My friend Christopher Walken
What you are about to read is unequivocally...indisputably..irrefutably..100% accurate or my middle name is not Francis.
FIRST - THE MEETING
I got to spend a day with Christopher Walken once. My first year out of school I was interning for Simon and Schuster. Their big name author was Steven King at the time, hence the need for a local boy on the roster. I would do things like send out photos to fans, read through his fan mail and pass on the occasional letter that I thought he would like to see (remember, this was the early 80's, people still had to write letters), but mostly I would pick people up either at Logan, Portland, or Bangor and bring them to his house...wait until their meeting was done...and bring them back to the airport. Usually I wouldn't know the person, but occasionally it would be a celebrity.
Most were decent, fairly friendly, and were cool as long as you didn't bother them and minded your own business. Chris Walken was different. Not bad, not unfriendly (actually the extreme opposite), just different.
This is how the day went.
I was told to be at the airport at 6:00AM. The odd thing was that I wasn't supposed to deliver my passenger to the King's house (which was not being reverential...just a shortened version of "the king of horror" that he was labelled with at the time) until 5:00PM. It only took two hours to get to Bangor, which is where the King lived.
When I asked what I was supposed to do with the additional nine hours I had to kill, the answer was, "Your guest has some things he'd like to see". Good enough. I was never told who I was picking up until on my way to the airport. The instructions were always the same when picking up a passenger in Portland.. Go to the Maine Aviation private terminal, park at the front door, go in to greet the guest, take their bags, and bring them to the King's house.
On my way I found out I was picking up Christopher Walken. "That's cool", I thought. He was a great actor and seemed like one strange dude. Little did I know how strange.
So, I get to the airport, and within five minutes Chris walks off the plane. He has no luggage. He comes straight to me, extends his right hand, and says, "Good morning. I'm Dr. Michael Anthony Brace"
OK......
I didn't know until later (much later) that he liked to go by the name of his last character that he played for seventeen days after filming wrapped up. That was the name of the character he played from the last movie that he was in. Why seventeen days, who knew, but that would be one of the more normal occurrences from that day.
So, we get into the car and Chris says to me, " Do you know where the Porthole is?" I say I do. "That's where we're going." Not knowing why, I drive to the Porthole. Oh, and by the way, Chris is sitting in the front seat with me. Not just with me, next to me...literally...right next to me. His left leg is touching my right...his left arm is pressed against my right. Strange. I say nothing. Neither does he. I get to the Porthole and Chris says, "Park the car right over there". He points to an open space at the end of the wharf that the Porthole sits on. I do.
"OK, this is where we get out. See that car over there?" He points to a pristine black Cadillac. Black on the outside, black on the inside. All the chrome had been taken off of it except for the bumpers. It looked like a bullet. "That's my car. That's what we're taking. I'll drive and you be my wing man. Are you ready to have some fun?". So that was that. Christopher Walken had arranged to have his car delivered to a pier on the waterfront of Portland Maine so that he could drive it up to Bangor.
This was the beginning of a big adventure.
NEXT- THE ROAD TO NOWHERE.......
