Walken on the Web - The Christopher Walken Fan Site: 'The Dogs of War' Page 3

Press Materials Š1980 United Artists Corporation

"Swollen Cheekbones, Dried Blood - Christopher Walken and The Dogs of War Makeup"
(Press Release 10/21/80)

For three mornings while filming The Dogs of War in Belize, Central America, star Christopher Walken set his alarm clock and hour earlier, went on his customary jog alongside the Caribbean and then at 6:30 a.m. settled into the makeup chair. Three hours later he rose with a face like something out of a nightmare.

Scenes in the United Artists release of Frederick Forsyth's best-seller concerning a bloody mercenary coup on a West African dictatorship has Walken as the mercenary leader captured by military police during a reconnaissance. He is flung in a bug-infested jail cell and then beaten systematically and professionally by his interrogators.

Says makeup artist Dickie Mills who had to reshape Walken's sensitive features for the sequence, "This wasn't just a matter of a few make-believe bruises and some dried blood. Our director John Irvin said he wanted to show the brutal effects of a sadistic beating, what it can do the line of a man's features. So first of all I had to build the swollen bone structure up with white plaster, let it set and then paint the skin tones in. All the shadows and highlights had to be there as well, otherwise the sensation of reality would have been lost."

Working from reference photographs -- earlier scenes had already been shot as Walken's bruised face started to recover -- Mills worked on the actor making sure that each bruise and bump matched those of the earlier scenes. As the plaster stiffened, Walken's face set; he was barely able to talk or blink. One swollen cheekbone almost obscured the sight of his left eye; the other was puffy and half-closed.

Said Mills, "It was one of the most difficult and uncomfortable -- for the actor -- makeup jobs I've ever done. But I'll say this for Chris, he was a real professional all the way, never complained."

Said Walken later, his face restored to normal, "I couldn't complain. When Dickie had finished with me I couldn't say a word. The worst moment was when I came straight back from the set one day with the makeup still on and walked into the hotel lobby. Some tourists had just checked in and they almost fainted at the sight."

The Dogs of War, a Norman Jewison-Patrick Palmer Production, stars Christopher Walken and Tom Berenger. It is produced by Larry DeWaay. The screenplay is by Gary DeVore and George Malko, based on a novel by Frederick Forsyth. Executive producers are Norman Jewison and Patrick Palmer. It is directed by John Irvin for release by United Artists, a Transamerica Company.

"Christopher Walken - Biography for The Dogs of War" (Press Release 10/30/80)

In The Dogs of War, the United Artists release based on the worldwide best-seller by Frederick Forsyth concerning the meticulous planning and execution of a mercenary strike against a West African dictatorship, the leading mercenary is Jamie Shannon, and as played by Christopher Walken he is, you might say, the thinking man's fighting soldier.

That Shannon is a former war hero there is no doubt; he keeps his medals on display, even though they occupy a space in the toilet of his New York apartment. That he is a loner there is no doubt either. He keeps a photograph of his ex-wife turned to the wall. He prefers an electronic chess opponent to a human one, and never bothers to adjust the rolling picture on his television screen.

Iron has entered Shannon's soul and when one of his best friends is killed on a bloody assignment in Central America, Shannon avers he will lead no more mercenary coups. But circumstances force him into one more assignment, and the end result could be vindication for him of all the senseless violence that has gone before...

Christopher Walken has an austere, monk-like sensitivity about him which perfectly offsets the macho image of his mercenary team played by American Tom Berenger, Britisher Paul Freeman, and French actor/director Jean Francois Stevenin.

He is a tall, thin man with a pale face and prominent cheekbones. His voice is soft and throaty with its distinctive New York accent, his body spare, and his gait graceful as befitting someone who started his career as a dancer.

He says little until drawn into a conversation and then his laconic, dry wit becomes evident. But he rarely smiles.

Director John Irvin and producer Larry DeWaay deliberately cast Walken "against type" for The Dogs of War because, as in the Forsyth book, they wanted to show a man filled with self doubt about his role in life.

"We could have had the leader of the mercenaries firing from the hip and bearing gleaming teeth," Irvin said, "but that would have been too much of a cliché. Chris is just perfect in the part. He's aloof, tough, and yet you feel you'd trust him in any situation."

As with such recent roles as the award-winning Nick in The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate in which he again teamed up with director Michael Cimino, Walken brings a lot of thought into a role. He likes to motivate the character from within, inventing pieces of background not in script or novel that will give the character a three-dimensional quality.

Walken was born March 31, 1943, in Queens, New York City, where his father was a baker. With a keen interest in music and the theater from an early age, Walken showed talent for acting at school and, with the encouragement of school and family, began getting cast in television shows. His first off-Broadway production was the revue Best Foot Forward which also featured another young hopeful, Liza Minnelli. Walken hoofed it in this particular show as he did in many others before making his acting debut on Broadway at the age of 16 in Elia Kazan's production of J.B. by Archibald MacLeish.

By this time he had appeared briefly in his first motion picture, The Boy Who Could See Through Walls. (webmistress note: this must be an alternate title for Me and My Brother.)

After J.B. closed, Walken decided to take two years off and study English Literature at Hofstra University where he eventually majored in his chosen subject. He then returned to the boards and appeared in two Broadway musicals, High Spirits and Baker Street.

During a tour of West Side Story he met his wife, dancer Georgianne, to whom he has been married for eleven years.

Walken started winning prestigious theatrical prizes -- the Clarence Derwent Award for the role of King Philip in The Lion in Winter, an Obie for his performance in the title role of Kid Champion, and a Theater World award for work in the City Center Revival of The Rose Tattoo.

But he was looking more and more longingly westward, towards Hollywood. Finally, drawing a deep breath, he bought a ticket and went there. But it was to be a long and unnerving period of auditions and rejections before he made his film debut in The Anderson Tapes.

Other small roles in such films as The Happiness Cage, Next Stop Greenwich Village, Roseland, Santa Fe-1836 (webmistress note: this was an alternate title for Shoot the Sun Down), The Sentinel, and Annie Hall were punctuated with stage experience with the New York Shakespeare Festival, Hamlet with the Seattle Repertory Company, a triumph in the title role of Caligula by Albert Camus at the Yale Repertory Company, Miss Julie and The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail at the Goodman Theater in Chicago for which he won the Joseph Jefferson Award.

Early in 1977 he starred in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth opposite Irene Worth.

When Walken first read The Deer Hunter he vowed he would play any role he was asked to do, however tiny. He landed the part of Nick, for which he won the Best Supporting Actor Award at the 1979 Academy Award ceremonies and then played a compassionate gunfighter in Heaven's Gate prior to coming on to The Dogs of War.

Walken never worries about the future. On completion of The Dogs of War he had nothing firmly lined up. He would like, he says, to play a knight in a medieval romp or a New York gangster, "like those marvelous old Warner Brothers films of the thirties."

Photos and content on these web pages were reproduced from the United Artists press kit
for The Dogs of War issued in 1980 to publicize the movie's release.

updated 07/31/2007

Site of the Day - April 27, 2004!