LOOKING BACK That Time I Met Christopher Walken
Three years ago, Christopher Walken celebrated his 75th birthday in Switzerland.
Ok, the title of this installment is not entirely accurate: I didn’t actually meet Christopher Walken, but I was in the same room as him, and listened to him talk for an hour (having just watched a restored print of The Deer Hunter, for which he won an Oscar). This was back in March 2018, and Walken was one of the guests of the inaugural edition of the Rencontres du 7e Art (Think Cinema in English), a film festival in Lausanne focusing on the films of the past and conversations with great names in cinema.
This was the first edition, and the roster of guests was quite phenomenal: Darren Aronofsky, Alexandre Desplat, Thierry Frémaux, Barry Levinson, Léa Seydoux, and Thomas Vinterberg, to name a few. Of course, it helps when the person behind the whole thing is himself an actor/director of international renown (the Swiss-born Vincent Pérez), and people like Frémaux – with an impressive address book and a festival upon which the Lausanne event is loosely based – helped out as supporters.
Above all of them, though, was Walken, who gamely sat down for an hour-long talk on March 25, and accepted the festival’s main honorary award on March 28, an early birthday present since he turned 75 a mere three days later (he is now 78, on this very day).
It was a fascinating conversation (for those who understand Italian, I recapped it here), with topics ranging from his career choices to his love of dancing (he usually includes an impromptu move or two in most of his roles), not to mention his oft-imitated voice, for which he offered an explanation: having grown up in a largely immigrant-populated area of New York, with a German-speaking father (the family name was originally Wälken), he ended up sounding like someone who speaks English as a second language.
I mention this because tomorrow Think Cinema is scheduled to announce the full lineup for its 2021 edition, currently planned for April 26-May 2. Last year’s edition was canceled at the last minute, and many doubts surround this year’s program, mainly because it makes little sense to forgo a physical edition, should that become necessary, when the main focus is old films (not a huge selling point online) and getting to interact with major industry players (so far, three guests have been announced: Marjane Satrapi, Roland Joffé and Radu Mihaileanu).
Therefore, as I wait to hear what will happen with an event I quite enjoy covering, I think back to when we basically took such happenings for granted. It was a simpler time, when one could simply enter a cinema, watch a timeless masterpiece and then enjoy an in-person chat with one of its stars. Now, even watching an ordinary movie on the big screen is an uncertainty: at the time of writing, my last cinema visit was on December 29, to see the Liam Neeson vehicle Honest Thief. Amusingly enough, I did actually get to meet Neeson once, but that’s a story for another day…