At the junket for Hairpsray, I got total déjà vu. A zillion celebs overtaking the Four Seasons. A series of interviews that would test my tape recorder's strength and my attention span, yet made me quiver with excitement. Seeing Hairspray was as invigorating and exciting as watching Grindhouse for the first time.
Weird, right? On the surface these movies seem so different. But they're equally bold and exuberant. And they both have huge ensemble casts. So yeah, déjà vu big time.
Hairspray comes out on Friday. I'll be seeing this buoyant musical again, which is major for me, as I am not one of those people who raved about Chicago. So, I'll be dropping little cans of Hairspray on you all week.
Here's one:
3:24 p.m.: Can I get Christopher Walken to adopt me? He walks into the room, and all hype and publicist-driven zest just seeps into the floor. This man is for real.
He tells us he never leaves his house in Connecticut, except to work or do press junkets. I love it! What does he do in there all day? He flips channels and sometimes sees himself on television. "Sometimes I think, 'Oh, I hope that I'm not on TV right now.' If I catch myself, I move on. I'll think, 'You weren't that good in that' or 'You were good.' Sometimes I see something I did 10 years ago that I thought I was awful in and I think, 'I wasn't that bad.' "
At this point, I go to the mental IMDb page. I'm guessing he might be referring to the bomb Excess Baggage. The Alicia Silverstone-gets-kidnapped movie. Yep, Christopher wasn't that bad—but the movie sure was.
Then he gets all shy about the fact that everyone loves to "do" him, that so many comics have a Walken impression. "Good actors are mimics," he says, all semisad. "I can't do anybody. Absolutely nobody. If I did someone, you wouldn't know who I was doing."
I egged him on and asked him to give it a try. He smiled, all sly: "Right now I'm doing Barbra Streisand."
Oh, Christopher Walken, you should adopt all of us.