The great David Lee Roth back in the late 1970s.
 
So first off, yeah, I know that David Lee Roth’s isolated vocals from Van Halen’s 1978 juggernaut, “Runnin’ With the Devil” have been making the rounds out on the Internet for a while. But perhaps what you didn’t know is that there is a site that allows you to download them in neat little MP3 files so you could, as I’d strongly suggest, use them as ring tones for your smart phone. So let’s all help make our smart phones great again by ditching those irritating pre-loaded ringtones and replacing them with Diamond Dave’s straight-up mythical war cry from the stoner teen anthem, “Aaahhh Haaa YEAHHH!”

Of course, it’s easy enough for most people to DIY this themselves, but on Soundboard.com you can even text DLR’s vocals to anyone you want in the United States. If DLR isn’t your cup of tea (???), don’t despair as there are over 485,000 other sounds on Soundboard, including famous quotes spoken by Samuel L. “Say WHAT again” Jackson and Christopher Walken. There’s also an entire category called “Nicolas Cage loses his shit” that includes a downloadable MP3 of Cage rage-screaming the word “fuck” for five full seconds. Nice.

In case you’ve never heard Roth’s isolated vocals from “Runnin’ With the Devil,” here’s a video compilation of that audio:
 

David Lee Roth’s isolated vocals from “Runnin’ With the Devil.”

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Van Halen wanted to crush a Volkswagen Beetle with a tank in 1979… just to piss off Aerosmith
Van Halen cover Bowie and KC & The Sunshine Band (while judging a dance contest!) in the 70s
Thundertrain: The band that was ‘Hot for Teacher’ before Van Halen
The Nightmare Before Halloween: Insane early Van Halen set from 1977
‘They tried to make us look like the Clash!’ Van Halen’s rejected first album cover

 
Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, New York is currently showcasing an art installation of concrete Christopher Walken heads called “Monument to Walken.” The Walken busts are by artist Bryan Zanisnik.

How long are they going to be on display? I don’t know. But here’s a map you can download of Socrates Park so you can locate all the Walken heads.

I can’t think of a more fitting tribute. I’m going to try, though.

 
via Time Out

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
12-year-old Christopher Walken in clown makeup will make you hate clowns a little less (or will it?)
Little rascal: Christopher Walken, child actor
‘The Three Little Pigs’ read by Christopher Walken
‘Christopher Walken in the air’... What MORE could you want?

 
Why this exists… I simply do not know. But it does and I think I’m a better person for having watched it. Whatever drugs the person was on who made this must’ve been pretty spectacular because well, they came up with this.

And just in time for the holiday season to spread some Walken cheer. I’ll be walken in a winter wonderland… and so will you!

PS - It’s a damned earworm to boot! You’ve been warned.

 
Via WFMU

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
12-year-old Christopher Walken in clown makeup will make you hate clowns a little less (or will it?)
Little rascal: Christopher Walken, child actor
‘The Three Little Pigs’ read by Christopher Walken

 
Here’s an amusing (or is it just straight up American Horror Story: Freak Show territory?) photo series of a 12-year-old Christopher Walken applying and then sporting some clown makeup. These were shot in 1955.

As many of you already know, Walken’s been acting since he was child. He started in 1953 with his first film Wonderful John Acton.

You can read more about Walken’s early Hollywood acting career here.

 

 

 

 
More of Walken after the jump…
 

Tubbs & Edward from The League of Gentlemen

UK-based advertising and design company A Large Evil Corporation has these amazing vinyl dolls they’re creating daily for their blog to get into the Halloween spirit. I’m completely drooling over the The League of Gentlemen and Mighty Boosh vinyl toys. I never thought in a million years I’d see Tubbs and Edward dolls! They’re just brilliant!

Keep checking out A Large Evil Corporation’s blog as they’re adding new ones all the time. I’m curious as who or what they’ll do next (and if one can purchase these masterpieces? It’s unclear.) Maybe a Jill Tyrell figure (played by Julia Davis) from the dark British comedy Nighty Night?

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
 

Christopher Walken
 

The Hitcher from The Mighty Boosh
 

The Torrances from The Shining
 
More after the jump…
 

 
Happy Birthday Christopher Walken, born today in 1943.

Walken was a dancer in variety and musicals before he became a respected (and much loved) actor starring in such films as The Deerhunter, The Dead Zone, The Comfort of Strangers, The King of New York, Pulp Fiction, True Romance, The Prophecy Trilogy, Wild Side, The Addiction, The Funeral, Sleepy Hollow, Hairspray, and most recently Turks and Caicos.

It’s fair to say that if Mr Walken’s name is attached to any movie, you know it’s going to be fun—well, at least when he’s on screen. You might not like what happens before or after, but once he appears, you know the movie sings. Who can forget his scenes with Dennis Hopper in True Romance? Or, the casual soft shoe shuffle in King of New York? Or, his bravura dancing to Fat Boy Slim’s promo for “Weapon Of Choice”?

Such is his popularity that when an Internet forum ran a hoax Christopher Walken for President campaign, it seemed almost believable, and I’m sure there would have been quite a few people out there who would have given a big ‘X’ to Mr. W. had it been real.

Walken is so likable, so watchable, and seems such an interesting character (he likes cats and pineapple, and his mother came from Glasgow, where he still has relatives) that it’s unusual to find an interview with him that hasn’t had at least a zillion views, so I was rather delighted to find these three clips of the great man talking about his career as an actor, his acting techniques, and how he like to improvise.
 

 
More chat with Christopher Walken, after the jump…
 

 
Christopher Walken is in a very special group of beloved actors…. really, only Bill Murray is in the same category in terms of having an almost spooky ability to touch and delight us, sometimes without doing anything at all. What those two actors share, it occurs to me, is a knack for complete and utter freedom; they don’t seem tethered at all by the normal constraints.

A couple of years ago, Stephen Collins, who acted on stage with Walken in two productions, was interviewed on Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show, and he made a fascinating comment about Walken’s utter lack of the usual actor’s vanity (quote starts at 42:30):
 

I did Three Sisters with Walken at Williamstown [in 1987]. ... He was playing Vershinin, and he got a lot of laughs. ... He would get a laugh—I mean a big, huge laugh—and the next night, I’d think, oh hey, this’ll be fun, I can’t wait for him to go for that again, because it’s fun when anybody on stage gets a laugh. And he wouldn’t do anything even remotely like what he did the night before. He would give up the laugh completely. It was like, it had never happened. And you’d think, God, how amazing. And then I swear, three seconds later, he’d do something else and get a huge laugh—that he would never go for again.

I never, ever have known an actor less possessive of his laughs. Because actors are usually really possessive. ... When you get a big laugh in a play, you kinda want to get it eight times a week. And you sort of want everybody to help you get it. ... He has none of that attachment. ...

When he was a chorus boy he worked with Beatrice Lillie, ... in a musical called High Spirits, the musical version of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, and he said she did that. He said, “Beatrice Lillie never got the same laugh twice. ... I always thought that was so brave, and so I guess it affected me, you know.” I guess it did! He’s like the bravest guy on stage I’ve ever, ever seen.

 
One of the secrets of Walken’s success and utterly distinctive persona may be an application of Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hour rule”—in order to become a master at something, you have to put in ten thousand hours and then you have a chance to be really great.  Walken has been Walken his entire life!

I didn’t know before a couple of days ago that Walken has been acting since he was a child. Here are some amusing publicity stills from those early days, years before he would achieve such stellar results in movies like The Deer Hunter, True Romance, King of New York, The Dead Zone, Seven Psychopaths, a Fatboy Slim video and countless episodes of Saturday Night Live.
 

 

 

 
Here’s Walken’s portrait from his high school yearbook from “PCS”—Professional Children’s School in New York. (Clarification: Walken’s given name is Ronald; he adopted the name “Christopher” in 1964.) Walken was born in 1943, so I suppose this would have been about 1960. After a Shakespeare quotation, we encounter the following, which is somehow hilariously apt: “This tall blue-eyed cavalier” is “a watchful dreamer, he will speak up quite suddenly with some witticism, and then lapse back into silence.”
 

 
Here’s Walken in his first acting role, at least according to IMDb.com. It’s from 1953, and it’s called “Wonderful John Acton,” and it’s about “an Irish-American family in Ludlow, Kentucky in 1919.” It looks heavily influenced by Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, but what do I know. Only the first three minutes are here, you’ll see Walken walk across the stage around the 2:20 mark.
 

 
via Showbiz Imagery and Chicanery

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘The Three Little Pigs’ read by Christopher Walken

 
Brooklyn-based comedy outfit POYKPAC put together this witty homage to Christopher Walken and parody of zombie movies. Nicely done.

POYKPAC are Jenn Lyon, Maggie Ross, Ryan Hall, Ryan Hunter and Taige Jensen

More cowbell!
 

 
Via The High Definite

 
If you’ve ever wanted to see a Christopher Walken doppelgänger make sexy-talk… here’s your chance.

 
(via KMFW )

 
Christopher Walken gives the tale of The Three Little Pigs a wiseguy spin in this very funny clip from British TV show Saturday Zoo hosted by Jonathan Ross. This aired in 1993.
 

 
Thanks to Open Culture

Donald Cammell with Anita Pallenberg on the set of “Performance.”

Though he only directed two films that are truly extraordinary, Donald Cammell will always hold a special place on my list of the all-time great cinematic mindfuckers.

Dangerous Minds readers will undoubtedly be familiar with the hugely influence Performance, but Cammell’s last film, the darkly witty and perverse Wild Side, deserves to find a wider audience. It was butchered by its original production company and released in a bastardized form that so depressed the already mentally fragile Cammell it sent him over the edge and he killed himself in 1996.

Wild Side was re-released in 2000 in a version that comes close to Cammell’s original cut. Cammell’s close friend editor Frank Mazzola managed to gather together the “lost” footage from Wild Side and reconstruct it in a form that approximates Cammell’s vision. It is available here as an import DVD. For some unfathomable reason the director’s cut has never been released in any form in the USA. I did manage to see it years ago at a Cammell film fest in NYC. It features one of Christopher Walkens’ best and most bizarre performances in a career of bizarre performances. Trust me when I tell you, you’ve never seen Walken at his weirdest until you’ve seen him in a kimono and a long black wig.

Wild Side is cut from the same dark cloth as David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. But I can’t stress enough the fact that the butchered version available on Amazon and elsewhere is worthless. Avoid it like a bad case of the clap.

Here’s a clip from Wild Side with Anne Heche, Steven Bauer and Walken to whet your appetite. “Off with the Calvins.”
 

 
Cammell got his professional start in the arts as a painter and photographer in the swinging London scene of the 1960s. He lived the life of a rock star, looked the part and was prone to the hedonistic excesses of the times as well. He worked with filmmaker Nic Roeg to create the greatest head movie of all time, Performance. Artistic recognition led to a series of disappointments in Hollywood and Cammell’s life quickly veered toward a sad end. His story is compelling and tragic and in this documentary his fascinating life unfolds like one of his movies.

 
Ho-ho-hum.
 
Via I Raff I Ruse