Christopher Walken, Opportunist
The CrankyCritic.com interview by Chuck Schwartz

Christopher Walken: The thing about interviews is that you say something and then 20 years later they say "did you say that?" Yes. What did I mean? I'm not really sure.

So, you can make of this what you wish. We took the opportunity to talk with Christopher Walken while he was making the rounds for the indieflick The Opportunists, co-starring Cyndi Lauper. The Opportunists is the story of a blue collar auto mechanic who's done time for safecracking. He's learned his lesson but times are tough and the old "gang" has found a sweet job and this previously unknown cousin from Ireland has shown up on his doorstep. Everything his character Victor Kelly wants, including financial equality with his girlfriend (Lauper) who owns the local bar, can be his. But only if he backtracks.

Yes, we did talk Star Wars, and all the rumors flying about his part as "Darth Bane" but we also got a whole lot of background material detailing what makes this actor act. . .

Christopher Walken: An actor really is a kind of intermediary between an audience and the piece, whether it's a play or movie. I've always felt that whenever you read a play, particularly a great play, what you're really doing is . I mean you could say that every character that Shakespeare or Tennessee Williams or Chekhov or Shaw wrote, you could say that every character is them. So that when you do Sweet Bird Of Youth you're really, over the course of time, getting into Tennessee Williams' mind. As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.

CrankyCritic: Between The Opportunists and your Tony nominated role in The Dead you're really taking up an Irish twist in your career.
Christopher Walken: Yes. Exactly. To do that play you realize that you're speaking the words pretty much the way you might have heard [them] if you had had the conversation with James Joyce. You really do develop an affinity with the writer that you wouldn't if you just read it. It's the reading it over and over hundreds of times and doing it on stage when you have a little bit of a cold or when you're feeling good or upset about something it's all different angles on something that you never would investigate that carefully if you were just reading it.

CrankyCritic: Does that hold true when you're making a movie aimed at the blockbuster market?
Christopher Walken: It can. It depends on the quality of the script
CrankyCritic: So what do you look for when you're picking these small roles? What piqued your interest about The Opportunists?
Christopher Walken: It's a pretty good part. It's a small movie in terms of budget and so forth but it's a bigger part than I usually get to play. Certainly different in that he's a father and a decent person; more of what you might call a regular person than I usually play.
CrankyCritic: And you know these people...
Christopher Walken: That's my neighborhood where they shot the movie. The house that I live in in the movie is about two miles from where my parents live now. I used to pass the building that I was a baby in, regularly. I was very familiar with that. The curious thing is that the neighborhood hasn't changed that much in all those years.

CrankyCritic: Can you tell us about your character/ the Irish background?
Christopher Walken: Well, my background isn't Irish. My mother and father came from Europe. Mother from Scotland and Father from Germany and for a long time and still to this day they are the only people from their family to do that. They met here as adults, they had left as adults, and most of my family still lives in Europe. And I did grow up in that neighborhood and I am the same age as that character. A lot of it was stuff I was familiar with. If somebody showed up at my door and said "hi I'm your cousin from Germany" I'd have to say "Hi." It could be entirely possible.
CrankyCritic: But you'd check him out, just like your character does
Christopher Walken: Well, you have to ask somebody. But my first reaction would be "Hi. Come on in."
CrankyCritic: The director told us that you said to him that you could have wound up like Vic does. How did you miss?
Christopher Walken: Well, I was lucky. I grew up at the birth of television in New York City, a subway ride from Rockefeller Center where it all started to happen. I was in Queens, the train was fifteen minutes away from the center of everything. There were ninety live TV shows in New York every week. They used a lot of kids, particularly at holidays. I was pretty much immersed in that world from the time I was a kid with my two brothers and when it came time to figure out what I would do for the rest of my life it was pretty much settled. I never had to debate being a rocket scientist. I just never was suited for anything else. So here I am.