He held a revolver to his head in "The Deer Hunter," kept a watch up his butt in "Pulp Fiction" — and has waved around any number of guns and knives. But you've never seen Christopher Walken play the cello before. In the new film "A Late Quartet," he plays Peter, the oldest, gentlest member of a Manhattan chamber ensemble — one with Philip Seymour Hoffman playing second violin! — who discovers he has Parkinson's disease. Critics have hailed Walken's restrained, dignified performance.
So it seems as good a time as any to catch up with the 69-year-old Astoria native and "Saturday Night Live" legend — "More cowbell!" — and talk about music, movies and WHY. He sometimes. Speaks. Like THAT.
Walken plays a cellist with Parkinson's disease.
What was it like faking the cello?
I had a wonderful teacher. Of course, the body language — the way your shoulders move and the angle of your head, there was a lot of that. I was always super careful with my instrument. I mean, I treated it like it was an egg! And [the teacher] said, "You don't have to be that careful. They're really tough." But when I put it down it would take me five minutes. (Laughs)
Did you already have Beethoven on your iPad?
I don't have an iPad, I don't have a cellphone, I don't have a computer. I'm up in Connecticut. So when the trees went down, I was in the dark. I was like a caveman for eight days! The lights went out last Monday, and that meant no water, no phones, no light! And this time of year, it gets dark at about 4:30, and it got cold in the house. So it was just me and the cat.
Where was your wife, Georgianne?
Happily, my wife was in another place. And I said, "Don't come here, because there's barely enough stuff. Stay put." The minute I went to bed, the cat would get under the covers and never move. Just a little bit of heat.
There's a Woody Allen-ish feel to "A Late Quartet," right down to an appearance by Wallace Shawn as a fellow musician.
Well, it is in that it's one of those quintessential New York fables. I was born in New York, I went to school at Columbus Circle and I watched Lincoln Center be built from the tenements featured in "West Side Story." So to make a movie on my own turf! [During filming] I had an apartment there on the Upper West Side, and I had forgotten something. So I just walked back to my apartment and got it, and nobody even knew I was gone. I wish I could make a lot of movies that way. To work where you live, it's just divine!
You've been in a 100 movies. Favorite scenes?
There's all the ones you would imagine. I got into a steam bath at some hotel that I was staying in. And there were all these young guys in there. And all of a sudden, one of these kids started doing the speech from "Pulp Fiction" — you know, about the watch. And he'd memorized it. And at first I didn't know what he was doing, but I recognized the dialogue. And he got further and further along, and I thought that was hilarious, that a movie could be so popular that I get into a steam bath with strangers, and one of these guys starts doing my dialogue. That's a popular movie!
The way you read lines is rather eclectic. What's that about?
I think it has to do with the fact that I love the words, but I don't like the punctuation. I feel that punctuation is a kind of stage direction. Punctuation tells you how to say something, and I think the words of what you have to say and how you say them is really up to you.
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