Christopher Walken discusses his most harshly treated movie: “I never understood the beating it took”
Christopher Walken has been working for most of his life, landing his first acting job at just ten years old. Appearing in various television shows throughout the early 1950s, he eventually transitioned to cinema in the 1960s, making his film debut in 1966’s Barefoot in Athens.
As Hollywood continued to evolve, Walken appeared in various landmark movies from the era, like The Anderson Tapes, Annie Hall, and The Deer Hunter. The latter won him a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Oscar, establishing his place in the industry as a well-respected star.
Walken has seen cinema change and latch onto certain trends, and he’s adapted to the ever-transforming landscape, balancing his time between groundbreaking indie movies and bigger budget productions.
Working with everyone from Abel Ferrera and Quentin Tarantino to Tony Scott and Steven Spielberg, the actor has an impressive list of credits on his resumé. Yet, not every movie that Walken has starred in has been a success – most actors have to star in a handful of duds, it’s only fair.
Some of his most critically panned movies include Barry Levinson’s Envy, which saw him star alongside Ben Stiller and Jack Black. In it, he plays a strange man that the pair meet and use as part of their get-rich-quick scheme. Then there’s Heaven’s Gate, a movie that caused significant controversy upon its release in 1980.
Directed by Michael Cimino, who previously helmed The Deer Hunter, which gave Walken his Oscar-winning performance, the film featured big names like Kris Kristofferson, Isabelle Huppert, John Hurt, Jeff Bridges, and Sam Waterston. Even Willem Dafoe can be seen in the background of a scene, with the movie being his first-ever film role.
Yet, the western drama was released to an incredibly poor reception. Not only did it lose $40million at the box office, but critics hated the film, tearing it apart in their reviews. It wasn’t until a re-edited version was released the following year that people’s opinions began to change, and now it is highly regarded by many as a misunderstood masterpiece.
“I always thought it was good and never really understood the beating that it took at the time,” Walken explained to IndieWire, adding how “that movie seemed disproportionately beat up at the time, including by people in the business”. To Walken, the criticism seemed unnecessary.
“I never understood that. It always seemed extreme. It certainly was always a beautiful movie to look out for,” he said. “Often things are not as bad as they are touted to me and also not as good as they are touted to me. It’s always a little too much one way or the other,” he said.
Heaven’s Gate has remained a controversial film due to the effects it had on the film industry. The movie was marred by lots of negative publicity after the production faced various issues, and in the end, this led Transamerica Corporation to sell United Artists, an independent film distribution company, to MGM. However, with the positive reception the movie has been getting over recent years, Walken believes that “in some sense [the film] has been vindicated.”
