Is Christopher Walken really dancing in the music video for ‘Weapon of Choice’?
When it came time to shoot the video for Fatboy Slim’s 2001 single ‘Weapon of Choice’, he returned to experimental filmmaker Spike Jonze, the Hollywood director behind the celebrated video for his earlier hit ‘Praise You’. But Jonze was to spring a surprise when he told the song’s creator that veteran actor Christopher Walken wanted to dance in the video.
The original idea was for Fatboy Slim himself, aka Norman Cook, to be the central star of a shoot in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles. Walken had other ideas, though. “The big thing about that for me was to work with Spike Jonze,” he later told The Hollywood Interview. “He’s terrific. And young”.
The problem was that unlike his director Walken himself wasn’t quite so young, at the ripe old age of 58. Surely Jonze and his team would have to bring a stunt double in to do most of the dancing for Walken, while incorporating his face into the moves using CGI. Not an easy task.
Especially bearing in mind that the routine we see in the video includes a 360-degree spin on a wheeled clothes trolley, a dance down an ascending escalator in which Walken’s face is shown throughout, a one-handed cartwheel, and suspension on wires from the hotel’s mezzanine. How could Walken and his stunt double appear to be one and the same throughout such a complex sequence?
Which parts of the video are really Walken?
Simple. Forget the stunt double. Walken would do all the dance moves himself. The whole video is him, from start to finish. What’s more, he choreographed most of the moves, winning an MTV Video Music award in 2002 for his work.
What Cook and others hadn’t been aware of prior to the video shoot was that Walken had danced at a professional level for most of his life to that point. “I danced from the time I was a little kid when I was a chorus boy until I was about thirty-something,” he explained.
Brief glimpses of his repertoire appear in several of his film performances, including the Steven Spielberg movie Catch Me If You Can. Jonze had asked him to base his routine for the video on a tap dance he did for the film 1981 Pennies from Heaven.
“The best thing about that for me was I’m going to be 84 years old,” the actor joked. He’s still only 81, 20 years later, but we get the point. “To be able to be in a music video and actually have kids think it’s cool…” More than just cool, Christopher. The stuff of Legend.
