Two Kings From Queens

Big news out of Tinseltown: Christopher Walken has been cast, alongside Sam Rockwell, in Martin McDonagh’s next movie, called Wild Horse. Something about men on an island; it will draw on the director’s specialty, which is “absurdist dark humor.” I probably won’t see it, and I have mixed feelings about that. 

I like to think I discovered Christopher Walken. That’s because I liked him in one of his early films, Paul Mazursky’s Next Stop, Greenwich Village, released way back in 1976, before the rest of the world even knew Walken existed. He also had an oleaginous charm in Roseland and was affecting in The Deer Hunter in ways moviegoers these days might not expect. Since then, it has been pretty much downhill. The more movies he makes, the worse he gets.

I should have seen it coming. John Simon, reviewing Next Stop, Greenwich Village, referred to Walken’s “frozen narcissism,” and it is precisely that aspect of his acting that has dominated for decades. Fans seem to love it. They expect that creepy detachment. Directors do too, evidently. I don’t. I realized, somewhere along the way, that I liked Christopher Walken better before he began doing Christopher Walken imitations. 

Now, to be fair, he is a performer. That’s what he does. And that’s what the public pays for. The troubling thing is that our culture now seems to want people—not just performers—to do impressions of themselves more than they want a person’s “authentic” self, whatever that is. We are now encouraged to “find ourselves,” to discover our “true selves.” We explore our options and decide to “identify as” this or that, or the other. 

Maybe we are aware, on some level, that we do this, which might account for so much attention given nowadays to “authenticity.” A friend the other day told me he always does well in job interviews. What’s his secret? “I smile and give them my authentic self.” This is not someone applying for a job as a creative director at an advertising agency. It’s a guy looking for work as an apartment complex maintenance man.

We’ve come to a place where we expect our politicians to be, above all, performers. We want them to do imitations of themselves, and they employ teams of media advisors to help them do that. Thomas de Zengotita in Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It, saw this before most of us did. George W. Bush—a product of Andover and Yale, the grandson of a senator from Connecticut and son of a U.S. President—“had to decide to become a regular guy. It was a lifestyle option.” Back when W. was president and playing 

his role as the protector of the ‘Merican people, you can see he is performing. If you watch as he runs through those lists of evangelical/Manichean truisms, you will see his is performing the simplicity he thinks of as his principal virtue. He actually recites (rush of words, pause and stare; rush of words, pause and stare) little bromides like “We are good people,” “Our enemies hate us for who we are,” and “Our cause is just,” and his eyes like up after each nugget is delivered, as if he is proud to get his lesson right.

Bush was “trying to be himself, to act himself.” Donald Trump, by contrast, performs, but he doesn’t have to act. The product of a different media world, Trump’s “authentic” self is to do shtick. His oratorical influences seem to be comics he’d seen on late-night TV shows, like Shecky Greene or Don Rickles, yukking it up with Johnny Carson or Jack Paar.

Trump, whatever you think of his policies, is pure showbiz. That’s why the man who gained his greatest celebrity on The Apprentice would describe Linda McMahon, his pick to be secretary of education, as a “superstar.” McMahon, who with her husband Vince was head of WrestleMania TV—there’s authenticity for you—actually had Trump on the show.

Which brings us back to Christopher Walken. I’ve always thought he could do a great Trump impression. Walken has done impressions for decades—impressions of himself. He has enough hair that the stylists backstage could do anything with it. He and Trump are roughly the same age. They’re both from Queens, so Walken wouldn’t even have to vary his accent.

SNL, why haven’t you thought of this?