old Hollywood.  For readers of Charles Fleming's Secret Stairs, we were following walk #37 ("an exotic stairwalk" around the back side of the Hollywood Bowl) and walk #35 ("a most spiritual walk" above Franklin Avenue, west of Beachwood).  Oddly, there weren't a lot of stairs on these two walks... but there were plenty of fascinating sights.

The first walk revolved around an architectural feature with a storied history.  Practically every twist and turn in the path offers a different perspective on the High Tower above the secluded neighborhood of Alta Loma.  The tower, which houses a private elevator for people who live on the hill, was made famous by Robert Altman's film The Long Goodbye, which is based on a novel by Raymond Chandler.  According to one website, Chandler also used the tower as inspiration for Marlowe's apartment in his novel The High Window... but I recently read The High Window and didn't see any indication of that.

High Tower from afar

High Tower Drive

High Tower from above (Marlowe's apartment building to the right)

High Tower close

Marlowe's private elevator

The walkway at the top is accessible to the public but it feels very private -- largely because this is one of very few neighborhoods in Los Angeles that's not accessible by car.  You might think that the neighbors would be put off by a couple of nosy tourists wandering through their enclave, but that wasn't our experience.  In fact, I've been consistently surprised by how friendly people have been in nearly every neighborhood we've visited on the Secret Stairs tours.  On multiple occasions, people have seen the book in our hands and started telling us proudly about their neighborhood.  In a city where so many people don't even talk to the people who live right next door to them, that's refreshing. 

Just off the beaten path was another hidden treasure -- a Frank Lloyd Wright house that was built around the same time as the Ennis House, using a similar design.  As soon as I saw it, I immediately wondered why I hadn't heard  of it.  The answer is simple enough: The Samuel Freeman House hasn't been prominently featured as a filming location.   As a result, it apparently doesn't get as much love as the Ennis House, which recently underwent an major restoration.  Like Ennis, the Freeman House suffered structural damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and remains closed to the public.  (Ditto nearby Hollyhock House.  Frank Lloyd Wright's Egyptian-themed treasures have all taken a beating at the hands of Mother Nature.)

Our second walk offered some equally exotic locations.  The first was the Vedanta Society temple, an active monastery with deep connections to L.A.'s literary scene.  This is the primary setting of Christopher Isherwood's book My Guru and His Disciple.

Isherwood was turned on to the place by a close friend of his in 1939, when the temple was still relatively new.  At first, the British expat says he regarded Vedanta with suspicion, and Hindus in general as "stridently emotional mysterymongers whose mumbo jumbo was ridiculous."   He resolved, however, to keep an open mind and decided to give Swami Ramakrishna "six months of honest effort" before he would publicly declare Vedanta a sham.  By the end of the period, he had become a formal devotee of Ramakrishna. He concluded: "To live this synthesis of East and West is the most valuable kind of pioneer work I can imagine - never mind who approves or disapproves."

Here's what he had to say about the temple itself: "The atmosphere is extraordinarily calming, and yet alive, not sleepy.  Someone said to me that it's like being in a wood.  This is a very good description.  Just as, in a wood, you feel the trees alive all around you, so in the shrine the air seems curiously alsert.  Sometimes it is as if the whole shrine room becomes your brain and is filled with thought." 

A Hindu temple in Hollywood

Of course, old Hollywood is a known hotbed for esoteric religions.  Right down the street from the Vedanta temple is Krotona, former home of the Southern California Theosophical Society, as well as the infamous "church" of Scientology.  Quasi-religious groups like these seemed to spring up overnight during the Hollywood studio era, when America's first movie stars were congregating here.

Former Krotona residence - now an apartment building

Our tour guide pointed out two former homes of Charlie Chaplin, as well as the former residences of Hopalong Cassidy and Barbara Stanwyck.  The Stanwyck estate, now known as Hollymont Castle, was especially intriguing.  I have always associated Barbara Stanwyck with actresses like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, whose iconic status as screen sirens in the 1930s and 1940s somehow morphed into b-movie status as hellish harpies in the 1950s and 1960s.  I think of it as Norma Desmond syndrome.  Appropriately enough, Stanwyck's former home is reputedly haunted... and looks it.

Hollymont Castle

Here's what the book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites has to say about it and its Pepto-Bismol colored neighbor: "The two houses at 6215 and 6221 have reportedly been haunted for years, with countless examples of furniture chasing people around rooms nad books flyign off shelves.  When a local bishop came to perform an exorcism his ceremonial hat vanished and a scepter filled with holy water exploded.  His hat was later found locked in a third floor attic.  The hauntings may be related to the secret tunnel hidden behind a bookshelf recently discovered in one of the two houses that connects several of the hillside homes.  Deep in a tunnel a makeshift grave was found, saying simply, 'Regina, 1922.'  It just may be that 'Regina,' whoever she is, is still in residence."  (More details here.)

Here's another house down the street -- unmentioned in Secret Stairs -- that's practically begging for its own ghost story.  I'd love to know how a simple old house like this, which looks like it might date back as far as Hollywood's orange grove days, has managed to survive all these years in a neighborhood where historical value runs a distant second to land value.... It makes me think that someone, or something, is looking out for it.