EGN NEWS DESK
If you turned on MTV for any size of time in 2001, you virtually actually noticed Christopher Walken flying across the foyer of a Marriott in Los Angeles. Even in an period when music movies had been much more hotly mentioned than they’re now, it was a bizarre sight. Walken’s trim shock of grey hair matched his grey swimsuit, punctuated by a purple tie; he regarded much less just like the film star he was than some man on a protracted layover.
The music was Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice,” a bizarre little ditty that did make you need to dance. Having skilled as a dancer in his youth — and achieved a substantial amount of faucet and extra in “Pennies From Heaven” (1981) — Walken was properly outfitted for the idea that the video’s director, Spike Jonze, had cooked up: Normal-looking man hanging out in a resort foyer hears the tune, begins dancing, then flies off a mezzanine earlier than, finally, returning to his seat. The video was a success, profitable a number of MTV Video Music Awards and a Grammy.
The lyrics to “Weapon of Choice” (sung by Bootsy Collins) are closely distorted — the purpose isn’t the phrases a lot because the hypnotic beat. But in the event you pay attention intently, you may choose up the road “Walk with out rhythm/and it received’t entice the worm.”
Yes, it’s a reference to “Dune.”
In Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, big historical sandworms that reside beneath the desert on the planet Arrakis are massively harmful to people, although their energy could be harnessed for journey and different functions. They’re one of the vital well-known components of the story, so immediately identifiable that they had been made right into a dubiously conceived popcorn bucket for the discharge of Denis Villeneuve’s new “Dune: Part Two.” And they’re drawn to rhythmic thumps on the floor, so the Fremen — individuals who reside within the Arrakis desert — stroll in unusual, loping, arrhythmic steps to keep away from unintended detection.
In the video, Walken even appears to be imitating these steps:
These lyrics additionally seem. They might imply something, in fact.
Don’t be shocked
by the tone of my voice
Check out my new weapon
weapon of alternative
But it actually would make sense if it was a reference to “the voice” (or is it THE VOICE?), a strong vocal distortion that the magical sisterhood Bene Gesserit use to manage individuals in “Dune.”
This was all a humorous reference in 2021, when the primary installment in Villeneuve’s adaptation of “Dune” appeared in theaters. But it received a lot funnier in “Dune: Part Two.” In the brand new movie, the function of Emperor Shaddam — who engineered the extinction, or so he thought, of the House Atreides, making him technically the baddest of the dangerous guys — is performed by Walken himself.
Coincidence? Maybe. Delightful? Absolutely.
