The co-star Woody Harrelson “can’t fucking believe” he got to work with
Cinema history is full of iconic face-offs, and in 2012, Woody Harrelson got the opportunity to take part in one that he couldn’t believe actually came to pass.
Ironically, despite Harrelson being so bowled over by the scene, his interaction with one of Hollywood’s kookiest legends hasn’t exactly entered the cultural lexicon. While the move was middling at best and critics did their job receiving it half-heartedly, deeming it a lesser work of the director, the chance to bat the proverbial ball with someone he’d always admired from afar was hugely rewarding for the grinning Harrelson.
Harrelson’s character is sitting in a hospital waiting room, idly leafing through a magazine. He is wearing a nice suit with an open-collared pink shirt and a gold neck chain, carrying an air of menace, hinting he is likely wealthy but not by way of generational capital. This is ruthless gangster Charlie Costello, whose beloved Shih Tzu has been kidnapped by a pair of hapless dognappers.
With his back to the audience, enters Hans, perching himself opposite Costello. He is carrying flowers and a trilby hat, jauntily dressed in a blue blazer and polka-dotted cravat that arrests your attention. His hair loud and proud, laughs in the face of gravity, and his eyes regard Costello with an absence of malice more unnerving than if he were trying to be more obviously intimidating. Played with dead-eyed perfection by Christopher Walken, Hans is one of the men behind the pilfered dog.
In Martin McDonagh’s (extremely) black comedy Seven Psychopaths, the scene is the first time their characters meet in the film. It’s undeniably one of the best scenes in a movie that has its moments, but doesn’t quite come together as a whole.
Still, watching Harrelson and Walken having a seemingly genial conversation about Hans’ cravat, a sartorial flourish “from a bygone era”, as Costello puts it, is pretty thrilling. After all, it’s not about what they’re saying, but rather the tension so thick underneath it could be cut with a knife.
“I can’t believe I’m doing a scene with Christopher Walken,” Harrelson gushed to Uproxx, “I love him. You never really know where you stand with him, you know? You’ll be talking and you won’t know. And then he’ll crack a big smile suddenly.”
Indeed, as Harrelson gushed about the scene, he revealed that he and Walken were allowed to improvise on one take in which McDonagh specifically asked the Cheers icon to make the veteran star laugh. Harrelson dutifully pointed at the cravat and quipped, “It looks like your neck threw up, man”, to which Walken let out a hearty, yet still somehow sinister, laugh.
At the end of the day, the face-off amounted to two actors using their unique talents and vast experience to see where a scene would take them, and in the end, it took them somewhere that Harrelson always wanted to go. “I can’t fuckin’ believe I just did a scene with Christopher Walken,” he said once more, his head shaking in stunned disbelief, a massive grin on his face.
