Off the Cuff: Christopher Walken on 'Stand Up Guys' and the Joys of Acting

Off the Cuff: Christopher Walken on 'Stand Up Guys' and the Joys of ActingStar talks about new buddy movie with Al Pacino and Alan Arkin $(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').hide(); } ); }); OO.ready(function() { OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer', 'x3OWx5ODqsO4h7uIA3LXeHFM9EsdTORv', {'autoplay': true }); });

Christopher Walken is a man of many roles, including his latest in the new film Stand Up Guys, which opens in theaters today. Peter Travers welcomed the Oscar winning actor to the Rolling Stone offices to talk about the movie, in which Walken teams with fellow Oscar winners Al Pacino and Alan Arkin, and who he really is.

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"You were the son of a baker, you were a lion tamer and then, somehow, you got into acting," marvels Travers. Later, he asks, "When you're sitting on a set with [Pacino and Arkin], how many times do your Oscars come up?"

"We carry them," Walken replies. "We don't have to talk about it." Walken jokes that actors don't talk about acting, but instead chat about restaurants, movies, cooking and plenty of other things. "Working with actors, there is absolutely a playground, sandbox aspect to it. It's play," says Walken. "And no matter what it's about, whether it's very dark or funny, it doesn't make any difference."

Stand Up Guys stars Pacino as Val, a criminal recently released from prison. He reunites with his old partner, Doc (Walken), who he discovers has been ordered to kill him.

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Shinedown Top the Charts, Stand Up to Bullies

Brent Smith of Shinedown performs at The Regency Ballroom in San Francisco.

The latest effort from Florida hard rockers Shinedown debuted in the top five on the charts yesterday, landing at Number Four on Billboard and Number Two on iTunes alongside Madonna, Lionel Richie and Adele. The success of Amaryllis is nothing new for the Florida hard rockers, who have sold over 10 million albums to a devoted fan base over the last decade. But with this album, the band is also aligning itself with a cause that's recently gotten attention from everyone from Lady Gaga and Oprah to documentary filmmakers: bullying.  

The band's latest single, aptly titled "Bully," is "about not feeling like you can't stand up for yourself and take back your self respect if you feel as if someone is belittling you or trying to push you around," frontman Brent Smith tells Rolling Stone. "The song is not condoning violence. What it is condoning is survival. I don't think that anyone should ever have their self-respect or their dignity taken from them."

That determination to fight back is something that comes from Smith's childhood. "When I was ten years old, my dad took me to the garage and put a pair of boxing gloves on me and said, 'I don't ever want it to come to this, but you need to learn how to fight,'" Smith recalls. "And I got my butt kicked sometimes, but I always stood up for myself. By nature I've just never backed down from what I believed in, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let someone push me around. It's the same thing with my family, too. I wouldn't let someone come into my house and mess with my girlfriend or my son."

Smith and his bandmates bring the same take-no-prisoners mentality to their music. "We're four guys that are never satisfied, and we're always trying to outdo what we've already done," Smith says. "We really are the band that looks for the biggest mountain and wants to climb it. And then once we've gotten to the top, we just want to find a bigger mountain."

For Amaryllis, the band sought to achieve new heights by reteaming with producer Rob Cavallo. "On the song 'I'm Not Alright,' we had the orchestration, but at the last minute Rob said, 'Let's put a 10-piece horn section on it,'" Smith says. "We're quite fearless on this record. There wasn't anything we strayed away from or said that we couldn't do. We just went for it. And ultimately I think that's what enhanced the album."

Shinedown is currently on tour around the country, and Smith indicates they don't have plans to slow down anytime soon: "We're very focused. We've been through a lot and we've got a lot more to go through, a lot more to do and accomplish. And we're always looking to tomorrow."

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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Shinedown Top the Charts, Stand Up to Bullies

Brent Smith of Shinedown performs at The Regency Ballroom in San Francisco.

The latest effort from Florida hard rockers Shinedown debuted in the top five on the charts yesterday, landing at Number Four on Billboard and Number Two on iTunes alongside Madonna, Lionel Richie and Adele. The success of Amaryllis is nothing new for the Florida hard rockers, who have sold over 10 million albums to a devoted fan base over the last decade. But with this album, the band is also aligning itself with a cause that's recently gotten attention from everyone from Lady Gaga and Oprah to documentary filmmakers: bullying.  

The band's latest single, aptly titled "Bully," is "about not feeling like you can't stand up for yourself and take back your self respect if you feel as if someone is belittling you or trying to push you around," frontman Brent Smith tells Rolling Stone. "The song is not condoning violence. What it is condoning is survival. I don't think that anyone should ever have their self-respect or their dignity taken from them."

That determination to fight back is something that comes from Smith's childhood. "When I was ten years old, my dad took me to the garage and put a pair of boxing gloves on me and said, 'I don't ever want it to come to this, but you need to learn how to fight,'" Smith recalls. "And I got my butt kicked sometimes, but I always stood up for myself. By nature I've just never backed down from what I believed in, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let someone push me around. It's the same thing with my family, too. I wouldn't let someone come into my house and mess with my girlfriend or my son."

Smith and his bandmates bring the same take-no-prisoners mentality to their music. "We're four guys that are never satisfied, and we're always trying to outdo what we've already done," Smith says. "We really are the band that looks for the biggest mountain and wants to climb it. And then once we've gotten to the top, we just want to find a bigger mountain."

For Amaryllis, the band sought to achieve new heights by reteaming with producer Rob Cavallo. "On the song 'I'm Not Alright,' we had the orchestration, but at the last minute Rob said, 'Let's put a 10-piece horn section on it,'" Smith says. "We're quite fearless on this record. There wasn't anything we strayed away from or said that we couldn't do. We just went for it. And ultimately I think that's what enhanced the album."

Shinedown is currently on tour around the country, and Smith indicates they don't have plans to slow down anytime soon: "We're very focused. We've been through a lot and we've got a lot more to go through, a lot more to do and accomplish. And we're always looking to tomorrow."

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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Black Keys' Patrick Carney Clarifies Band's Stand on Spotify

Patrick Carney of The Black Keys performs in London.

In an interview with WGRD 97.9 after a show in Grand Rapids, Michigan last week, Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney – in typical Patrick Carney fashion – expressed his continued frustration with the popular music streaming service Spotify.

"If it was fair to the artist, we would be involved in it," Carney told the station. "I imagine if Spotify becomes something that people are willing to pay for, then I'm sure iTunes will just create their own service, and they're actually fair to artists."

When asked about Napster founder and current Spotify board member Sean Parker's claim that within two years Spotify will be generating more revenue for the music industry than iTunes, Carney put it quite bluntly: "He's an asshole. That guy has $2 billion that he made from figuring out ways to steal royalties from artists, and that's the bottom line. You can't really trust anybody like that. The idea of a streaming service, like Netflix for music, I'm not totally against it. It's just we won't put all of our music on it until there are enough subscribers for it to make sense."

Carney's statement should come as no surprise to Black Keys fans who looked to streaming services like Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody, and MOG to hear the duo's latest album, El Camino, and found it missing. It was a planned move by Carney and bandmate Dan Auerbach, who withheld the record from such services for financial reasons, with Carney telling VH1 Spotify is "set up to be a little more fair for the labels than the artists."

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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Black Keys' Patrick Carney Clarifies Band's Stand on Spotify

Patrick Carney of The Black Keys performs in London.

In an interview with WGRD 97.9 after a show in Grand Rapids, Michigan last week, Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney – in typical Patrick Carney fashion – expressed his continued frustration with the popular music streaming service Spotify.

"If it was fair to the artist, we would be involved in it," Carney told the station. "I imagine if Spotify becomes something that people are willing to pay for, then I'm sure iTunes will just create their own service, and they're actually fair to artists."

When asked about Napster founder and current Spotify board member Sean Parker's claim that within two years Spotify will be generating more revenue for the music industry than iTunes, Carney put it quite bluntly: "He's an asshole. That guy has $2 billion that he made from figuring out ways to steal royalties from artists, and that's the bottom line. You can't really trust anybody like that. The idea of a streaming service, like Netflix for music, I'm not totally against it. It's just we won't put all of our music on it until there are enough subscribers for it to make sense."

Carney's statement should come as no surprise to Black Keys fans who looked to streaming services like Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody, and MOG to hear the duo's latest album, El Camino, and found it missing. It was a planned move by Carney and bandmate Dan Auerbach, who withheld the record from such services for financial reasons, with Carney telling VH1 Spotify is "set up to be a little more fair for the labels than the artists."

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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Artie Lange Returns to Stand Up

Artie Lange arrives at DirecTV's Sixth Annual Celebrity Beach Bowl Game at Victory Field in Indianapolis.Theo Wargo/Getty Images for DirecTV

"It's good to be alive," Artie Lange said early in his set Sunday Night at New York's Caroline's Comedy Club. It was good to see him back; it was one of Lange's first high-profile stand-up sets after a nearly two-year hiatus that occurred following his suicide attempt in January 2010. He later spent two stints in rehab and three in psychiatric wards. 

Lange left the spotlight at his peak – he was a longtime sidekick on the Howard Stern Show, his memoir Too Fat to Fish was a national bestseller and he regularly performed sold-out theater gigs around the country. Since returning, Lange has done a handful of stand-up shows and begun hosting a Direct TV sports talk show with comic Nick Dipaolo. He never mentioned the tragic incident in the set, but after someone shouted, "What's up with Howard?" Lange said, "Listen man, shit happens. One day you're on top. The next day, you're on top of a ledge."

Lange took the stage to a standing ovation as AC/DC's "Hell's Bells" blared. It was striking to see him in person; his hair and beard have gone greyer, and his onstage demeanor is mellower than it used to be. When the material wasn't razor-sharp, the crowd was there to rally for him, regularly erupting with shouts of "We love you, Artie!"

Lange recalled several anecdotes from his recovery. He remembered gaining "83 pounds in nine days" while in rehab in Chicago. "If you have a cheeseburger with pastrami, they call you a pussy for not dunking it in something," he said. He recalled hiring a personal trainer who suggested running could substitute a heroin high. "I said 'Have you done heroin?' He said 'No.' Then you're not really qualified to be in this fucking argument." He also remembered one facility where a therapist asked patients to Google themselves to prove their significance in the world. "I had 4.2 million hits," Lange said. "The first Web site that came up was called ArtiesBloatedLiver.com"

Lange didn't stay away from his past vices, either. "After I stopped gambling I realized I'm not that big a sports fan," he said. "You know you have a gambling problem when it's 4 a.m. at the Mirage Sports Book and you're walking around going, 'Hey you get the lacrosse scores?'"

He continued, "People who don't have the disease say, 'Artie, you can have one drink, one beer, one five-dollar bet. If I put down a five-dollar bet on roulette in a casino, half an hour later, it's beer, vodka, weed. By 11:30, I'm doing blow off a stripper's ass. By 12:15, I'm doing blow off a stripper's ass who's of legal age. By 8 a.m. I'm running guns to Cuba."

Too often, the show veered into sports jokes and inside humor from his new Direct TV show. There was a slightly funny parody of "Empire State of Mind" that Lange set to lyrics about Boston, and a bit about traveling to the Super Bowl and playing in a celebrity football game that never quite took off.

Still, it was moving to see Lange back onstage. "Thank you for coming. It's very sweet of you," he said late in his set. "I was gone for a couple of years. I want to thank you for not forgetting me."

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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