Christopher Walken names the directors he’s always wanted to work with
It’s hard to imagine a single movie that wouldn’t benefit from the presence of Christopher Walken. A gritty gangster flick? Check. A Damien Chazelle musical? 100%. A kid’s movie? No question. With his unpredictable cadence, ability to fit an impressive vocal range into a single line, and ice-cold stare, he is a one-of-a-kind performer who has, luckily for audiences, appeared in dozens of movies over the years.
For all his eccentricities, Walken has proven time and again that he is more than just a wacky on-screen personality but an honest to god thespian. This is the man who won an Oscar for portraying a traumatised Vietnam veteran in the harrowing 1978 drama The Deer Hunter and then went on to play another Vietnam veteran in Pulp Fiction to diametrically opposed effects. Whether he’s throwing you into a pit of despair or stretching a silence far beyond its reasonable limits, he has an intensity that few other actors can pull off or would even bother trying.
It’s not surprising that so many directors have leapt at the chance to work with him. From Michael Cimino and Quentin Tarantino to Steven Spielberg and David Cronenberg, he’s collaborated with a who’s-who of post-1960s auteurs. But despite having appeared in over 100 productions, there are still a few directors on the actor’s bucket list with whom he has yet to collaborate.
In a 2012 interview, Walken highlighted a shocking fact: “I’ve never worked with Scorsese,” he said, adding, “I almost worked with him once. He tried to make The Last Temptation of Christ a number of times. At some point, I was going to play Jesus. I spent some time with him, and it was fascinating, but then the studio wouldn’t let him make it, and ten years went by. I almost got to work with him. So many wonderful directors I’d love to work with: Sydney Pollack, Spike Lee, Bernardo Bertolucci, to name a few.”
Setting aside the truly glorious image of Walken playing Jesus (not to mention the line delivery), it is difficult to believe that the actor has never teamed up with one of the all-time great directors of his generation. With that terrifying stare and unique aptitude for turning philosophical dialogue into modern art, he would have been perfect in any number of Scoresese’s movies.
Mean Streets, Goodfellas, and even The Aviator would almost certainly have produced memorable Walken performances. In fact, maybe the only Scorsese film he wouldn’t have been a natural fit for is Silence, but, to be quite frank, given that one of his greatest talents is throwing a spanner into the works of an otherwise serious movie, he might have been just what the film needed.
As for the other directors on Walken’s list, he will sadly never get to work with the late Sydney Pollack or Bernardo Bertolucci, but the door is still wide open for him to collaborate with Spike Lee and Scorsese. We’ll just be replaying all our favourite Walken performances on repeat until then.
