Christopher Walken thread

The Prophecy (1995) has been on cable lately, so I have watched most of it over the course of this week, in bits and pieces. I mostly like the movie, but it has got me thinking about Christopher Walken.

When did he become the icon he has been for so long?? Does anyone know, or remember, when he started getting really popular? At some point he sort of became a caricature of himself... I am not even saying that that's a bad thing, I always like seeing him in everything I've seen him in.

I was just thinking, in A View to a Kill (1985) he was a famous enough star to play the arch villain in a James Bond film, so, that's pretty damn famous. But I'm not sure I would say he was really KNOWN as CHRISTOPHER WALKEN yet, at that time, with all his freaky mannerisms, subtle comedy, etc. Like, in the late 80's if someone mentioned Christopher Walken, people might have known who you were talking about but I don't think they would have immediately started doing their own impersonation of him, or started saying "I gotta have more cowbell" or whatever the 80's equivalent of that might have been....

Googling around, I can see that he was on Saturday Night Live for the first time in January, 1990. That must be a fairly decent benchmark of when lots of people starting becoming aware of how funny he can be. Certainly he was already known as a comic genius by the time he did Pulp Fiction, and The Prophecy.

So, I guess maybe it was in the late 80's, or very early 90's, that people starting being aware of him as CHRISTOPHER WALKEN, not just Christopher Walken. I have not seen all of his movies from the late 80's, so I can't really talk about exactly when it happened.

It's kind of a shame that he hadn't completely grown into his 1990's-and-ever-since-then persona when he did A View to a Kill... that could have been an even better James Bond movie, and it's not bad as it stands. He certainly did an amazing job in everything I've seen him in from the 70's and 80's, (including all the obvious roles) but I'm not sure I would say he really had the public persona he has now until the 90's.

Anyone have anything to say about any of this?