Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice Music Video

Filmed in December 2000 in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles (now the L.A. Grand Hotel Downtown), the “Weapon of Choice” video was directed by Spike Jonze and stars Christopher Walken, who trained as a musical theatre dancer before acting. Walken had asked Jonze to film him dancing, and Jonze pitched the video; a planned Fatboy Slim cameo did not happen because Norman Cook was unavailable that weekend due to Zoe Ball giving birth.

In the video, Walken hears the track playing from a radio on a cleaner’s cart in an empty hotel lobby, then dances through the space, takes an elevator, leaps from a balcony and “flies” around the mezzanine before calmly sitting back down.

It became a major awards hit, winning six awards at the 2001 MTV VMAs, including a “Moonman” for Walken, and was later ranked number one in VH1’s top 100 videos list in 2002. It’s also been reinterpreted and parodied, including a Swedish version with Mikael Persbrandt, Rowland Rivron’s Sport Relief routine (2012), and a later Saturday Night Live promo reference mentioned in the text.

Walken has said he did it partly because he admired Jonze and wanted to do something different, and that dancing to electronic music suited his tap background. The video saw renewed attention in the 2020s after Walken was cast in Dune: Part Two; the song references Dune in its lyrics, but the text says that connection did not influence his casting, and Walken said he was not aware of it at the time.

Director

• Spike Jonze

Cast

• Christopher Walken as himself

Sources: IMDB & WIKI