Now, y’KNOW, we here at. Manolith. We – well – are, fans of a certain actor. This GUY, Christopher Walken, he’s, BEEN, in a ton of the MOVIES. He’s. Also. Y’know. GOT. A certain vocal. Pattern.
He got his START in New YORK, in the 50’s. He was good. Real good. But his name was Ronnie, Ronnie Walken. It wasn’t CHRIStopher like we know know him. One of his earliest gigs was as the narRATOR of a TV show, this show, called, The Wonderful John Acton. Can you IMAGINE Christopher WALKen narRATING a SHOW? I know. It’s, like, hard to, y’know, picture.
Ok I’ll stop doing the voice. Chris then bounced around for a while with recurring TV roles for the remainder of the 50’s and 60’s. He eventually had his first starring role opposite Sean Connery in the (somewhat forgettable) 1971 action/drama “The Anderson Tapes”. In 1977 he landed a memorable but brief role as the suicidal brother of Diane Keaton in Woody Allen’s Best Picture winner “Annie Hall”, but it wasn’t until a huge breakthrough as a Vietnam veteran in Deer Hunter that he finally broke through onto the collective American consciousness as THE Christopher Walken.
He has a wife, a casting director named Georgette, who worked one of the main casting directors for The Sopranos. And it seems there are indeed many, many Walken groupies (Johnny Depp and Jake Gyllenhaal have both publicly expressed their unabashed heterosexual love for him, with Johnny Depp doing a great impression in his uncut episode of Inside The Actors Studio), with practically half of Hollywood being able to do an impression of his vocal cadence. The short stops and seemingly random emphasis of certain syllables are an easy target; something that Christopher has taken to hand with his many memorable appearances on Saturday Night Live where he openly lampoons himself and his inherent weirdness.
Indeed, its something that he’s been able to wrangle, his public persona, which is more than can be said for 98% of movie stars. He understands the way people view him – as the gangly outsider who talks like Jazz – and has taken that and ran with it all through the 80’s, 90’s, and the 2000’s. He’s appeared in over 100 movies, won nearly as many awards (check his entire Wikipedia page dedicated to his awards here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Christopher_Walken), and has worked solidly as an actor since the 60’s – an almost unheard of feat for an actor in Hollywood. His impeccable timing and reputation for being a pretty amazing guy have led for him to be one of the true greats of our time. Even if, y’know, he talks, like, this. Y’know?
Christopher reads The Three Little Pigs:
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