Christopher Walken to star in film with Tom Waits, break world record for awesome, end Hollywood, etc

Blueprint Pictures and CBS films have just announced that singer/actor/raspy Übermensch Tom Waits will be joining the cast of their upcoming film project Seven Psychopaths, which means he will be sharing the screen alongside actor/comedian/dancer/cowbell enthusiast Christopher Walken – creating perhaps the hippest on screen pairing of all time.

I make that bold statement being fully aware of the fact that Tom Waits once shared the screen with not only Jack Nicholson, but also Meryl Streep in 1978’s Ironweed:

Nah, even that trio with all of it’s Academy Awards cannot compete with the Walken/Waits doubleshot.

Oh, and I’m a closet kitsch hipster, so let me go ahead and head off my brethren by dismissing any future challenge by saying even the beloved pairing of Spongebob and The Hoff aren’t even close.

According to IMDB Tom Waits was in the multi-career-launching Outsiders in 1983 so theoretically he may have appeared on screen alongside Patrick Swayze, but even if that did happen, you can’t argue with the simple coolculus statement: Walken > Swayze.

(My apologies to the women out there. It seems my concept of “cool” on-screen pairings is fairly sexist.)

But enough about how awesome Christopher Walken and Tom Waits are – there is plenty of information about that fact online, in print, and throughout reality. Let’s learn a little about the movie shall we?

Here is the official press release announcing the cast:

LOS ANGELES – November 9, 2011 – Colin Farrell (In Bruges, Crazy Heart), Sam Rockwell (Iron Man 2, Frost/Nixon), Academy Award®-winner and Tony® nominee Christopher Walken (Hairspray, Catch Me If You Can), and Academy Award®-nominee Woody Harrelson (The Messenger, Rampart) have all signed on to star in Seven Psychopaths, an action-comedy written and directed by Academy Award®-winner Martin McDonagh (In Bruges). Blueprint Pictures is producing. Film4 are co-financing with the BFI Film Fund and CBS Films which has the U.S. rights to the film. Hanway Films is handling foreign sales.

Farrell stars as a struggling screenwriter, who inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends (Rockwell) and (Walken) kidnap a gangster’s (Harrelson) beloved Shih Tzu.

Tom Waits (The Book of Eli, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) has also joined the cast along with Olga Kurylenko (Centurian, Quantum of Solace) who is currently in negotiations.

Graham Broadbent (In Bruges, Millions) and Peter Czernin (In Bruges) are attached to produce with Film4’s Tessa Ross who is set to serve as executive producer.

CAA represents Farrell, Harrelson, Kurylenko, and co-represents McDonagh with the Knight Hall Agency in London. The agency, which packaged and set up financing for the film with the producers, brokered the U.S. distribution deal on behalf of the filmmakers. Rockwell is represented by Gersh, Walken by ICM and Waits by WME.

EVP of Acquisitions Scott Shooman will oversee the project for CBS Films. Production began in Los Angeles on November 7th.

I love how they don’t even have a description for Waits’ character yet!

In honor of this announcement, I’d like to play you a pseudo Tom Waits/Christopher Walken mash up in the form of Tom’s cowbell-laden steampunk anthem “16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six” from his 1983 album Swordfishtrombones.

Actually, that’s probably not a cowbell at all. Knowing Tom it was more than likely a rusty axle from a 1963 Chevrolet pick up being struck by a lead pipe – but either way, it is in the cowbell family of instruments.

Now, we just have to figure out a way to get Chuck Norris and Clint Eastwood involved in this movie…