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Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Best Way to Understand Val Kilmer
When Val Kilmer was a teenager, performing in high-school plays and making amateur movies with his younger brother, Marlon Brando was his hero. Like Brando, Kilmer eventually moved to New York to study acting, becoming one of the youngest students to be admitted to the Juilliard School's drama program. And years later, after he acted alongside Brando in the infamously disastrous The Island of Dr. Moreau, Kilmer would nonetheless express a twisted kind of admiration for his co-star. 'I wouldn't call him normal,' he said of Brando on Late Show With David Letterman. 'He's a genius. Have you ever met any normal geniuses?' Kilmer, who died last week at the age of 65, wasn't 'normal' either—which I mean as a high compliment. His commitment to the profession, the intensity of his working process, the curiosity and at times inscrutable logic guiding his choices of roles—all suggested that he knew no masters. Kilmer worked with auteurs such as Francis Ford Coppola and Michael Mann but turned down offers from David Lynch and Robert Altman. He was Moses and Batman and he starred in not one but two direct-to-video action movies with 50 Cent. As he explained in Val, the 2021 documentary about his life, he was driven by the desire to explore the mysterious space between 'where you end and the character begins.' Although several obituaries have focused on his well-known roles, Kilmer didn't need to be a leading man for his powers to shine through; his touch was so formidable that you felt it in transience too. Because Kilmer was staggeringly handsome, and because he made headlines for his on-set clashes, he was often thought of as a mere movie star. Arguably, his two most iconic roles—as 'Iceman' Kazansky in Top Gun and Jim Morrison in The Doors—echoed the rise of the brawny, big-budget blockbuster and of MTV, shaping his image along the contours of America's pop-cultural trends. Yet celebrity's glossy facades can obscure finer truths. He was also a consummate shape-shifter: a soulful brute in Heat, a twinkle-eyed gunslinger in Tombstone, a sardonic private eye in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Even in his tiniest roles, he made big impressions. It didn't matter if the camera was elsewhere or if he wasn't given any written lines. Consider True Romance, the second of Kilmer's three collaborations with the cult action director Tony Scott—which features one of his most nefarious characters, despite the brevity of the part. In this shoot-'em-up written by Quentin Tarantino, Clarence (played by Christian Slater), a nerdy comic-book-store employee, becomes an outlaw figure after he falls in love with Alabama, a sex worker played by Patricia Arquette. His transformation represents a fraught passage into manhood—Clarence feels emboldened to protect his lady's honor, yet he dictates his life according to the violent fictional worlds of cartoons and movies. Enter Kilmer, who plays a phantasmagorical version of Elvis Presley that's the literal embodiment of Clarence's conscience. He doesn't have more than a few minutes of screen time, and you can't even really make out his face, because the camera mostly captures him from neck down or in the distance as a fuzzy specter. But his arrival shifts the film's entire mood, as his baritone murmurings cast a sort of hypnosis on Clarence. Like a Faustian figure, Kilmer's Elvis plays to Clarence's macho aspiration. He's seductively cool, slinking in the background like a panther in one moment and then—bam!—pointing at Clarence with a sharp, extended finger, inciting him to man up. It's a captivating performance that in a handful of hazy moments manages to anchor the film's self-critique. [Read: The King, the conspiracies, and the American Dream] Kilmer, a lifelong Christian Scientist, claimed that he was too sensitive to dabble in drug use, even when his immersive preparation methods for movies such as The Doors and Wonderland (a thriller about the 1981 Wonderland murders in which Kilmer plays the adult-film star John Holmes) might've warranted some experimentation. His fiery public image and the ease with which he embodied strung-out party people made it easy to assume that his own lifestyle was similarly raucous. Yet Kilmer could do disturbed au naturel. Case in point: his indelible cameo as Duane, an aging rocker, in Terrence Malick's Song to Song, in which he swoops into the drearily moody drama with the force of a mythological lightning bolt. Midway through the film, as two of its several romantically entangled characters exchange charged glances at a Texas music festival, a snippet of voice-over narration wonders about the appeal of chaos: 'Maybe what stirs your blood is having wild people around you,' one of the characters thinks about another. In response, Duane seems to materialize out of nowhere. As the ostensible front man of the garage-punk band the Black Lips, Kilmer's character heeds this call of the wild in less than a minute, taking a chain saw to a speaker, cutting off chunks of his hair, and bellowing at the crowd while he holds up what he claims is a bucket of uranium. The actor's frayed mane and lumbering gait tell us that Duane is as accustomed to the stage as he is to being dragged off of it. And when he's actually pulled away and thrown into the back of a cab, Kilmer's exit is as unceremonious as a cable yanked out from an amp, leaving viewers drifting along the film's woozy currents. Kilmer's final performance would also take the form of a cameo. In Top Gun: Maverick, he reprises the role of Iceman in a small yet arresting scene opposite Maverick (Tom Cruise), his rival turned ally from the first movie. In the sequel, Maverick has come to his old comrade seeking advice. When Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, the procedures he underwent severely damaged his vocal cords, altering the sound of his voice and limiting his ability to speak. To accommodate Kilmer's disability, Iceman was written as struggling with cancer too; Kilmer appears with a scarf wrapped around his neck to conceal his surgical scars as he delivers a mostly wordless performance. When Iceman types out his thoughts on a computer, his silence is moving. From his earliest roles, Kilmer flaunted his singing abilities and an incredible talent for transforming his voice. Here, the memory of the characters he played fills the ensuing quiet. Still, when the camera cuts to Kilmer's face, he flashes the same cocky, knowing gaze of his youth, collapsing the distinction between where he ends and Iceman begins. He was an actor who could complicate the entire meaning of a film with a strut and a glimpse, and convey savagely weird and wonderful humanity in a brief encounter. Kilmer brought characters to life as extensions of himself. No gesture or look was too little. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
Val Kilmer Always Stole the Show
When Val Kilmer was a teenager, performing in high-school plays and making amateur movies with his younger brother, Marlon Brando was his hero. Like Brando, Kilmer eventually moved to New York to study acting, becoming one of the youngest students to be admitted to the Juilliard School's drama program. And years later, after he acted alongside Brando in the infamously disastrous The Island of Dr. Moreau, Kilmer would nonetheless express a twisted kind of admiration for his co-star. 'I wouldn't call him normal,' he said of Brando on Late Show With David Letterman. 'He's a genius. Have you ever met any normal geniuses?' Kilmer, who died last week at the age of 65, wasn't 'normal' either—which I mean as a high compliment. His commitment to the profession, the intensity of his working process, the curiosity and at times inscrutable logic guiding his choices of roles—all suggested that he knew no masters. Kilmer worked with auteurs such as Francis Ford Coppola and Michael Mann but turned down offers from David Lynch and Robert Altman. He was Moses and Batman and he starred in not one but two direct-to-video action movies with 50 Cent. As he explained in Val, the 2021 documentary about his life, he was driven by the desire to explore the mysterious space between 'where you end and the character begins.' Although several obituaries have focused on his well-known roles, Kilmer didn't need to be a leading man for his powers to shine through; his touch was so formidable that you felt it in transience too. Because Kilmer was staggeringly handsome, and because he made headlines for his on-set clashes, he was often thought of as a mere movie star. Arguably, his two most iconic roles—as 'Iceman' Kazansky in Top Gun and Jim Morrison in The Doors —echoed the rise of the brawny, big-budget blockbuster and of MTV, shaping his image along the contours of America's pop-cultural trends. Yet celebrity's glossy facades can obscure finer truths. He was also a consummate shape-shifter: a soulful brute in Heat, a twinkle-eyed gunslinger in Tombstone, a sardonic private eye in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Even in his tiniest roles, he made big impressions. It didn't matter if the camera was elsewhere or if he wasn't given any written lines. Consider True Romance, the second of Kilmer's three collaborations with the cult action director Tony Scott—which features one of his most nefarious characters, despite the brevity of the part. In this shoot-'em-up written by Quentin Tarantino, Clarence (played by Christian Slater), a nerdy comic-book-store employee, becomes an outlaw figure after he falls in love with Alabama, a sex worker played by Patricia Arquette. His transformation represents a fraught passage into manhood—Clarence feels emboldened to protect his lady's honor, yet he dictates his life according to the violent fictional worlds of cartoons and movies. Enter Kilmer, who plays a phantasmagorical version of Elvis Presley that's the literal embodiment of Clarence's conscience. He doesn't have more than a few minutes of screen time, and you can't even really make out his face, because the camera mostly captures him from neck down or in the distance as a fuzzy specter. But his arrival shifts the film's entire mood, as his baritone murmurings cast a sort of hypnosis on Clarence. Like a Faustian figure, Kilmer's Elvis plays to Clarence's macho aspiration. He's seductively cool, slinking in the background like a panther in one moment and then— bam! —pointing at Clarence with a sharp, extended finger, inciting him to man up. It's a captivating performance that in a handful of hazy moments manages to anchor the film's self-critique. Kilmer, a lifelong Christian Scientist, claimed that he was too sensitive to dabble in drug use, even when his immersive preparation methods for movies such as The Doors and Wonderland (a thriller about the 1981 Wonderland murders in which Kilmer plays the adult-film star John Holmes) might've warranted some experimentation. His fiery public image and the ease with which he embodied strung-out party people made it easy to assume that his own lifestyle was similarly raucous. Yet Kilmer could do disturbed au naturel. Case in point: his indelible cameo as Duane, an aging rocker, in Terrence Malick's Song to Song, in which he swoops into the drearily moody drama with the force of a mythological lightning bolt. Midway through the film, as two of its several romantically entangled characters exchange charged glances at a Texas music festival, a snippet of voice-over narration wonders about the appeal of chaos: ' Maybe what stirs your blood is having wild people around you,' one of the characters thinks about another. In response, Duane seems to materialize out of nowhere. As the ostensible front man of the garage-punk band the Black Lips, Kilmer's character heeds this call of the wild in less than a minute, taking a chain saw to a speaker, cutting off chunks of his hair, and bellowing at the crowd while he holds up what he claims is a bucket of uranium. The actor's frayed mane and lumbering gait tell us that Duane is as accustomed to the stage as he is to being dragged off of it. And when he's actually pulled away and thrown into the back of a cab, Kilmer's exit is as unceremonious as a cable yanked out from an amp, leaving viewers drifting along the film's woozy currents. Kilmer's final performance would also take the form of a cameo. In Top Gun: Maverick, he reprises the role of Iceman in a small yet arresting scene opposite Maverick (Tom Cruise), his rival turned ally from the first movie. In the sequel, Maverick has come to his old comrade seeking advice. When Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, the procedures he underwent severely damaged his vocal cords, altering the sound of his voice and limiting his ability to speak. To accommodate Kilmer's disability, Iceman was written as struggling with cancer too; Kilmer appears with a scarf wrapped around his neck to conceal his surgical scars as he delivers a mostly wordless performance. When Iceman types out his thoughts on a computer, his silence is moving. From his earliest roles, Kilmer flaunted his singing abilities and an incredible talent for transforming his voice. Here, the memory of the characters he played fills the ensuing quiet. Still, when the camera cuts to Kilmer's face, he flashes the same cocky, knowing gaze of his youth, collapsing the distinction between where he ends and Iceman begins. He was an actor who could complicate the entire meaning of a film with a strut and a glimpse, and convey savagely weird and wonderful humanity in a brief encounter. Kilmer brought characters to life as extensions of himself. No gesture or look was too little.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
TV Writer Matt Corman Remembers Funny Side Of Former Boss Val Kilmer During ‘Heat' & ‘The Island Of Dr. Moreau' Shoots
Since news broke last night that actor Val Kilmer had died at the age of 65, there has been an outpouring of tributes from fellow actors and filmmakers praising Kilmer's talent on-screen. Matt Corman, co-creator/executive producer of USA's Covert Affairs and Disney+'s Daredevil: Born Again, has an insight into how Kilmer was off-screen. When he was a very young writer in the 1990s, Corman worked for a couple of years as Kilmer's personal assistant/researcher. He has shared with Deadline anecdotes from his time with the Top Gun star during the shooting of Heat and the infamous The Island of Dr. Moreau that reveal how funny Kilmer was in person. More from Deadline Val Kilmer Was Scheduled To Attend Last Night's Beverly Hills Film Festival Screening Of Documentary On Friend Michael Madsen Nicolas Cage Pays Tribute To "Genius Actor" Val Kilmer: "He Should Have Won The Oscar For 'The Doors'" 'Heat' Director Michael Mann Leads Tributes To Val Kilmer: "I Always Marvelled At The Range, The Brilliant Variability" 'His wit and impersonations were astounding; it was a part of his persona that he didn't really showcase as much as he should have,' Corman said. Here are Corman's stories that include a Charlie Chaplin-esque skit by Kilmer and a running gag in each of the actor's voicemails. I'll leave it to others to unpack Val's impressive and diverse body of work, and the awful illness that robbed him of his distinctive voice and came to define his later years. What I want to discuss is an often-overlooked aspect of Val— just how hilarious the man could be.I came to know Val at the height of his fame. Batman Forever was 'in the can' but had not yet been released. I was an extremely young writer, and Val hired me to help him organize some ideas he had for movies, and to type them into treatments. This was on the set of the iconic Michael Mann film Heat. I worked in Val's trailer in downtown Los Angeles, with the sound of machine gun blanks echoing from the epic bank heist shootout being filmed just outside. I sifted through Val's typed up pages and floppy disks (yup, this was a while ago) and I peered at scribbled notes on legal pads; I did my best to create a synthesis, a coherence. It was a daunting task, and, truth be told, the notes were all over the place. I sometimes felt like one of those forensic historians who try to recreate East German Stasi memos by cobbling together bits of shredded documents.I did a decent enough job in organizing Val's creative output that he invited me to co-write one of those scripts with him in Australia, while he was on the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau. A lot has been written about that film, about the wild experiment of casting Marlon Brando and Val and Nelson De La Rosa. New Line conscripted the aging, legendary director John Frankenheimer to wrangle all of it in the dense jungle of Far North Queensland when the original director Richard Stanley was fired after just a few days of filming. Hundreds of drugged-out Australian hippies called 'ferals' were hired as extras. They camped near the remote set and descended out of the hills like fog when craft services got breakfast going each day— it was quite a sight. Brando confided in me that he hadn't read the script. He said this allowed him to make more spontaneous acting choices. Mind you, we were three months into production at that point. Beyond that, I have nothing to add here except to say that everything else you've heard about that production is true, and it was bonkers. But most of that experience was not too funny, and I'm here to tell you about how funny Val One evening Val got really mad at me; he was yelling, in fact. I was crashing at his house in Cairns Australia, and I had gone out for a six-pack of VB beer without locking the front door. It was an oversight, as Val was paparazzi bait at the time, and it wasn't inconceivable that someone could have tried to get in, take photos, steal stuff, whatever. I said I was sorry. Val started to cool down. As he went to grab his American Spirits, I realized with horror that earlier in the night while watching a Rugby League game on TV, I had sat on the pack of cigarettes on the couch and crushed them. But then, instead of getting madder, Val switched gears. He took out a severely bent cigarette and performed a ridiculous theatrical display. He started acting like a drunk trying to light his bent cigarette. His schtick was broad, but in the way Charlie Chaplin was broad, which is to say it was brilliant. I started laughing hysterically, and when Val saw that, he really committed to the bit, taking out his zippo and 'failing' to light the bent cigarette despite several attempts. He crossed his eyes in mock drunken concentration. He burped, stumbled around, pretended to take a piss into a potted plant, leaning his head on the wall while moaning. He whispered in a weird Midwestern accent about wanting a 'pork chop.' Val's physicality and matinee idol looks only made the whole thing much funnier. Was Val performing this display because he felt bad about yelling at me, or because the bent cigarette was just too great a prop to pass up? I don't know, but it was a comedic miracle in miniature, an entire production put on for my amusement alone, and although Val milked it, it was over much faster than I would have liked. Val had a funny relationship to his funniness. I witnessed a couple of occasions when fans approached him and complimented him on his (hilarious) turns in Real Genius or Top Secret! Val would wince and say he only did those gigs for the dough, to use his term. Val idolized Brando and told anyone who'd listen that he only agreed to be in The Island of Dr. Moreau in order to act alongside his idol. Val considered Brando's acting to be the aspirational pinnacle, the distillation of the 'seriousness' he aspired to. But the Brando I got to see in Australia was hamming it up more than anyone. Brando acted with an ice-bucket on his head, imitated the Queen of England in his line readings and performed bongos at the wrap party while wearing a often took guff for the way he appeared on talk shows and other public appearances. He had this looping nonequatorial speaking style. He sometimes seemed spaced out or stoned or drunk. That's basically the way he talked conversationally, too. Ideas trailed off or were finished slowly. It was a kind of cowboy's cadence, and after a while you got used to it. He wasn't on anything; he just came at ideas from odd angles. That's what made Val's comic genius even more impressive. Comedy is all timing, and when he needed to, when he wanted to, Val could turn that gear on, speaking more quickly with perfect punchy delivery. He was like a Formula 1 driver who refused to go above 30 MPH unless he was in a could do amazing impressions of people both famous and not. He told me that he had an impression of me 'ready to go' but it would be so accurate and cutting that it was best that he not reveal it. I didn't press him on this point and my ego is the better for a year or so, it became clear that the script we were working on was going nowhere, and I stopped working with Val. I told him I wanted to pursue my own writing, and he was gracious about can pull people apart. But whenever Val would leave me a voice mail, he'd begin in the same way, 'Hey, it's your old pal Val calling¬—' And then, after a perfect pause, as if there were any doubt, he'd add, 'Val Kilmer, the actor.'I'm going to miss you, old pal. Best of Deadline The Best 7 New Movies To Watch On Netflix In April 2025 Everything We Know About 'Hacks' Season 4 So Far '1923' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out?
Boston Globe
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Five things to do around Boston, March 17-23
Friday Cringe Chronicles See Mortified Live at WBUR Boston. The show features people sharing real artifacts of their former teen angst — including rage-filled journal entries, poems, letters, song lyrics, schoolwork, and more. Celebrate (and cringe at) teen emotion as you get in touch with your childhood self. Show starts at 7 p.m. (doors open at 6 p.m.) at WBUR CitySpace. Find tickets — students, $10; general admission, $25 — at Advertisement Friday-Sunday Fear Factory Experience a modern interpretation of a classic H.G. Wells horror story in None Escape (The Island of Dr. Moreau) — written by former Globe Magazine advice columnist Robin Abrahams (a.k.a. Miss Conduct). The play, performed at Unity Somerville church, follows a woman stranded on an island with a scientist conducting inhumane experiments. With additional performances next week. Find times and tickets, $25 general admission, $20 seniors and students, at Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Saturday-Sunday Patchwork Past See 250 years of American history sewn together at Quilts 250: Stitching in the Spirit of Democracy, on display at Concord Academy. To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the Concord 250 Celebrations Committee is showing over 200 quilts that touch on the founding and history of the United States. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Free. Sunday Wool Works Browse through the best of New England's fiber arts at Boston Public Market FiberFest 2025. Buy yarn, cozy goods, and more from 20-plus fiber farmers and crafters. Or, learn to needle felt, indigo dye, and make your own headbands at a series of drop-in and ticketed interactive workshops. Runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free admission, with items available for purchase. Adelaide Parker can be reached at
Boston Globe
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Here's some advice: Never ask someone who's leaving their job ‘What's next?'
Aw, thanks! I say with a blush. Per your question: One waits eternally. 'Don't ask people what they're doing next' is one of the odd, small bits of wisdom I've picked up from doing this. Don't ask students what their post-graduate plans are, don't ask newlyweds if they plan to have kids, don't ask new authors what their next book is going to be about. It's such a natural thing to want to do — I've done it! — and the intentions behind it are good, but no. 'What's next' might be a stressful or exhausting thing to contemplate, or perhaps it is, as yet, uncontemplated. In a city as achievement-oriented as Boston, in particular, it conveys a sense that one always has to be in motion, on the way to scale new heights, that today's accomplishments are never enough. If people who have accomplished A Big Thing have a shiny new Next Thing on their horizon, they'll tell you. You won't have to ask. (Here's mine: I wrote a modern-day stage adaptation of H.G. Wells's science fiction/horror classic The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Somerville's Theatre@First will be producing it this March! It's my first play and I'm delirious with excitement. I'm also continuing in my job as a research associate at Harvard Business School, and yes — while not as active as I should be, I am present on LinkedIn.) Now let's get to this retirement/job-quitting business specifically. Based on my recent experience, I think the best thing to say in response to this news is some version of 'Wow, that's huge!' and invite the other person, by words or facial expression, to tell you more. Advertisement When people have finished something — a degree program, or a renovation, or a book — we congratulate them. They always had a goal in mind and they achieved it. But when people end something, that's more ambiguous, because the 'something' could go on. The thing itself isn't finished, the person who did it is finished with it. It's a choice, not a predetermined outcome. Advertisement Finishing doesn't require a story — ending does. And any story about ending is going to be complicated and filled with ambivalence. Ending a job, in particular, is multifaceted. There are practical issues about money and time, and personal ones about identity and the passage of time, and public-relations ones about the relationship of the person with their organizational alma mater. So be open to whatever story the person wants to tell, without pressing for specific details. And while not asking 'what's next' — if you have an idea or an offer, throw it out there! Do you have a new part-time gig in mind for your friend? Have you been looking for a travel buddy? Someone to collaborate on a project with? Offer! Even if they say no, it's a lovely feeling to be asked. What's the best advice you've ever been given? Let us know in the comment form below. Miss Conduct is Robin Abrahams, a writer with a PhD in psychology.
