Val wrote about this music video way back in 2016. I’m sharing it again because today is Christopher Walken’s 82nd birthday! Walken trained as a dancer before going into acting and he gets to show off more than a few moves in this video.
Walken also trained as a lion tamer before he went into acting. I guess he’s a little bit old to play a lion tamer now but still, that’s something I would have liked to have seen.
Enjoy!
First released in 1981 and then re-released in several different versions since then, Heaven’s Gate begins at Harvard University.
The year is 1870 and the graduates of Harvard have got their entire future ahead of them. At the graduation ceremony, Joseph Cotten gives a speech about how, as men of cultivation, they have an obligation to help the uncultivated. Student orator Billy Irvine (John Hurt) then gives a speech in which he jokingly says the exact opposite. Amongst the graduates, Billy’s friend, Jim Averill (Kris Kristofferson), laughs at Billy’s speech. It’s a bit of a strange scene, if just because all of the graduates appear to be teenagers except for Hurt and Kristofferson, who are both clearly in their 30s. The graduates of Harvard sing to their girlfriends and dance under a tree and, for a fleeting moment, all seems to be right with the world.
Twenty years later, all seems to be wrong with the world. Averill is now the rugged and world-weary marshal of Johnson Country, Wyoming. Cattle barons are trying to force immigrant settlers to give up their land. Gunmen, like Nate Champion (Christopher Walken) and Nick Ray (Mickey Rourke), are accepting contracts to execute immigrants who are suspected of stealing cattle. When Averill stands up for the people of Johnson Country, the head of the Wyoming Stock Grower Association, Frank Canton (Sam Waterston), hires a group of mercenaries to ride into Johnson County and execute 125 settlers. Billy Irvine, who now is dissolute alcoholic who works with Canton, warns his old friend Averill. Averill, who has fallen in love with Ella (Isabelle Huppert), the local madam, announces that he will defend the immigrants. Nate, who is also in love with Ella, considers changing sides.
Heaven’s Gate is loosely based on an actual event. I actually have three distant ancestors who traveled to Wyoming to take part in the Johnson County War. All three of them survived, though one of them was shot and killed in an unrelated manner shortly after returning to Ft. Smith, Arkansas. That said, director Michael Cimino is clearly not that interested in the historical reality of the Johnson County War or the issues that it raised. Just as he did with Vietnam in The Deer Hunter, Cimino uses the Johnson County War as a way to signify a loss of national innocence. Averill and Irvine start the film as hopeful “young” men with the future ahead of them. By the end of the film, one is dead and the other is living on a yacht and dealing with what appears to be crippling ennui.
Heaven’s Gate is a bit of an infamous film. Though the film was pretty much a standard western, Cimino still went far over-budget and turned in a first cut that was over six hours long. A four hour version was briefly released in 1980 but withdrawn after a week, due to terrible reviews and audience indifference. A studio-edited version that ran for two hours and 35 minutes got the widest release in 1981. Since then, there have been several other versions released. Cimino’s director’s cut, which was released as a part of the Criterion Collection in 2012, runs for 212-minutes and is considered to now be the “official” version of Heaven’s Gate.
For years, Heaven’s Gate had a terrible reputation. It’s failure at the box office was blamed for bankrupting United Artists. After the excesses of the Heaven’s Gate production, studios were far more reluctant to just give a director a bunch of money and let him run off to make his movie. (They should have learned their lesson with Dennis Hopper and The Last Movie.) Described by studio execs as being self-indulgent and even mentally unstable, Michael Cimino’s career never recovered and the director of The Deer Hunter went from being an Oscar-winner to being an industry pariah. (Some who disliked The Deer Hunter’s perceived jingoistic subtext claimed that Heaven’s Gate proved The Deer Hunter was just an overrated fluke.) However, the reputation of Heaven’s Gate has improved, especially with the release of Cimino’s director’s cut. Many critics have praised Heaven’s Gate for its epic portrayal of the west and, ironically given the controversy over The Deer Hunter, its political subtext. It’s anti-immigrant villains made the film popular amongst the Resistance-leaning film historians during the first Trump term.
So, is Heaven’s Gate a masterpiece or a disaster? To be honest, it’s somewhere in between. Whereas it was once over-criticized, it’s now over-praised. Visually, it’s a beautiful film but those who complained that the film was too slow had a point. As with The Deer Hunter, Cimino takes the time to introduce us to and immerse us in a tight-knit immigrant community. Personally, I like the much-criticized scenes of the fiddler on skates and Averill and Ella dancing in the roller rink. Overall though, as opposed to The Deer Hunter, the members of the film’s victimized community still feel less like individual characters and more like symbols. As for the political subtext, I think that any subtext of that sort is accidental. (I feel the same way about The Deer Hunter, which I like quite a bit more than Heaven’s Gate.) Cimino is more interested in the loss of innocence than whether or not the Johnson County War can be fit into some sort of nonsense Marxist framework.
The main problem with the film is that there is no center to keep everything grounded. Kris Kristofferson had a definite screen presence but, as an actor who was incapable of showing a great deal of emotion, he lacks the gravitas necessary to keep from being swallowed up by Cimino’s epic pretensions. Isabelle Huppert, an otherwise great actress, also feels lost in the role of Ella and Sam Waterston is not necessarily the most-intimidating villain to ever show up in a western. Christopher Walken, as the enigmatic and intriguing Nate Champion, gives the best performance in the film but his character still feels largely wasted.
There are some brilliant visual moments to be found in Heaven’s Gate. I even like the Harvard prologue and the ending on the boat, both of which are not technically necessary to the narrative but still add an extra-dimension to both Averill and Irvine. But, in the end, Heaven’s Gate is big when it should have been small and epic when its should have been intimate. It’s a misfire but not a disaster. Even great directors occasionally have a film that just doesn’t work. Speilberg had his 1941. Scorsese has had a handful. Coppola’s career has been a mess but no one can take his successes away from him. Michael Cimino, who passed away in 2016, deserved another chance.
The Deer Hunter, which won the 1978 Oscar for Best Picture Of The Year, opens in a Pennsylvania steel mill.
Mike (Robert De Niro), Steve (John Savage), Nick (Chistopher Walken), Stan (John Cazale), and Axel (Chuck Aspegren, a real-life steel worker who was cast in this film after De Niro met him while doing research for his role) leave work and head straight to the local bar, where they are greeted by the bartender, John (George Dzundza). It’s obvious that these men have been friends for their entire lives. They’re like family. Everyone gives Stan a hard time but deep down, they love him. Axel is the prankster who keeps everyone in a good mood. Nick is the sensitive one who settles disputes. Steve is perhaps the most innocent, henpecked by his mother (Shirley Stoler) and engaged to marry the pregnant Angela (Rutanya Alda), even though Steve knows that he’s not actually the father. And Mike is their leader, a charismatic if sometimes overbearing father figure who lives his life by his own code of honor. The men are held together by their traditions. They hunt nearly every weekend. Mike says that it’s important to only use one shot to kill a deer. Nick, at one point, confesses that he doesn’t really understand why that’s important to Mike.
Steve and Angela get married at a raucous ceremony that is attended by the entire population of their small town. The community is proud that Nick, Steve, and Mike will all soon be shipping out to Vietnam. Nick asks his girlfriend, Linda (Meryl Streep), to marry him when he “gets back.” At the reception, Mike gets into a fight with a recently returned soldier who refuses to speak about his experiences overseas. Mike ends up running naked down a street while Nick chases him.
The Deer Hunter is a three-hour film, with the entirety of the first hour taken up with introducing us to the men and the tight-knit community that produced them. At times, that first hour can seem almost plotless. As much time is spent with those who aren’t going to Vietnam as with those who are. But, as the film progresses, we start to understand why the film’s director, Michael Cimino, spent so much time immersing the viewer in that community of steel workers. To understand who Nick, Mike, and Steve are going to become, it’s important to know where they came from. Only by spending time with that community can we understand what it’s like to lose the security of knowing where you belong.
If the first hour of the film plays out in an almost cinema verité manner, the next two hours feel like an increasingly surreal nightmare. (Indeed, there was a part of me that suspected that everything that happened after the wedding was just Michael’s drunken dream as he lay passed out in the middle of the street.) The film abruptly cuts from the beautiful mountains of Pennsylvania to the violent horror of Vietnam. A Viet Cong soldier blows up a group of hiding women and children. Michael appears out of nowhere to set the man on fire with a flame thrower. An army helicopter lands and, in a coincidence that strains credibility, Nick and Steve just happen to get out. Somehow, the three friends randomly meet each other again in Vietnam. Unfortunately, they are soon captured by the VC.
They are held prisoner in submerged bamboo cages. Occasionally, they are released and forced to play Russian Roulette. Mike once again becomes the leader, telling Steve and Nick to stay strong. Eventually, the three men do manage to escape but Steve loses his leg in the process and a traumatized Nick disappears in Saigon. Only Mike returns home.
The community seems to have changed in Mike’s absence. The once boisterous town is now quiet and cold. The banner reading “Welcome Home, Mike” almost seems to be mocking the fact that Mike no longer feels at home in his old world. Stan, Axel, and John try to pretend like nothing has changed. Mike falls in love with Linda while continuing to feel guilty for having abandoned Nick in Saigon. Steve, meanwhile, struggles to come to terms with being in a wheelchair and Nick is still playing Russian Roulette in seedy nightclubs. Crowds love to watch the blank-faced Nick risk his life.
Eventually, Mike realizes that Nick is still alive. Somehow, Mike ends up back in Saigon, just as the government is falling. Oddly, we don’t learn how Mike was able to return to Saigon. He’s just suddenly there. It’s the type of dream logic that dominates The Deer Hunter but somehow, it works. Mike searches for Nick but will he be able to save his friend?
The Deer Hunter was one of the first major films to take place in Vietnam. Among the pictures that The Deer Hunter defeated for Bet Picture was Coming Home, which was also about Vietnam but which took a far more conventional approach to its story than The Deer Hunter. Indeed, while Coming Home is rather predictable in its anti-war posture, The Deer Hunter largely ignores the politics of Vietnam. Mike, Nick, and Steve are all traumatized by what they see in Vietnam. Mike is destroyed emotionally, Steve is destroyed physically, and Nick is destroyed mentally. At the same time, the VC are portrayed as being so cruel and sadistic that it’s hard not to feel that the film is suggesting that, even if we did ultimately lose the war, the Americans were on the correct side and trying to do the right thing. (Many critics of The Deer Hunter have pointed out that there are no records of American POWs being forced to play Russian Roulette. That’s true. There are however records of American POWs being forced to undergo savage torture that was just as potentially life-threatening. Regardless of what one thinks of America’s involvement in Vietnam, there’s no need to idealize the VC.) Released just a few years after the Fall of Saigon, The Deer Hunter was a controversial film and winner. (Of course, in retrospect, the film is actually quite brilliant in the way it appeals to both anti-war and pro-war viewers without actually taking a firm position itself.)
In the end, though, The Deer Hunter isn’t really about the reality of the war or the politics behind it. Instead, it’s a film about discovering that the world is far more complicated that you originally believed it to be. De Niro is a bit too old to be playing such a naive character but still, he does a good job of portraying Mike’s newfound sense of alienation from his former home. In Vietnam, everything he believed in was challenged and he returns home unsure of where he stands. While John, Axel, and Stan can continue to hunt as if nothing happened, Mike finds that he can no longer buy into his own philosophical BS about the importance of only using one shot. Everything that he once believed no longer seems important.
It’s a good film and a worthy winner, even if it does sometimes feel more like a happy accident than an actual cohesive work of art. The plot is often implausible but then again, the film takes place in a world gone mad so even the plot holes feel appropriate to the story being told. Christopher Walken won an Oscar for his haunting performance as Nick and John Savage should have been nominated alongside of him. This was Meryl Streep’s first major role and she gives a surprisingly naturalistic performance. During filming, Streep was living with John Cazale and she largely did the film to be near him. Cazale was dying of lung cancer and he is noticeably frail in this film. (I cringed whenever Mike hit Stan because Cazale was obviously not well in those scenes.) Cazale, one of the great character actors of the 70s, died shortly after filming wrapped. Cazale only appeared in five films and all of them were nominated for Best Picture. Three of them — The first two Godfathers and The Deer Hunter — won.
The Deer Hunter is a long, exhausting, overwhelming, and ultimately very moving film. Whatever flaws it may have, it earns its emotional finale. Though one can argue that some of the best films of 1978 were not even nominated (Days of Heaven comes to mind, as do more populist-minded films like Superman and Animal House), The Deer Hunter deserved its Oscar.
Have you ever wanted to hear Christopher Walken read The Raven? Of course you have! Who hasn’t?
Well, today is your lucky day! Here is Christopher Walken, reciting Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. This was apparently recorded for a CD entitled Closed For Rabies, which featured several celebrities reading stories and poems by Mr. Poe.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasion ally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1977’s Double Nickels, a film featuring many cars and many crashes!
Then, on twitter, #MondayMuggers will be showing 1986’s At Close Range, starring Sean Penn and Christopher Walken! The film is on Prime and it starts at 10 pm et!
It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, pull up Double Nickels on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! Then switch over to twitter, pull At Close Range up on Prime, and use the #MondayMuggers hashtag!
Enjoy!
The trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part Two was just released. We’re seeing some new faces in Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan, Austin Butler as Feyd, Lea Seydoux as Lady Margot and Christopher Walken as the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV. I like Javier Bardem’s Stilgar telling Paul to “Keep things simple.” here. So far, it’s looking good!
Dune Part Two will be released on November 3rd.
In the year 1973, Bobby McBain (Christopher Walken) was an American POW, fighting for his life in a North Vietnamese prison camp that was run by a general so evil that he wore a necklace of human ears. Luckily, on the last day of the war, McBain was rescued by Roberto Santos (Chick Vennerra). When Bobby asked how he could ever repay Santos, Santos gave him half of a hundred dollar bill and told him that someday, Santos would give him the other half. McBain swears that he will be ready when the day comes to get the other half. I guess he’s like Caine in Kung Fu, waiting for the chance to snatch the pebble from his master’s hand.
15 years later, McBain is a welder in New York. One day, while sitting in a bar, he watches as Santos is executed on live television after a failed attempt to overthrow the dictator of Colombia. Shortly afterwards, McBain is approached by Santos’s sister (Maria Conchita Alonzo), who asks McBain to help her finish Santos’s revolution. McBain tells her a long story about attending Woodstock and then reunites with his Vietnam War buddies, Frank (Michael Ironside!), Eastland (Steve James), Dr. Dalton (Jay Patterson), and Gil (Thomas G. Waites). After killing a bunch of drug dealers, stealing their money, and harassing Luis Guzman, the gang heads for Colombia.
I wonder how many people have watched this movie over the years with the expectation that it would be a live action version of the famous Rainier Wolfcastle film that was featured in several episodes of The Simpsons. Unfortunately, this movie has nothing to do with the Simpsons version of McBain. (Sorry, no “Bye, book.”) Instead, it’s just another strange and overlong action film from director James Glickenhaus. The film mixes scene of total carnage with dialogue that often seems to be going off on a totally unrelated tangent, like McBain’s musings about what Woodstock ultimately stood for. Walken doesn’t seem to be acting as much as he’s parodying his own eccentric image. Walken takes all of his usual quirks and trademark vocal tics and turns them up to 11 for this movie.
Even though the movie is twenty minutes too long, it still feels like scenes are missing. Alonzo leaves Colombia on a mule and then is suddenly in New York. (The mule is nowhere to be seen.) We don’t actually see Walken recruiting the majority of his team. Instead, they just show up in his house. Once the action moves to Colombia, it turns out that overthrowing the government is much simpler than it looks. While the rebels lay down their lives while attacking the palace, McBain and his crew pretty much stroll through the movie without receiving even a scratch. Maybe welders should be put in charge of all of America’s foreign policy adventures. It couldn’t hurt.
With its hole-filled plot and confusingly edited combat scenes, McBain isn’t great but 80s action enthusiasts should enjoy seeing Michael Ironside and Steve James doing their thing. Others will want to see it just for Christopher Walken’s characteristically odd performance. He may not be Rainier Wolfcastle but, for this movie, Christopher Walken is McBain.
Christopher Walken vs. Zach Braff? Gee, who’s going to win that fight?
Actually, we’ll never know because, in this upcoming film Percy vs Goliath, Walken and Braff are actually allies. Walken plays an aging farmer who gets sued by a gigantic corporation and who appeals the case all the way to the Supreme Court. Braff plays his attorney. Christina Ricci plays an environmental activist. This is based on a true story and it sounds like the type of film that’s usually promoted for the Oscars. That said, that April 30th release date indicates that this is not being set up as an Oscar film.
Myself, I’m just interested in seeing Christopher Walken in a lead role for once. As of late, he’s mostly done quirky supporting turns. I’m also glad to see Christina Ricci in another movie because she doesn’t really seem to get as much work as her talent warrants. As for Zach Braff …. to be honest, I actually thought he was Ray Romano when the trailer began. That said, I will let you in on a little secret. I actually kind of liked Garden State.
Anyway, here’s the trailer for Percy vs Goliath!
Today, we wish a happy birthday to the one and only Christopher Walken! And what better way to do that than with a little song and dance?
Walken only has one big scene in the 1981 film, Pennies From Heaven, but it’s a showstopper. In this satirical and downbeat musical, he plays Tom, a stylish pimp who seduces a school teacher named Eileen (Bernadette Peters) by singing, tap dancing, and stripping on a bar. Director Herbert Ross did five takes of the scene and, each time, Walken performed the entire dance without stopping once. This is a scene that, in my opinion, shows that Christopher Walken is more than just a character actor with a unique way of speaking. At his best, he’s a force of nature.
Today is Christopher Walken’s 77th birthday so it seems appropriate to share a Walken scene that I love. Without further ado, here is the classic gold watch speech from the 1994 film, Pulp Fiction:
Through the Shattered Lens 