by Val Kilmer
I lobbied Oliver about including some scenes which I hoped would reveal Jim as a serious poet trying to figure out his life through his religion—art—and he made many changes to accommodate my commitment. He and I adore each other, and more than a decade later we would work together again on Alexander. But perhaps I lacked the wisdom to understand that creativity, like prayer for me, is best expressed without insistence or force. I understand actors who want to be considered “easy to work with.” Actors don’t want day jobs. Actors want to act. Gaining a reputation as a cooperative thespian is not a bad thing. I do not condemn my brothers and sisters who have developed personalities pleasing to directors. I have, in fact, pleased dozens of directors. Others I have not. And when I have not, it isn’t through ego. It’s simply because I have connected with a character and must honor that connection. How to do that is an ongoing lesson, and despite our debates and differences, working with such a brilliant director as Oliver on such a profound subject as The Doors was something I hope to remember in many, many lifetimes.
The members of the band appreciated my performance, which was tremendous affirmation. And some argue it remains the best rock and roll film ever made. I don’t know how you say what’s best. It’s all so personal. Though I will say back then wasn’t like it is now, with all the billion-dollar music biopic hits. Back then, Hollywood for some reason looked down on them. While I don’t know if I have ever done it all the way like others have done it for me—Toshiro Mifune in Yojimbo, say, or those moments of genius in Chaplin, or metamorphoses from contemporaries such as Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder, Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth, Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice, Sean Penn in Milk, Joaquin Phoenix in The Master, Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry, Rooney Mara in the American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Viola Davis in everything, just to name a few—I see my work in The Doors as one of the proudest moments of my career. That’s because I was praying with my poetic ancestors in real time, and because of Oliver’s generosity of spirit and our mutual respect for something Jim held sacred: a magical moment onstage. When it happens, we all feel the unity of spirit.
With Oliver Stone on the set of The Doors
Shattered
After The Doors, I took a year off and left Hollywood and didn’t even read a script for seven months. My agent fairly pulled her hair out that I didn’t stay in Los Angeles and lobby for an award. She tried to get me to see how my performance was something many people in our industry wanted to acknowledge, perhaps even reward my effort with a statue. But I always figured that if my work was good enough it didn’t require beating a drum about it. And besides, I had more important things to focus on.
At the beginning of the Jim Morrison saga, Joanne surprised me with an announcement. She had been offered a part in Shattered with Tom Berenger, Greta Scacchi, and Bob Hoskins. The film was being shot in San Francisco. She wanted to accept.
I didn’t have to remind her that our marriage vow prevented this. We had pledged to be together during every movie, knew the hundreds of ways that filmmaking eats away at a romance if you are both working. I obviously couldn’t leave The Doors. I had already put body and soul into it. We were about to start shooting. I wanted her to stay with me and asked her to decline the offer. She wouldn’t. I was hurt but not angry. I don’t know at what point you stop hurting and start healing. Joanne is a talented and ambitious actor. Ambitious myself, I’d have been a fool not to understand. This was early in her career. Good roles are hard to come by. There was no reason my career should have come before hers. There was no big scene. She left, and I continued my work as Jim.
I’ve never said this out loud or written it down before, but I was on edge, anxious and almost terrified because I could feel Joanne slipping away. And perhaps it was because I, too, was slipping away that I’d have visions of her falling for our friends, like the sensuous, quietly mischievous Liam Neeson, who Joanne had done a film with. Liam was like a modern Gregory Peck, who felt to both of us like the ideal man, a perfect cocktail of the stoic man’s man Gary Cooper, who had a sense of humor about his good fortune, and the paradigm of a suave film star like Clark Gable. I remember wondering if she would fall for him. He was awfully charming. Those damn Irishmen! They say the reason you feel jealousy is because you yourself may be entertaining a questionable agenda. All possible, and yet my premonitions remained strong.
The thing I kept thinking of was the film she was about to make: Shattered. Mind you, this was before the birth of Mercedes and Jack, our two beautiful children. Years of happiness lay before us. Years of conflict as well. The dance between darkness and light would continue. I do believe, though, that it was during those light-dark days of The Doors that, when Joanne understandably took her departure, I knew in my heart that our marriage would not last. I ascribe fault to no one. I now see it as a matter of fate. And who was I but the partner who went away literally for half the day sometimes on our honeymoon? What planet was I on? How could I expect her to be supportive about such heartlessness? Nonetheless, I loved being married. And soon I would love having children.
But now I was dealing with the blues that come after a film is finished. It’s a postpartum blues. Artists can become severely depressed when they’re not performing. What is this business of giving our bodies and souls over to magic so mercilessly that we have nothing left for ourselves? Is it God or the devil? Maybe my postpartum, post-Doors blues came from a deep knowledge. Maybe I feared no project would ever be quite as special. I felt like I had experienced glory. Nirvana. And what next? To live or die? What would life look like, pretending to be normal after getting a taste of heaven? After touching the pearly gates?
Fortunately, someone would then enter my life who no doubt understood these feelings all too well and could offer a sympathetic ear and advice. A legend. A hero. And soon enough a friend.
Brando
After I shot The Doors and Joanne shot Shattered, we flew off to Ireland to wind down and reconnect. I’ve always seen Ireland as a literary land—George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett—and find solace in its charming cities and cool green countryside. Much of the tension my wife and I had experienced in the past year seemed to melt under the summer sun.
Back in Santa Fe, a friend called to say Marlon Brando wanted to meet me. My heart broke into a happy song. Apparently he had seen The Doors and was curious.
I rode to his home on Mulholland Drive in a state of high excitement. A young Russian writer on his way to meet Tolstoy. A young German composer about to jam with Bach. A young boxer off to spar with Ali.
I arrived early and was shown to his den filled with artifacts—Native American art, a set of bongo drums, books of every variety, all in casual disarray. I waited for over an hour. I was eager but necessarily patient. I figured this was part of the ritual. I felt fortunate. I dug the ritual.
The door opened and Marlon slowly walked through. His face was covered with makeup. It was as though he were in whiteface. He wore a white muumuu that covered his enormous frame. He was as big as a grand piano. He was as big as Orson Welles. He sat in an oversize easy chair. I sat on a couch in front of him.
His first question was, “I was wondering if you’re familiar with the work of Paul Muni.”
I knew Muni was considered one of the great actors of the thirties and forties but could only remember seeing him in The Last Angry Man.
“Not as familiar as I probably need to be,” I said.
“Are you too young to remember John Garfield?”
“I’ve heard it said that Garfield was Brando before Brando was Brando.”
Brando liked that remark.
“What about Buster Keaton?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know his work well?” asked Marlon.
“I could know it better.”
“And Gene Hackman, of course. Gene Hackman is the actor’s actor.”
Saying that, Marlon’s lips turned up ever so slightly at thei
r edges.
He began speaking of other actors he admired—Edward G. Robinson, Karl Malden, Jean-Paul Belmondo. He mentioned Lino Ventura, who starred in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows, the classic film about the French Resistance. He didn’t say anything about The Doors. He didn’t even indicate that he had seen it. But I had the feeling—although it may be my ego—that in discussing good actors he was including me in that company. Or at least I wasn’t made to feel excluded.
During one long pause I found the courage to ask him, “What do you think of Samuel Beckett?”
I’ve had a lifelong fascination with Beckett’s work and was curious to hear Brando’s point of view. His response shocked me.
“I’ve never read him.”
“But you’ve seen his plays.”
“Not one.”
“I’m surprised.”
“Why?”
“Well, because… Samuel Beckett is so seminal.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps if I read him, I would agree. But I haven’t. Of all the world’s literature, none of us have read more than a fraction of the great works. What do we know of the literature of Indonesia? There are surely poets, playwrights, and novelists in Iceland and Haiti who merit our attention.”
Of course I agreed with this but wondered whether Marlon was telling the truth about Beckett. He had come of age in the theater when Beckett was all the rage. It was hard to believe he’d never seen a single performance of Waiting for Godot. I also wondered whether, because he had chosen not to act in a Beckett play, he avoided the subject by claiming not to know his work. Or maybe he just wanted to shock me with an answer I never expected.
He seemed pleased to see me shocked. I didn’t mind. I was just so happy to be in a room with Marlon Brando. From there, the conversation eased up. I was able to express my appreciation of his craft. I didn’t at all resist sounding like a fanboy. I spoke of two of my favorite Brando lines: when as Kid Rio in One Eyed Jacks he calls his adversary a “scum-sucking pig,” and the monumental mutiny scene in Mutiny on the Bounty, when, as Fletcher Christian, he slaps his superior Captain Bligh (played by Trevor Howard) and says, in his gloriously understated English accent, “You bloody bastard! You’ll not put your foot on me again.”
“Do you have a list of your own favorite lines?” Brando asked in return.
I admitted that I did not.
“Neither do I. I’d rather not remember.”
“Even something as grand as Last Tango in Paris?”
He spoke about that experience ruefully. He had good things to say about director Bernardo Bertolucci—did I know he was also a fine poet who grew up in the communist-dominated city of Parma, Italy?—but did not want to discuss Paul, the character he portrayed. “The pain borne by that peculiar man,” he said, “became a burden I carried for far too long.”
“As actors, how do we free ourselves of all those post-production burdens?”
Marlon’s answer came swiftly. “We don’t.”
We spoke all afternoon. Although we all indulge in gossip, Marlon had a strict rule: if you weren’t present for someone’s remark, he refused to hear the comment. Firsthand accounts only. Beyond an occasional anecdote about certain directors he admired or disliked, the gist of the conversation was Marlon, in his offhanded way, suggesting certain movies I might see and books I might read. He assumed an avuncular attitude. Great. I wanted Marlon Brando to be my uncle, my friend, my anything. He liked to speak in riddles. He valued ambiguity over clarity. Yet for all his eagerness to respond to my questions in ways that he hoped I’d find puzzling, there was a certain warmth about him. I presumed he’d invite me back, and he did.
Thinking over my initial meeting with Brando, I now realize that the makeup and muumuu had a certain irony I missed the first time around. He was taking on the role of a great man, a great actor, while at the same time mocking that role. There was also the chance he had just finished doing an on-camera interview. But he did wear makeup often, so I suppose he had some vanity attached to his aging skin.
I met Marlon when he was in his sixties, and he was still having kids left and right like a Catholic teenager newly married after World War II. Just remarkable. How many children did he have altogether? I am not sure and am tempted to Google. I almost never Google people. I would like to live learning the old-fashioned way, if that’s even possible. I don’t know what I am intending by that comment. Life is moving so exponentially fast, it is just about impossible to imagine those thirty years ago when I first met Marlon, that time just before this heart-stopping, heart-stomping technological era which we can never undo. Certainly it is possible to just not respond to texts or emails, but I admit when my iPhone is out of reach I start to get a little antsy in a way that, I know from playing so many addicts, is a physical feeling very close to chemical dependence. Boy, do I pray about that often—the idea of needing some physical thing more than the unity of the spirit, more than the principles of mind, soul, life, truth, Love.
Now I, too, am officially in my sixties. Every time I speak, I must put a finger to the aperture in my throat to be understood. Cher says that I remain adorable but Cher says that to lots of guys. But like Brando, my body has taken on a much different form. Also like Brando, I choose to accept this form with equanimity.
Confusions & Contradictions
I now invoke the protection of the great gray-bearded poet of the nineteenth century whose queer sensibility speaks to all humanity with tender Love and rare wisdom. Walt Whitman’s famous answer to the self-imposed question “Do I contradict myself?” was “Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
I’d amend that to include an additional question: “Am I confused? Yes, I embrace confusion.” All this is a lead-up to a statement I must make about making movies.
Going through my filmography, my first reaction is that these films have nothing to do with my life. My second reaction is that they have everything to do with my life.
I am none of the characters I have portrayed, and I am all of the characters. Good acting requires both detachment and engagement—and, most of all, nonjudgment. Playing a character means detaching myself from whatever preconceived notions I might have of them. It requires that I conduct research, much as a scientist researches a specimen. Except that the specimen needs to be brought back to life as a living, breathing human being replete with contradictions and confusions. To overwhelm the contradictions and confusions with clichés is a crime against nature. The commitment to character requires an open heart. I must allow myself to feel deeply. Such feelings linger—for weeks or hours or even a lifetime. Thus at the end of the film I carry that character somewhere in my soul. Just as I am a composite of all my characters, each character I’ve played is a composite of me. I don’t know, though, how to break down that composite.
I do know that virtually every film or play I’ve acted in has been difficult—some even torturous—because of the fact that I am not in control. I realize the deficits of control. I know control can stifle one’s soul. I know that to surrender to the universe, to follow a divine plan not of one’s own making, is spiritually sound. To an alarming degree, the need to control comes out of fear. Yet in the context of art, the artist’s relationship to the control of his/her environment is complex. I both do and do not want my character to control me. And I both do and do not want to control my character. Moreover, my inability to control the overall context in which my character is operating is often maddening. It could be the script; it could be the director or the producer. If they see the story one way and my character sees it another way, conflict is inevitable. At times conflict yields exciting art. Other times it yields lousy art. One of the reasons that early on I learned to love writing so fervently is because in writing such conflicts don’t exist. Or if they do, I can voice them—which is exactly what I’m doing right now—so the reader might possibly benefit from my uncertainty.
There are lots of reasons to make art, but I usually m
igrate toward the educational aspect of it. I like to learn from art. It’s almost impossible for me to learn in any formal way, yet I love to learn. I love that about the Jewish culture and faith: knowledge is holy, learning is holy. Oh how glorious! Brando used to be so eloquent about his being really turned on about formal study from his introduction to the Jewish community through Stella Adler and that original bunch from the Actors Studio. He even lived at her house for a time and had an affair with her daughter. I can’t recall if he told Stella about that. He also claimed to have had an affair with Jackie Kennedy in the kitchen of the White House. And that from a guy who said he hated gossip. He never hated gossiping about the ladies, that I ever saw.
A big part of me says, “Consider my life outside the realm of my public work.” I like the way that statement sounds. And I may make it again before this story is over. But I don’t trust those words entirely. Which is why I have no choice but to continue the difficult task of locating the nexus where my life and my art meet. Wish me luck.
Thunderheart
It was my good fortune to act in the film Thunderheart. In reading the script, I recognized my character, Ray Levoi, as a man struggling to find himself. I was doubly attracted to the role because Ray’s father was a Native American and Ray had rejected his Native American identity. The film dramatizes his struggle to regain his identity. A straitlaced government agent who has indifference and even contempt for his Native American heritage, Ray learns to embrace it. It’s a murder mystery unfolding on a Lakota reservation, but also a hero’s journey to which I related: moving from safe and familiar ground to divine consciousness.
