When was the last time Christopher Walken played a serious role?

[An Gadaí]

He used to be a serious actor, right? Same with DeNiro, what happened that guy?

[astro]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christo...en_filmography

[lissener]

I think they've both earned a break. I'd coast for the paycheck at this point if I were in either of their shoes, if I'm honest with myself.

[jayjay]

Since when does "serious actor" mean "doesn't do comedies"? Comedy is harder than drama...Walken can pull it off, which makes him a hell of a serious actor.

[Little Nemo]

Wedding Crashers was a comedy but Walken's character in that movie was serious - at least he wasn't playing a joke character like Jane Seymour or Henry Gibson were.

[friedo]

He was in the quite serious Fade to Black in 2006.
He was also in Man on Fire in 2004.

The dude is constantly working. He can do whatever he wants.

[Captain Amazing]

DeNiro's been in a bunch of serious roles lately too. Righteous Kill, Hide and Seek, The Good Shepherd, The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

[Argent Towers]

I recently read that Christopher Walken was originally the choice to play Han Solo. Obviously, it's damn hard to think of ANYONE other than Harrison Ford playing that role, but of course in Hollywood there are always weird casting changes like that, and so I've always wondered how the movie would have turned out if it was Walken as Solo instead of Ford.

Obviously Harrison Ford brought a really distinctive presence to his role (arguably he was the only really good actor in the whole movie - I personally think Han Solo is what made the SW movies, and without him they wouldn't have been any good) but what would it have been like with Walken wearing the black vest? Harrison Ford has a really macho, cocky, cowboy sort of personality as Han Solo, a real tough-guy and all around badass who knows his way around the galaxy and can out-fly, and out-muscle anyone. Ford's inherent alpha-male characteristics, his gruff voice and rugged looks were what made that role what it was.

But Walken is a different sort of actor entirely. At that point in his career, in the 1970s, Walken was NOTHING like Harrison Ford. He was not an alpha male or a badass - he had built up his career playing unstable, neurotic, and slightly creepy characters as in the Deer Hunter. Walken was handsome then - thin, blonde, with delicate features and a sorrowful, vulnerable charm - but he was certainly nothing like the rugged, cocky, and more conventionally-handsome Harrison Ford.

So I have to wonder what the character of Han Solo would have been like if it had been Walken who got the role. Would he have been less macho, but maybe more witty and slightly eccentric? Would he have been able to carry that role the same way Harrison Ford did?

I know Walken has in recent years been made into a sort of caricature of himself through pop culture - an oddball whacko with crazy hair and a stunted delivery - but try to refrain from making this a joke thread. Think about 70s-era Walken, before he became typecast, and imagine what he would have brought to the Han Solo character?

Any thoughts?

[C K Dexter Haven]

Please note: Argent Towers has posted this scenario as a different thread: What would it have been like if Christopher Walken had played Han Solo?

So, please post responses to that question in that thread. Let's keep this thread about "When was the last time Christopher Walken played a serious role?"

[Alessan]

He was also excellent in Catch Me If You Can - nabbing an Oscar nomination - in 2002. Not a comic part at all.

[An Gadaí]

I saw Catch Me If You Can only the other week, an excellent film and I loved Walken in it.

[Cisco]

Originally Posted by jayjay

Since when does "serious actor" mean "doesn't do comedies"? Comedy is harder than drama...Walken can pull it off, which makes him a hell of a serious actor.

How did this meme start, and I'm curious if the people who repeat it have ever tried either?

I wonder if you think Anna Faris can do what Jodie Foster does, if Mel Brooks can do what Sir Ian McKellen does, if Steve Carell can do what Sean Penn does?

It might be harder to make a comedy hilarious to as many people as a drama is, errr, dramatic to, but that's because comedy isn't as universal, and that's largely in the writer and director's hands anyway.

[DaphneBlack]

There are plenty of actors who've shown they can do both comedy and dramatic roles well. Usually these folks start out as comedians. I think that says something about the challenges involved.

[Cisco]

Originally Posted by DaphneBlack

There are plenty of actors who've shown they can do both comedy and dramatic roles well. Usually these folks start out as comedians. I think that says something about the challenges involved.

Leslie Neilsen, Christopher Walken, David Allen Grier, and Robert Deniro - off the tip-top of my head- all started as serious actors.

[Fish]

I have done both, Cisco, and without question comedy is harder than drama.

Now, I grant you, drama is hard in different ways. But comedy is harder.

[Cisco]

Originally Posted by Fish

I have done both, Cisco, and without question comedy is harder than drama.

Now, I grant you, drama is hard in different ways. But comedy is harder.

Care to elaborate? I will. I've done both too. I guess it's subjective, but comedy is generally fun and upbeat and natural; there's nothing more fun than playing a comedic role when you really believe in the humor. Drama often includes situations you'd never really find yourself in and dialogue you'd never really say. And crying. I can't cry in real life. I'm screwed if I ever have to cry for a part.

That being said, if you can act, you can act; it shouldn't matter much if the part is serious or silly. "Comedy is harder than drama" just sounds, to me, like a rumor a comedian started. In jest.

[Alessan]

Originally Posted by Cisco

Care to elaborate? I will. I've done both too. I guess it's subjective, but comedy is generally fun and upbeat and natural; there's nothing more fun than playing a comedic role when you really believe in the humor.

Fun is nice, but how easy is it to get your audience to laugh?

[Cisco]

Originally Posted by Alessan

Fun is nice, but how easy is it to get your audience to laugh?

If the material is good, and you believe in it, and you can act, I honestly believe it's far easier than turning in a performance like PSH in Doubt or Paul Giamatti in John Adams, but I'd settle at "equal difficulty" for reasons related to my personal theories on acting.

Dave Chappelle in Half-Baked is IMO a top-25 funniest role of all-time, but it's child's play compared to, say, Hillary Swank in Boys Don't Cry.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by Cisco

Care to elaborate? I will. I've done both too. I guess it's subjective, but comedy is generally fun and upbeat and natural; there's nothing more fun than playing a comedic role when you really believe in the humor. Drama often includes situations you'd never really find yourself in and dialogue you'd never really say. And crying. I can't cry in real life. I'm screwed if I ever have to cry for a part.

You're right in that comedy and drama are played much the same way: you have the same range of emotions, you must deliver lines, you must have the right tone of voice. Comedy is very often delivered seriously, as is drama.

However, comedy has one brutal demand which drama does not, and that is pace. If the pace dies, if the delivery isn't timed well, then the comedy falls flat, no matter what else you do.

Also, comedy requires the actor to have an innate sense of what not to do. If anybody is ever hurt, genuinely hurt, it stops being funny. Therefore, the actors must work with a more limited set of responses; the actors must have a fine sense of the tone of the piece. Farce is very different from slapstick, different from screwball; everybody has to have the same ear for the tone of the piece. You don't want actors to stand out, tone-wise, from the ensemble.

Hence, I say comedy is harder than drama. Drama is much more of an individual actor's poor choices than is comedy. Comedy, as John Cleese says, is very brittle.

I can't cry on demand either. I would find crying difficult. I don't confuse that with drama being difficult; not all drama is crying.

[Cisco]

I can see some of the things you say applying on stage, but I'm a film actor, and we're talking about film actors here, and most of the things you bring up are more the responsibility of the writer, director, and editor than the actor. I mean, besideshowfastyou say..........your.........individual........words........ the pace of a film is almost completely determined by the editor.

[Miller]

Originally Posted by Cisco

Leslie Neilsen, Christopher Walken, David Allen Grier, and Robert Deniro - off the tip-top of my head- all started as serious actors.

Walken started off as a song-and-dance man, actually. DeNiro's comedy is almost entirely based on self-parody of his image as a serious dramatic actor. The same, to a lesser extent, is true with Neilsen. And while I'm tempted to argue that Grier did not start as a serious actor, it's rather a moot point, because he's never been any good at comedy. His career largely exists because the Waynes brothers keep casting him in their movies to make themselves look funny by comparison.

[Cisco]

Counter-examples, then?

[astorian]

Originally Posted by Miller

Walken started off as a song-and-dance man, actually. DeNiro's comedy is almost entirely based on self-parody of his image as a serious dramatic actor. The same, to a lesser extent, is true with Neilsen. And while I'm tempted to argue that Grier did not start as a serious actor, it's rather a moot point, because he's never been any good at comedy. His career largely exists because the Waynes brothers keep casting him in their movies to make themselves look funny by comparison.

Leslie Nielsen was the type of "B" movie actor who always got cast in supporting roles in disaster movies- for example, he was the doomed captain in "The Poseidon Adventure." Like Robert Stack, Peter Graves and Lloyd Bridges, he'd spent years playing such roles SERIOUSLY.

When the Zucker brothers wanted to spoof disaster movies in "Airplane!," their genius was to fill the cast with EXACTLY the type of actors who'd really be hired to play similar roles in a legitimate Irwin Allen-style disaster flick.

Leslie Nielsen was hilarious in "Airplane!" less because he's a gifted comic, but because he was able to play a comical role as if it were a serious role. He had to say idiotic things as if they made perfect sense.

[Guinastasia]

Commedians who later turned dramatic? How about Tom Hanks?

Let's see, famous commedians, in the "legend" sense.

-George Burns and Gracie Allen
-Lucille Ball
-Jack Benny
-Jackie Gleason
-Bob Hope
-Danny Kaye
-Buster Keaton
-The Marx Brothers
-Will Rogers
-Laurel and Hardy
-Abbot and Costello

(I'm debating whether to add the Three Stooges -- they're legends, of course, but I LOATHE the Stooges)

And of course, Charlie Chaplin

(I don't think anyone deny them the statis as "serious actors")

[Cisco]

Originally Posted by Guinastasia

Commedians who later turned dramatic? How about Tom Hanks?

Let's see, famous commedians, in the "legend" sense.

-George Burns and Gracie Allen
-Lucille Ball
-Jack Benny
-Jackie Gleason
-Bob Hope
-Danny Kaye
-Buster Keaton
-The Marx Brothers
-Will Rogers
-Laurel and Hardy
-Abbot and Costello

(I'm debating whether to add the Three Stooges -- they're legends, of course, but I LOATHE the Stooges)

And of course, Charlie Chaplin

(I don't think anyone deny them the statis as "serious actors")

Wait-- what is this a list of? I think of every single person on that list, save maybe Will Rogers, first and foremost as a comedian.

[Guinastasia]

The OP seemed to me, mocking those who were mere "commedians." If I misinterpreted, I appologize.

[j666]

Originally Posted by astorian

Leslie Nielsen was the type of "B" movie actor who always got cast in supporting roles in disaster movies- for example, he was the doomed captain in "The Poseidon Adventure." Like Robert Stack, Peter Graves and Lloyd Bridges, he'd spent years playing such roles SERIOUSLY.
...
Leslie Nielsen was hilarious in "Airplane!" less because he's a gifted comic, but because he was able to play a comical role as if it were a serious role.

Actually, that's a bit sideways. I heard Nielsen say in an interview that he always found he 'serious' roles faintly ridiculous and that he played them like the straight man in a comedy. He swore he played Airplane just like every other movie up to the time.

[Miller]

Originally Posted by astorian

Leslie Nielsen was the type of "B" movie actor who always got cast in supporting roles in disaster movies- for example, he was the doomed captain in "The Poseidon Adventure." Like Robert Stack, Peter Graves and Lloyd Bridges, he'd spent years playing such roles SERIOUSLY.

When the Zucker brothers wanted to spoof disaster movies in "Airplane!," their genius was to fill the cast with EXACTLY the type of actors who'd really be hired to play similar roles in a legitimate Irwin Allen-style disaster flick.

Leslie Nielsen was hilarious in "Airplane!" less because he's a gifted comic, but because he was able to play a comical role as if it were a serious role. He had to say idiotic things as if they made perfect sense.

Thank you, that's exactly what I wanted to say about Neilsen.