How Fatboy Slim Made Christopher Walken His "Weapon of Choice"

By 2001, Christopher Walken had an admirable career as an actor in Oscar-winning fare like The Deer Hunter, charming turns as villains in blockbusters like A View to a Kill and Batman Returns and that eye-popping cameo in Pulp Fiction. But nothing prepared audiences for his big role that year: star of the video to Fatboy Slim's catchy, oddball dance track "Weapon of Choice."

There's little camera trickery at play here: before starting his stage and screen career, Walken was a trained dancer who studied at the Washington Dance Studio. It was a semi-hidden talent before the "Weapon of Choice" shoot - the actor volunteered when asked by his friend, director Spike Jonze, to make an appearance.

"He asked me to do that based on my work on a movie twenty years ago, Pennies from Heaven," Walken later shared. "I suppose musicals have always been my favorite thing - I'm talking about movie musicals...I think if I was in the movies at an earlier time, I might have been in a lot of musical movies. But certainly MTV and music videos, some are brilliantly done, little movies."

"He said to Spike, 'I would love to get my dancing on film while I’m still young enough to do it,'" Slim explained in a 2006 interview. "To see an actor that I really admire but who’s famous for playing psychopaths, to see him do that silly un-psychopathic dancing made me smile and made everyone else smile."

Ultimately, Walken carried the entire video himself, filming in a deserted Los Angeles hotel lobby. Slim had other commitments. "I normally make cameo appearances in my videos," he said, "but my son was born that weekend, and I figured my priorities - that I should be with my wife." Slim did end up sharing six MTV Video Music Awards for the work - including Breakthrough Video, Best Direction and Best Choreography - and the track remains one of the U.K. dance artist's signature songs, with a still from the video making the cover of his greatest hits album Why Try Harder.