Blessed, Life and Films of Val Kilmer

by William Hamilton

  After the disagreements, he opted to quit the series, and turned down the lead role in “A Time to Kill.” Val says, “Joel thought my turning it down was a reflection on him, which it wasn’t. No hard feelings, I turn down a couple of movies a week.”

  According to Caruso (director of “The Salton Sea,”) Kilmer tried to dig deeper into motivations than Schumacher wanted to. When Kilmer would ask Schumacher what might motivate his character, Schumacher would reply “Well, you’re Batman. Just go do it.”

  “I can see that just driving Val crazy,” says Caruso. “He’s so smart and so intellectual and wants to be so good, and that type of direction would probably trigger some negative feelings toward the project or the character or maybe even the director. So I can see why that reputation was built.”

  Nicole Kidman (Chase Meridian) says, “Val’s an actor’s actor, wonderfully complex. Before we made “Batman,” Tom (Cruise, her husband) said, ‘you’re really gonna get along well. He’s really bright, and he’s really dedicated,’ and that was true. We just clicked.”

  “Hard Copy” ran a rumor that Jim Carrey was feuding with Val, but it was Joel Schumacher, if you can believe it, that first put the rumors to bed. Val says, “I don’t know how that started. When those stories came out, I’m not sure, either we hadn’t actually met or it was our first day together. Anyway, I later went over and said to (Carrey), ‘This stuff’s coming out. Don’t know why.’ And he doesn’t know why he’s getting all this stuff written and said (about him), either.”

  How did Val enjoy working with the rest of the cast, “(Chris O'Donnell, who played Robin) kind of eternally preppy. The whole cast could easily start a religion. We’re a very Christian group, extremely white. The black sheep of the family it Tommy Lee Jones, who may never recover from (playing) Ty Cobb.”

  But who is the Real Batman?

  Val was at home with his children one day when Mercedes comes into the room and says to him, “Jack’s not believing me. I told him you’re Batman, but he says that he’s Batman.”

  Val had a parental duty to set Jack straight, so he explained to him, “Jack, your sister’s telling you about this time when I played Batman in the movies.” Jack nodded like he didn’t believe his father. If you’ve played one of the coolest role ever, you might as well get credit for it, but he didn’t own a copy of “Batman Forever,” so he had to send an assistant to the video store to rent one.

  Val gathered the kids in the living room to watch. After twenty minutes Mercedes left, she’d seen it before, and Jack watched with his arms folded for just a little longer, as if he were thinking there Dad is with this cape on, pretending to be me. A few minuets later, he left, knowing in his heart that he is the real Batman.

  Val says, “And twenty-five minutes into the movie, I’m sitting there watching “Batman” alone in my living room.”

  “IGN Filmforce: Last question, and you have to be honest with me, Val. Were you the best Batman?”

  Val: “Oh, compared to Adam West, are you kidding? He was amazing. The style, the grace, and what a mover.”

  Heat

  12/15/1995

  Val had an opportunity to work with two Hollywood legends in “Heat,” Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. According to Michael Mann (Writer, Director, Producer) “If you can imagine it, Val can do it. If you want him to perform a 3.9 high dive on screen, he’s there. He is right up there with Al and Bobby in his drive toward specificity. You can see in his work the elevated ambition, the high order of expectations, he places upon himself.” This included flying to Folsom prison for half a day to better get “some Folsom-ness” into his character.

  Val said, “I think I’d like to work more on projects that don’ t take so long to do. Even “Heat”-I’ve only played a couple of roles like that where I wasn’t the lead in the story-but that took forever. I started the day after “Batman Forever,” and that just took practically as long as “Batman” took - like 4 1/2 months. It took 14 days to do that shoot-out scene. Every Sunday, we’d go down to LA and blow it up. There were thousands of rounds being fired. We had 11 cameras on that.”

  “Heat” is unusual in that it was entirely filmed on location; no sets were used, not even for hotel rooms or houses. This presented a challenge for location manager Janice Polley, who, with a staff of three to four people, scouted from August to December of 1994. Michael Mann instructed them on the style and type of house each character would live in according to his socio-economic class. One goal was to minimize places that had been shot in other movies before, and they succeeded. Of 85 locations, less than ten percent had appeared in a movie before.

  The moviemakers had to get permission from the local City Council to shut down Venice Boulevard for seven days. The bank robbery was shot at the Far East Bank; they didn’t want to close the bank so they had to set up and shoot between six on Friday night to five Monday morning. It took five weekends to film, and Val shot it on weekends when he was filming “Batman.”

  When they were planning the bank robbery, a real bank in LA let themselves be guinea pigs. Only the manager knew. Val Kilmer, Robert DeNiro and Tom Sizemore all wore disguises so they wouldn't be recognized, then wore body armor and went into the bank. One or two guys were covertly videoing them from cameras in bags, and the three of them had certain tasks to complete. Kilmer had to find the name and location of the woman who held the keys to the vaults. DeNiro had to cover the area and map out all the cameras and lockable doors, while Sizemore had to make sure that the escape route stayed clear and open. After they’d done it, the bank handed over its security videos, and, because they’d planned it right, they weren’t on any of them.”

  The filmmakers also utilized a rolling brake maneuver, where California Highway Patrol cars weave in and out of traffic on a highway to create about a minute's worth of empty road. This made it possible to clear a freeway access ramp when they filmed the armored car heist, in case the tow truck didn’t stop when it was supposed to and rolled onto the ramp. It was also used when Hanna catches up with McCauley on Route 105 and offers to take him for coffee.

  Filming in the Los Angeles Airport created the most problems. The day before the shoot, the Unabomber had threatened the post office at the airport and the FBI had been called in. Delaying filming at this point would cost thousands of dollars since all other filming was done. The filmmakers met with airport security and FBI. After investigation, they discovered they were filming far enough away from the bomb threat location that filming could safely go ahead.

  Interesting Facts:

  Although in the movie the characters left California, the movie was made entirely in California.

  Tom Sizemore speaks about working with Val, “Never have I heard so much crap about an actor I had such a good time with. It’s all bullshit. He doesn’t explain himself to people, so people talk.”

  Val refused to be photographed while smoking for promotional pictures, but posed with a gun. “I'm better at taking picture if I can think ‘props.’ Like, I came to the photo shoot with my briefcase from “Heat” and your editor (of Movieline magazine) say(s), ‘What's in it?’ I went, ‘I got beads, I got a gun,’ and he said, ‘Well, let's take some pictures with that.’ Its very stylized gang, right? It’s not like it reads, ‘Go shoot somebody!’ Understand?”

  The Business of Acting

  “What should a young actor do when he’s handsome enough to stop traffic yet determined to be noticed only for his acting ability?” began a Boston Herald story. “I don’t want to sell my face,” said Kilmer, then 25. “But I would like people to see what I do. I know if you become something that’s desirable, people will come to see you. But I believe more strongly that they will come if you have talent.”

  Val Kilmer has had a long a varied career. Sometimes its hard to see how he chooses his roles, it obviously isn’t based on money. Val says, “I’m very emotional about career choices. Being scientific about my career always fails. Some actors bring that sort of organization to th
eir work. It’s hard to imagine Tom Cruise or Jodie Foster misplacing a letter. Their movie companies are very well organized and they know right where the stationery is. I’m not that kind of person. It’s not my style.”

  “I'm a perfectionist. The best part about acting is (the) potential to affect people and to influence someone’s point of view. Which is grand. It can be a noble profession. The worst part about acting is that autograph hounds followed my mother and myself after the premiere of ‘The Prince of Egypt.’ They ran in front of us and into our hotel like a bunch of teenagers on Halloween, screaming obscenities at us.”

  “No matter how successful you are, everybody has periods when nobody cares. No one is immune. Charlie Chaplin couldn’t get a movie made after a while, Orson Welles, Brando, any of ‘em. It can make you think you should put a job before your personal needs, or you might not get another one. I’m grateful I didn’t succumb to that thinking. I’d be much more successful now because I would have worked more. I’ve never added them up, but I think I’ve made 15 (films) now 16. All the Toms, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, even the younger guys -Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt - they've all made 20 or 30 movies. A lot of actors did two or three films a year for years and learned how to act by doing movies.”

  “Many jobs I’ve turned down because Joanne got one, even where the job I’d turned down as clearly more of an advantage to me in the abstract than the job she had chosen was for her.”

  “I turned down the role in ‘Dirty Dancing’ because I didn’t want to be perceived as a ‘hunk.’ "But those were the kind of roles I was offered after ‘Top Secret!’ I tried for other really good acting jobs, but I didn’t get them. So...I took off. Went around the world alone to think about what I wanted and why. I’m pretty convinced I made the right decision.”

  Val thinks Brando has a better way, “He has genuine courage. A lot of actors’ courage comes from wanting to be good; but once they achieve greatness, there’s often a kind of complacency. You see great actors-people who have really pursued acting as a craft- (develop) a kind of complacency or a familiarity with a certain kind of behavior. Tricks, you know? But he has genuine courage.”

  “I know he has been uninterested in acting for quite a while, but he’s still so obsessed - chronically obsessed - with behavior and storytelling. That’s what’s inspiring to me about him. To me, he has poetry that separates him from other actors. Poetry is an essence of something, and he’s able to capture an essence.”

  “When I was preparing to play Hamlet, a wonderful acting teacher, Peter Cass, said that I had enough to say to be able to play the character. He said, ‘Why don’t you think you can do it?’ I said, ‘He's just so awesome, so profound.’ He said, ‘what are you talking about? He’s pathetic. He does anything anybody tells him to. Right off the bat, this guy he despises-who he hates to be around-says, don’t go back to school. Stay here. He says OK. He’s tragic. He’s stuck. He doesn’t know what to do. But you have 10,000 choices.’ He broke the spell over my sense that there was something beyond me."

  Val writing about acting, “One of the elementary lessons you learn when studying acting is that of mastering the senses. Listening, for example. Real listening requires effort, concentration, and focus. If one wants to act well, one needs to receive information free from personal judgments in order to respond spontaneously and honestly. If you’re really listening, the ear is turned on to receive, and the inner monologue, your own dialogue, is turned off.”

  “I discovered early on that it’s valid to apply this observation to praying, or listening spiritually to God, as well. We turn on to God's voice by turning our own, off. Listening requires humility, commitment, and concentration. So does prayer.”

  “Humility comes with the recognition that God is greater than any of us. He is the sole creator of the universe. When you pray, the aim is not to give God all kinds of information, telling Him what you want or need. Just the opposite. As you listen to the thoughts that God sends, listen with a willingness to accept them for the healing love they manifest. Harmony is present, no matter what the material senses seem to be saying.

  Those same senses claim to take in all that life is-to see, hear, taste, smell, and feel reality. Yet because they are material, they can’t actually do that. They can only suggest that what they’re reporting is real and true.”

  “Acting, if done without convincing imagination, is typically an imitation of behavior, without real connection or emotion. It’s fake.”

  “They (instructors at Julliard) all told me over and over and over again. I just wish I’d listened. You have to give yourself objectives that are virtually unobtainable and be happy about it. It’s perverse. And you have to love it beyond what you imagine. And I did and do. But I would not have worked as hard at it as I did by being in school. So it’s just the basics, the facts of learning how to learn and understanding that it just goes on forever, and trying to either fool yourself or buy the inspiration to put yourself into the environment to work harder than you believe that you can. Because you just won’t make it unless you’re willing to be that way.”

  Interesting facts:

  When it's suggested the conversation should finally turn to his new movie, he says: “Nah. That’s all right. I’d rather talk politics.”

  Host (AOL chat): “Dude, you were so racked in ‘The Doors.’ Did you experiment with any substances to prepare for your role as Jim Morrison?”

  Val: “Any substances? Yeah, I ate apples, bananas and ran and ran -- ran and ran. My indulge incidence was not drugs or booze, but health. He only had to jump off the stage once. I had to do it many times for the film.”

  On what movie did you feel this tug between art versus commerce the least?

  “Are you talking about the movie or the role in which I was most able to represent the deepest aspects of my soul?”

  “Well, ‘Batman Forever’ of course.”

  Val hasn’t done much television, probably because he views it like this, “Television reduces the standards of the culture to the standards of television. There’s a basic intrigue, a frivolousness about what people think they should know about other people.”

  Val has turned down roles in ‘Dune,’ ‘Blue Velvet,’ ‘Flatliners,’ ‘Backdraft,’ ‘Sliver,’ ‘Point Break,’ ‘In the line of Fire,’ ‘Indecent Proposal,’ ‘Dirty Dancing,’ ‘The Outsiders,’ and ‘Something Wild’

  The Island of Dr. Moreau

  8/23/1996

  Val’s career seemed to be headed in the right direction, and then came along what seemed like a great opportunity, the chance to work with one of his childhood heroes, Marlin Brando. Val was quoted as saying to the Washington Times “I couldn’t resist the chance to be in a movie with Brando. It was a privileged acting experience.” This was the third movie based on the classic H. G. Well’s book of the same name (the 1st movie was the 1933 “Island of Lost Souls”) and was released on the hundredth anniversary of the book.

  Marlin Brando was quoted as saying that the movie was going to make $500,000,000, even though he probably was exaggerating to hype up the film, certainly big things were expected by all. The movie was shot in Australia.

  Val was supposed to have the lead role of Douglas, but ended up choosing to play one of the villains, Montgomery. Montgomery is Dr. Moreau’s (Marlin Brando) assistant, and is a more difficult role than the lead, although that role was played nicely by David Thewlis, it’s a character whose only job is to react to the strange things surrounding him.

  One of the film’s producers, Edward Pressman, stated, “Kilmer is at his best in roles requiring an edge and a touch of cynicism. The role was not that of the protagonist. But, is a character that, as you will see in the movie, Val plays beautifully.”

  The first director of the film was Richard Stanley, who was fired three days into production for “creative differences.” Rob Morrow (who was originally to play Douglas) then quit.

  Director John Frankenheimer says that the movie, “was very difficult
to make. They didn’t call me in to replace Richard Stanley because things were going so well. We changed elements, script, players, etc. It was a tough go. New Line was very supportive. I did it because I wanted to work with Marlon Brando.” This bad portend also made the usually good director Frankenheimer not have as much time to develop the script as usual; there were a total of four screenwriters credited with writing the movie.

  The plot of the film was inconsistent, and as a result Val’s character did a 180-degree turn for no reason other than to pull the plot forward. “The Island of Dr. Moreau” misuses it’s actors and actresses in the worst way, and some other talented actors’ (notably Ron Perlman, Temuera Morrison, and Daniel Rigney) emotions are hidden behind masks.

  Montgomery’s joke about the Nobel Prize, Marlin Brando’s speech in the middle of the film, and Val’s impersonation of Brando are highlights of the film.

  Majai played by Nelson de la Rosa, the shortest actor in the world, is also funny, although not necessarily as planned. Majai plays the piano with Brando, and always dresses the same as Brando’s character, somewhat like Mini Me from Austin Powers. Val in his interview with James Lipton for the Bravo channel, “I said, ‘No. This is my plan. I’m going to get a baby papoose, see, so he’ll be with me all the time, but right here so, so I can’t fail. Right? I’m covered.’ He (Marlin Brando) said, ‘Well, that's a good idea.’ And I never saw the guy again. He stole my little man. He’s in every... You saw it, right? He’s in every scene. He’s there.” So you don’t get the wrong idea, Val said he enjoyed working with Marlin Brando, and it sounded like they had a lot of fun working on the movie together.