Blessed, Life and Films of Val Kilmer Read online

  During one of his interviews the phone rings, Val answers, “Hello? Who’s this? Are you barefoot? Are you in the kitchen? Are you cooking something? Don’t forget you’re pregnant. Sit down, put a hot towel over your head. Rest, damn it. Yes I decided to introduce De Niro. On Sunday. Yeah. Will you wear a miniskirt? Borrow something from our child. I can’t chitchat. They’ve called me to work. Yes. Okay, no. I’m going over to the other studio afterwards. Yeah, yeah. I have no idea. ‘Cause I don’t know when I’m finishing here. I might be earlier than last night. Okey-dokey.” He hangs up. “Would you like to guess who that was?”

  The couple decided not to both work at the same time, and it was this decision that I believe that started to create problems in their marriage. This arrangement sounds good on paper, but between the two of them one of them was working most of the time. That means time apart. Months of time apart. And a reunion is a reunion with the spouse and child, not as special for the spouse. Quality time is already very hard to find with someone when you have children.

  Batman was a project that Val couldn’t pass up, it was the role that did more to help his career that “Top Gun,” and it was certain to be that way even before the script was written, but the movie was a breaking point for the marriage. Val rented Faye Dunaway's Malibu home for the five-month shoot. Val says, “The only downside to Batman is that I didn’t see much of my home for a while.”

  Val came to Santa Fe when Jack was born on June 6, 1995 to be with Joanne, but he was alone on the way back to L.A. for the Batman premiere. On July 21, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer filed for divorce in Los Angeles, citing irreconcilable differences and seeking custody of both children.

  Val says, “I found out I was getting divorced on television…Joanne moved to Los Angeles and filed for divorce while I was away working. In L.A., before whoever takes the piece of paper and files it, it goes through, probably the Internet, but certainly the Xerox machine. I’m sure before Joanne got home it was on the local news. I saw it on CNN.”

  Val was in England when he heard the news, and he decided to postpone some of his publicity work and see his longtime friend Johnny Depp. Depp was working on a doomed project with Marlon Brando called “Devine Rapture.”

  Val recalls coming back to the states and telling the children, “I miss my children every single way that’s possible, and ways that I didn’t know where possible. When Joanne and I told our daughter (they were divorcing), that look—that’s the worst thing I’ve ever had to say. That face...For me, experiencing death has been an opportunity to understand life more clearly. And this experience has been an opportunity to understand love more clearly.”

  Divorces never go well, but there was no blood, and no enmity between them, that’s about as good as divorces get, well maybe there’s a little enmity. Val asked Laurence Fishburne once, “Tell me, Laurence, do you think this was cruel to my ex-wife, to give my son a drum for Christmas?” He grins. His teeth gleam. “It was a big drum too. Double-sided.”

  The Doors

  3/1/1991

  Val was starting to think that he shouldn’t act in movies or television anymore. The classically trained actor was looking for something more substantial, perhaps a return to the theater. Then he heard about Oliver Stone’s project, ”The Doors.” He was intrigued by the opportunity to work with the legendary director.

  Val told David Aldrige in the May ’91 issue of Film Review Magazine, “After all, which actor hasn’t done his best work in one of Oliver's films?”

  Kilmer met with Stone in 1989, and expressed that he didn’t want to be in a movie that glorified drugs or alcohol. Stone liked Val’s appearance, and he asked him if he could sing. Val offered to record a few songs. Oliver Stone continued to talk to other actors about playing the part. The original Doors were not impressed when Stone suggested Kilmer, they had known him from much lighter roles, such as “Real Genius” and “Top Secret,” and weren’t sure if he would be right to play the self-destructive rock star.

  Val not only recorded the songs, but also got some friends together, put on a wig, and a leather skirt from his wife, and made a video with three Doors songs on it.

  Oliver Stone wasn’t impressed with the tape, but Paul Rothchild said, “I was shaken by it,” and he suggested that they record Kilmer in the studio.Rothchild, who was the original producer of the Doors, and sometimes referred to as the fifth Door, coached Kilmer on how to sing like Jim. This time Stone was very impressed. The next step was to have the Doors listen to the tracks. When one of the Doors asked if they were listening to Jim or Val, it was clear he had the part.

  Now all Val had to do was become Jim Morrison. Val started to smoke to make his voice more like Jim’s, and grew his hair long during the 12 months before the shoot. Towards the end of the movie, Val gained weight to match Morrison’s weight gain.

  Val browsed through one of Jim’s biographies, but found his lyrics were a much better way to get in touch with his psyche. He visited with his friends, and the remaining Doors, except Ray Manzarek, who refused to cooperate with the picture.

  Interestingly enough, even though he had grown up in southern California, Val wasn’t a fan of the Doors. Val confessed to Michel Rebichon of Actor’s Studio, “I also remember having passed by the Greek Theartre in Los Angeles, when ‘The Doors’ were in concert. I was eight years old at the time. There was a big traffic jam, and I wondered why so many people were in a rush to see… ‘The Doors.’ At the time I didn't know they were a musical group.”

  The more Val learned about him, the more he felt a connection to the rock star. Both are singers, poets and actors. Strangely enough, both were also offered the part, Stone offered an early version of the movie to Morrison, who declined.

  Val spent hours learning 50 songs, 15 or which were used for the movie, in six months of coaching from Rothchild. Val also pored over classical and beat poets, which he enjoyed, because much of their tastes were the same. He was amazed by the similarity of their tastes while listening to some of Jim’s favorite music. Val told David Aldrige, “I’d discovered that we not only liked, say, the same Mississippi John Hurt blues album, but that we both particularly liked the same track on it.”

  Val told Michel Rebichon of Actor’s Studio, “All of L.A. is nothing but one immense remnant of the Doors. This hotel, this restaurant, this building, their imprint is everywhere,”

  Rothchild and Stone met to discuss how to shoot the live concerts. Rothchild mixed Jim’s voice with Val’s, he mixed Val’s with Val’s prerecorded, and he shot Val live. They listened to all of the versions and immediately decided not to dub Jim’s voice over Val’s, as it would look too strange to have Jim’s voice coming out of Val. Of the two remaining styles, the most risky would be to use Val’s voice live, but it would look the most natural to audiences, and help involve the people in the audience better. They decided that, although it would be financially risky to record the tracks live, they could dub over Val’s voice if the tracks were messed up. Val exceeded their expectations, and all of the live performances are Val actually live (other than a few words and a scream).

  Stone also used many techniques to make the concert scenes so real that Roger Ebert said, “Because of Kilmer, and because of extraordinary location work with countless convincing extras, the concert scenes in ‘The Doors’ play with the authenticity of a documentary.”

  Stone used five cameras to shoot the scenes, one being used for the first time in a major American feature- the technocrane. The remote control camera crane can telescope in length from 6 to 20 feet, and is capable of a 14-foot movement in any direction. The crane was also used in the courtroom scene. Oliver Stone shot the movie over a 12-week period, the longest of any Oliver Stone film.

  Robert Richardson said, “It was an extraordinarily difficult film, exhausting. Very long hours.”

  The thousands of extras used for the concert scenes helped generate excitement. A lot of the extras got out their own ’60’s wardrobe out of their closets, but some
of them were given special costumes, and had flowers painted on their faces.

  Donna Dedman, an extra for the movie, commented on her experience in the Val Kilmer newsletter. She worked for three days from six PM to six AM, and describes the experience as being boring much of the time when they weren’t filming, and they moved the audience back and forth. “The most interesting parts of the filming were when Val would come out to entertain us between shots. He came out and sang ‘White Wedding’ and a few other things that I don’t remember.”

  During the filming of the studio and concert scenes Val was the only person performing, the other actors were mimicking with instruments that were specially rigged to be silent. Stone wanted to show the audience reactions to the Doors, and they piped in a special thumper track so the audience could dance to the beat of music they couldn’t hear. The beat was a very low frequency that was taken out in post production.

  When Rothchild played Val’s version of ‘The End’ for Robby Krieger leaned, he told him, “I’m really glad that we finally got ‘The End.’ We never got a recording of that live with Jim. Now we've got it.”

  Val Kilmer says, “Oliver is very involved as the director and writer, and he has a kind of energy about him that is like an actor’s energy. He participates with every scene almost physically, very involved in the moments. He wants to be entertained in those moments.”

  Children

  It’s no secret that Val loves his kids, if you see almost any interview of him, you can see a reference to them. Sometimes, apparently, the interviewers don’t think that this is very important “Hollywood” stuff and gloss over it. Several interviews said something like, “Val talked about his kids for an extended period of time,” and they mentioned nothing about what he said. Too bad, hopefully more interviewers will realize that Val children are an important key to who he is. His creative influence is apparent in Mercedes, she makes sculptures, paintings, and pottery that he shows off to everyone he can.

  “My daughter is the greatest gift I’ve ever been given,” Val says. “Before she was born, my greatest concern or fear was that what was deep inside of me hadn’t come out enough to be a good parent. Now I’m not afraid of (that) anymore. I’ve learned that having children makes you much more acutely aware of what’s important to you. Besides, Mercedes already has such fine character and great intuitive knowledge and spirit. She’s made my job easy.”

  This is hard to do in a normal situation, but imagine raising two kids with two famous parents. Val says, “I would like to take full credit for how balanced and relaxed they are about their father’s fame, but in all honesty I can’t. There may be certain ways I behave that they’ve adopted, that make it impressive how they don’t take advantage of certain things. But they’re just gracious with people, and people sometimes behave foolishly, you know? My kids are sophisticated about it.”

  Despite what Val says, children pick up these sorts of things from their parents. His children are astute because Val has a value about telling meaningful stories about true events. If that doesn’t explain a bit about his acting, I don’t know what does.

  Before the divorce, Val and Joanne were dedicated to making sure that the children were always well cared for. “Since we don’t believe in leaving our child in somebody else’s care, we take her wherever we go. Mercedes as with Joanne in Ireland while she was making “Scarlett,” and I was with them whenever I could be. One of us tries not to work when the other does.”

  According to Catherine Hardwicke, Production Designer on “Tombstone,” Mercedes would come visit him on the set often. “I guess the family didn’t live too far away. She would always have pictures she had drawn for her dad. It was really adorable.”

  Despite the fact that Joanne and Val always kept the children’s best interests at heart, they grew separate from having so much time apart. “They were challenges. Living in separate states, that was a challenge. And there is genuine evil intent that can exist with divorce lawyers and psychologists and private judges and anybody that’s in any position to make money off of your children. They will take full advantage. But my kids have a loving mother, and we both had to find our way to keeping the best interests of the children almost as a constant prayer. It’s not dissimilar to movie acting, you know: Everyone’s got the best intention, everyone wants it to work. Then it rains, and then the financiers just pay you half, then the director changes your favorite part about the character....”

  “There’s this whole notion that the family has to be this one unit,” Val says. “But my father’s parents were together, and my dad picked cotton from before the sun rose until after sunset in the Texas panhandle, and got paid a dollar. Was he in a tighter family unit? I don’t know. He was standing near his mom, probably listening to her singing some crazy song, but he was working hard. He was nine when he started doing this, and my daughter’s nine. I’ve told her this story several times, and she gets the look on her face like, ‘Oh no, what did I do that you’re telling me that cotton picking story again?’”

  The divorce has affected his career in an indirect way; he has spent more time with his kids and less time working. “I have let jobs go that might have been the right thing or my career, but they were not going to be the best for my kids. And at the end of the day, I’ve never seen anything, from when my children were born, that impressed me more than their laughter, or meant more to me than that sense of being able to calm them, or provide for them, or protect them, or encourage them.”

  But working hasn’t always gotten in the way of his raising his children, in fact Val says he sometimes takes his kids to sets he working on. “depending on the scene, but we filmed in very faraway places. They actually visited years ago on another film to Australia. But we were in Australia and Jordan, and then into Sydney after we were finished in the Outback. So it was too far.”

  And it’s not just on movie sets the kids have extraordinary fun that the average kid would kill for. “My children don’t have a nanny, and I love it. My daughter has a pony. All three of us ride together. They love it so much that I can’t get them off their horses. They’re fearless.”

  “Over Christmas, we went up to the snow every day, so my daughter took up skiing. My son is fearless. I thought he would really jump on it, but he didn’t. He's 3 1/2, and she's 7. He’ll do anything that she does, so I really thought the second day that he’d be all over skiing, but he was very happy being inside and going on his sled, so I thought it was best to just have him enjoy the experience being up there because the mountain’s not going to go away. I was grateful that my parents didn’t push things on us.”

  Thunderheart

  4/1/1992

  The most disturbing part of “Thunderheart” is that it’s based on real events. In the early to mid seventies, the Indians at Pine Ridge Reservation were divided into two factions, one traditionalist and assimilationists. In 1974 two FBI agents followed a suspect unto the reservation for stealing a pair of boots. They ended up getting in a shooting match, and members of the Oglala Sioux nation investigated. Three men decided to capture the two agents, since women and children were in the area, but when they reached the car, they were dead. All three men deny killing the agents. Two of the men were captured but one, Leonard Peltier, who was the leader of The American Indian Movement, escaped to Canada.

  The two men who had been captured were acquitted of wrongdoing because of lack of evidence but even if they were guilty they had been acting in self-defense. The FBI used a perjured statement from an incompetent woman to extradite Peltier. The trial was based on a shell casing found in the trunk of the FBI agent’s car, which matched a gun that Peltier owned. Later evidence showed this to be inaccurate, but Peltier wasn’t allowed the opportunity for a retrial. A mysterious Mr. X has confessed to the crimes in Michael Apt’s (who was also the director for “Thunderheart”) documentary “Incident at Oglala.”

  The plot isn’t a rehash of these events, but many similar incidents occur in the film. The oth
er true aspect of the film is based on screenwriter-producer John Fusco’s relation to the Oglala Nation. He spent five years at Pine Ridge and met the Oglala Sioux medicine man, Chief Frank Fools Crow, who became the inspiration for the character of Grandpa Reaches.

  Fusco says, “Grandpa Reaches sees Ray as a young man who is materialistic and has lost touch with the earth and with himself. Grandpa can see all these things just in the accouterments that are all over Ray--his expensive watch, hiding behind the sunglasses and all. So Grandpa proceeds to trade these things away from him and strip him down, which is something Grandpa Fools Crow used to do. The relationship I had with Grandpa Fools Crow was the key that unlocked this story for me.” Grandpa Fools Crow died at the age of 100, one year before production on “Thunderheart” began

  Interesting Facts:

  The song at the end is also based on a reality, it’s known as the Freedom song and is sung at the end of most powwows to honor the A.I.M

  The films was shot on location at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the second largest reservation in North America, with a population of about 18,000

  Former American Indian Movement chairman John Trudell plays the part of the FBI suspect

  This is the first feature that Robert De Niro acted solely as a producer

  Val ironed his own shirts to get into the character

  Girldfreinds

  “No, no drinking, no whoring, no murder...I don’t even cook. But except for one or two (women), I don’t get asked about them, because people don't know who they are.”

  In actuality his love life is like a who’s who of the female side of Hollywood. While in high school he dated actress Mare Winningham for three years, who was nominated for an Academy Award for “Georgia,” (trivia: she played a virgin in ”St. Elmo’s Fire while pregnant, and was a contestant on the gong show). You might have heard of a singer/actress named Cher, whom he dated and went to Las Vegas with in the 1983. Val dated Ellen Barkin in 1984. Then there’s Michelle Pfeiffer. Of course he married Joanne Whalley, who was known after their marriage as Joanne Whalley-Kilmer.