BEFORE: I just didn't have many choices linking out of "Paul, Apostle of Christ" if I wanted to include it as this year's Easter film - in fact, there was just ONE possible link, so Joanne Whalley carries over and that's going to kick off my Doc Block that will take up the rest of April. Joanne is the ex-wife of actor Val Kilmer, so after hitting another century mark I can transition right into documentaries, this has usually been a summer thing for me over the past few years, but I need to fill the space between Easter and Mother's Day somehow, and docs can get me MOST of the way there. But there's a bit of an Easter-Passover connection here, too, as Val Kilmer played Moses in the animated feature "The Prince of Egypt" and also in "The Ten Commandments: The Musical".
I've made some last minute additions to the chain, after finding out I had the wrong date for Mother's Day, I thought for some reason it would be on May 9 and designed a chain around that, only to then find it's really on May 14 - turns out it's always on a Sunday, so I must have confused it with Easter's date of May 9. Well, when in doubt, just add more documentaries, right? Last year HBO Max provided me with several docs that aired as part of their "Music Box" programming, like "Jagged", "Listening to Kenny G" and "Mr. Saturday Night", and that same network also contributed "Becoming Mike Nichols", "Adrienne" and "George Carlin's American Dream". Well, it's HBO Max to the rescue once again, with docs about Muhammad Ali and Willie Mays that are going to fit RIGHT into my programming.
It's a lot more work keeping track of all the people who appear in archive footage in these docs, but I'm willing to do the work, also to keep updating the IMDB for these films when I find that the listings are incomplete. Hey, IMDB, I don't know where your offices are, but if you need to hire more people to watch movies to confirm unlisted appearances, I can make myself available.
THE PLOT: Documentary centering on the daily life of actor Val Kilmer, featuring never-before-seen footage spanning 40 years.
AFTER: OK, 100 films into 2023, so tonight I'm starting the 2nd third of Movie Year - second third? Yeah, I guess so. Documentaries are going to fly by, and then horror films and Christmas will be here before you know it. Time seems to have sped up, and we're all getting older faster, and that includes Val Kilmer. He had a bout with throat cancer (more on that later) but more importantly, he's still alive, and he's got a warehouse full of videotapes and home movies that he was able to turn over to some documentarian. Hey, if he can't be in any more Hollywood movies, there's time to tour the world, make some personal appearances, sign some memorabilia and record a documentary. Val's son Jack narrates the film, with something perhaps close to his father's voice.
It's been a full life in Hollywood, sure, but then there was so much more - marriage, divorce, a daughter and a son, a desire to perform Shakespeare, especially "Hamlet", that probably never came to fruition, a lot accomplished in his career but not everything he set out to do. The jobs are never really linear, are they? Nothing really is. But first the film goes way back to Val Kilmer's childhood, making home video versions of classic films like "The Great Race" with his two brothers, Wesley and Mark. But Wesley drowned in a jacuzzi at the age of 15, after an epileptic fit, and so I suppose what's surprising is that Val wanted to keep making movies after that. He became the youngest person accepted into the drama program at the Juilliard School, and it seemed like his career was off to a fine start, he clearly had "the bug" for acting, only in his first off-Broadway play, he was relegated to the third lead after Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn signed on.
The big break came in the film "Top Secret!", which was an "Airplane!"-like spoof of spy and war movies, and that was just about as far from doing a serious thing like "Hamlet" as one could get. Once you do a comedy film, it's easy to get pigeon-holed into that genre, so what's amazing there is that he did make another comedy, "Real Genius", but then pulled himself into drama/action by landing a role in "Top Gun". (Sure, I could easily link to "Top Gun: Maverick" from tonight's film, but there's no challenge in it - plus, I'm saving that film for Memorial Day weekend.)
You would expect a standard documentary focused on an actor to just roll clips from his biggest hits (and even some misses), and there's no shortage of material to draw from here: "Top Gun", "Thunderheart", "The Real McCoy", "Tombstone", "Batman Forever", "The Saint", "The Prince of Egypt", "Wonderland", "The Missing", "Alexander", "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", "Deja Vu", and "The Snowman" (and those are just the ones I've seen!). But this doc only really focuses on a few of these, like his 1-film stint as Batman, "Tombstone" (of course) and "The Doors".
Kilmer as Jim Morrison in "The Doors" was really something special - a chance to work with Oliver Stone, sure, but also a chance to disappear into the role. Kilmer looked a lot like Morrison to begin with, give him long hair and some singing lessons in the rock style, and heck, you're halfway there. But Kilmer spent months rehearsing not just the singing, but BEING Jim Morrison, wearing tight leather pants all the time, playing Doors music around the house 24/7, and it's revealed here that this probably contributed greatly to his divorce from Joanne Whalley. How rare is it that someone can method-act their way into a role where they, the actor, then become virtually invisible. When they cross-cut in the doc between Kilmer and Morrison, before long you won't be able to tell which one is which. (Umm, yeah, cue up the movie "The Doors", I'm overdue for a re-watch...)
Kilmer buried his sorrows by signing on for the film "The Island of Dr. Moreau", for a chance to work with his idol, Marlon Brando. But the shoot wasn't all smiles, Kilmer frequently argued with the director over the quality of the film they were making, and on most days, Brando didn't even show up and had a look-alike standing in for him. Sure, stand-ins are frequently used on movie sets so the actors don't get worn out, but in this case the look-alike probably got more screen time than Marlon did. It's another case where things just didn't seem to work out for Mr. Kilmer, or he got where he wanted to be and realized that it just wasn't a great place to be. Hey, it happens to many of us at some point in life.
The Hollywood movie game is a tough business, in the end, and actors are just the meat puppets that get placed in front of the camera to follow the director's orders. And if the meat puppets challenge the directors, they may not get to stay in front of the camera for long, just saying. Oh, you'll work on plenty of TV shows and films, but just not the ones that get released. After a cameo in "MacGruber" in 2010, Kilmer didn't make another solid movie worth talking about until "The Snowman" in 2017, unless you count doing voice-acting in "Planes". So the best advice is just show up, do whatever dance the director says to do, get your check and go home - arguing with a Hollywood director is one of the most futile things you can do, unless your goal is to get fired.
Money seemed to also be elusive for Kilmer, even before the divorce. His father wanted to buy up a lot of land in the San Fernando Valley and become some kind of real-estate baron, but to do that he borrowed money from Val, and put his name on a couple dozen shell companies to hide the profits. So Val had the choice to either sue his own father, or write a large check to make everything OK - so there went his "Top Gun" money. Later he owned a 6,000 acre ranch in New Mexico, with the intent of starting up an arts community there, and/or letting his kids inherit the land, but found he needed to sell the property to finance the production of his own film projects, especially "Citizen Twain".
As an homage to Mark Twain, who apparently invented the one-man show (and who, some might say, was the first stand-up comic), Kilmer would appear in prosthetic make-up and a white suit and perform monologues as Twain, and the visual and vocal similarity was just stunning - on a par with his previous resemblance to Jim Morrison, for sure, only more relevant to American history. The project began as a screenplay about Twain and Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science church, but it morphed into a one-man stage show in 2012, then a filmed version of the show was released as "Citizen Twain" (I see what you did there...) but it seems once again fate had other ideas for Kilmer, because the throat cancer diagnosis a few years later meant that vocal impressions of Twain would no longer be possible. Welp, I guess it's back on the convention circuit to sign "Batman" action figures and sign "Top Gun" 8 x 10 photos.
Sure, you can make a long list of the films that Kilmer was considered for, but didn't get picked for - most of them, like "Point Break" and "The Matrix", seemed to have hired Keanu Reeves, but again, it's a tough business. Nobody in any job ever gets all the opportunities they WANT to have, most everyone has to settle for the ones they get, and acting's no different. And most everyone at the top tier in Hollywood has too much money, the big stars usually have to start a foundation or invest in a struggling premium tequila business just so they don't get taxed at the highest possible rate. At least Kilmer spent his fortune covering up his father's shady business deals, so he never had that problem. I guess that's something?
Also starring Val Kilmer (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Jack Kilmer, Mercedes Kilmer, with archive footage of Kevin Bacon (last seen in "Patriots Day"), Fairuza Balk (last seen in "The Island of Dr. Moreau"), Powers Boothe (last seen in "Frailty"), Marlon Brando (last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain"), Jerry Bruckheimer, Nicolas Cage (last seen in "Pig"), Jim Carrey (last seen in "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop"), Bernie Casey (last seen in "Never Say Never Again"), Cher (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Tom Cruise (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Jon Cryer (last seen in "Shorts"), Warwick Davis (last seen in "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Robert De Niro (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Marlene Dietrich (last seen in "Paris When It Sizzles"), Robert Downey Jr. (last heard in "Dolittle"), Bob Dylan (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Anthony Edwards (last seen in "Mr. North"), Sam Elliott (last seen in "The Man Who Killed Hitler and then the Bigfoot"), Jimmy Fallon (also last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Larry King (ditto), Jay Leno (ditto), Oprah Winfrey (ditto), Will Ferrell (last seen in "Downhill"), John Frankenheimer, John Garfield (last seen in "Destination Tokyo"), Ana Gasteyer (last seen in "Robot & Frank"), Alec Guinness (last seen in "Spielberg"), Lucy Gutteridge (last seen in "The Trouble with Spies"), Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "The Family"), Peter Kass, Norman Keesing, Nicole Kidman (last seen in "The Northman"), Stephen Lang (last seen in "The Lost City"), David Letterman (also last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain"), James Lipton, Kyle MacLachlan (last seen in "Confess, Fletch"), Michael Mann, Richard Masur (last seen in "Don't Think Twice"), Kelly McGillis (last seen in "The Babe"), Jim Morrison, Paul Muni, Laurence Olivier (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Al Pacino (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Chris Parnell (last seen in "Goosebumps 2: Slappy's Revenge"), Jane Pauley (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"), Bill Paxton (last seen in "Term Life"), Sean Penn (last seen in "The Weight of Water"), Regis Philbin (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Tim Robbins (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Rick Rossovich, Kurt Russell (last seen in "Like Father"), Joel Schumacher, Tony Scott, Gene Shalit (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Tom Sizemore (last seen in "Spielberg"), Mira Sorvino (last seen in "Reservation Road"), Oliver Stone, Tom Stratton, David Thewlis (last seen in "Kingdom of Heaven"), James Tolkan (last seen in "Phil Spector"), Barry Tubb (last seen in "Top Gun"), Burt Ward (last heard in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"), Adam West (ditto), Denzel Washington (last seen in "The Little Things"), Mare Winningham (last seen in "Geostorm").
RATING: 6 out of 10 books of poetry
No comments:
Post a Comment