THE WALTER READE THEATER

Special Event:
Inventing Christopher Walken:
A Film Tribute to a Unique Artist

Wed Nov 10, 2004: 7pm

Please Note: This event is now sold out.

If there is a contemporary actor with a lighter touch than Christopher Walken's, he's a very well kept secret. A showman with keen instincts and impeccable timing, he has an arsenal of attributes that set him apart from the brooders and sufferers who follow in the footsteps of Brando and Dean. Unlike De Niro and Pacino, who seethe and explode, Walken delivers his emotional blows with a breathtaking, almost supernatural calm. From this impeccable poise he reacts to opposition with lightning speed and all hell breaks loose. The contrast between stillness and attack is frightening and often very funny. In Walken's best work, a single telling gesture or line is enough to put his mark on a scene like a brand.

On November 10 the Film Society of Lincoln Center tips its hat to Astoria's gifted exponent of elegant mayhem and mockery with a tribute of career highlights. The evening will investigate the various facets of this mysterious and beguiling personality who exerts such unusual power over his audience: the cagy wariness, the amused flirtatiousness, the creepy menace, the quizzical expressions, the strange accents, and (you can depend on this) the famously hyperactive hair. The notoriously elusive (and reclusive) actor will appear in person for an onstage conversation and a Q & A with the audience. Guests who will appear to pay tribute include Julian Schnabel, Paul Schrader and John Turturro.

A well-known workaholic, Walken has been performing on television and the stage since he was a kid. Like other dancers who proved themselves natural actors - Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor among them - "Ronnie," as he was called then, was an adorable ingénue one minute, a killer the next. At the Public Theater and at Lincoln Rep, he made the jump from musical comedy to Shakespeare and contemporary drama. He emerges in 1971 in The Anderson Tapes as a young ex-con with an angel face, capital-A attitude, and a glint in his eye. Already he has the habit of shaping his sentences into a weird new syntax. A verbal dazzler and an expert mumbler, he proves a seductive mover in Roseland and a master of the put-on in Next Stop Greenwich Village. But nothing hints at the depth of his gifts until The Deer Hunter, where his haunting portrait of a shattered soul in wartime conjures memories of Montgomery Clift. The Dead Zone further proves his affinity for melancholy outsiders, as does Catch Me If You Can, in which, as Leonardo Di Caprio's deluded father, he is like one of Eugene O'Neill's perennial losers. But suffering alone is not enough to satisfy the Walken persona. Now and again, a full vaudeville is required. In Pennies from Heaven, in a striped pimp suit, hair glazed with pomade, he erupts into a wild tap and strip that has no parallel outside burlesque. In King of New York, reunited with old buddies at the Plaza Hotel, he moves from steely calm to gleeful shimmy and back in the blink of an eye. In The Comfort of Strangers he creates a monster, a Medici in an Armani suit. In True Romance, "in a vendetta kind of mood," he relishes a good story as much as the kill, wielding his handgun like a toreador's cape. The years have erased Walken's pretty-boy appeal. His face now benefits from a Mitchum-like sardonic reserve that he uses expertly to comic, spooky or lethal effect. Even under bizarre circumstances - Caesar the exterminator in Mouse Hunt or his literary vampire in The Addiction - he retains his dancer's carriage and composure and the ability to pounce instantly when displeased. His air of wary alertness signals that a trench coat and classic film noir could be in his future. Warning - this is one cool cat; do not cross him.

- Joanna Ney, producer, special programs

Grateful thanks to Mara Buxbaum, Toni Howard, Laura Kim, John Goberman, Jane Klain, Maria Blanco and Brian Angioletti.

Tickets: $50 general public; $40 Film Society members.


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