Walken: Awful or Awfully Funny?

Matthew, you read my mind. I vote "A," tempered only slightly by "B." I found it actually kind of insulting.

Unfortunately, I had to turn SNL off I found it so distracting. It's too bad because I found some of the skits pretty funny.

He may be paying too much attention to his own image, you know?

I'd vote for greatest! his mere tossed off ramblings of the cue card readings can cause more actual, genuine, laughter then many many other hosts could combined. (and that's assuming they have all the lines completely memorized.) True maybe he could memorize the lines a bit more, maybe he enjoys the idea of winging his delivery on the spot so he could be more "live", He no doubt knows this, but Walken's delivery is gold, jerry! pure gold. I've long said that about any movie he's been in, no matter what the quality was before or after his alotted screentime will get about ten times better with his presence. Going back a long ways, long before he exploded in popularity, the idea that Walken just by showing up can turn s--t to gold was true.
Just look at his filmography.

On the other hand, it does seem more and more apparant that this entire past decade has pretty much seen him giving more and more attetion to his image, by giving more gist for the mill. (country Bears movie, kangaroo jack, etc.) It seems these days that the idea of him actually being serious again in film seem slim, which is sad, because at least as recently as a decade ago, he could jump back and fourth between self parody and complete seriousness with awesome ability. (suicide Kings, even Poolhall Junkies which was in '02 saw him delivering serious monologues with excellent results.) He may still have that in him, but obviously that's up to him.

I'm only saying all of this cause several years ago i took a class where we had to write a ten page paper explaining the career of someone we admire (it was a film class) and i chose Walken, and in doing some reasearch I found an interview with him where he said that he had so much fun playing the villian in A View To A Kill (that James Bond moive he did in the mid 80's) that he pretty much been concentrating on trying to play the bad guy more then the flawed heroes he'd been playing up til then. (Dead Zone, Dogs of War, Brainstorm, etc.) You factor in his very very effective two minute role in Annie Hall, which is perhaps the first time a crazy Christopher Walken character ever appeared onscreen, and you pretty much have his career since then. However his delivery, combined with his voice is of such power that its mighty hard to dismiss the idea that he is perhaps the greatest, or at least most influential actor out there currently. The good thing though is that he works with such frequency that his next great screen performance (and i mean legit screen performance as opposed to being ironic and in air quotes) could only be a few films away. You really never know, but I will maintain that anyone who could make something as horrible and inconsequential as "Envy" be actually funny even if only for five minutes has a pretty amazing ability in him.

Your loyalty is impressive, Matt. You make me want to wait for that next truly dramatic turn, without air quotes... MG

His first film was The Sentinel, from 1976,,everyone thinks its Annie Hall, but its not,,

I think the second part. It makes him better. He's my favorite.