Blessed, Life and Films of Val Kilmer

by William Hamilton

  Val’s research started close to home with friend Michael Naranjo, “I have a friend who was blinded in Vietnam. He’s a sculptor and was kind enough to let me observe him for days. It’s his movements I copied and his voice I tried to imitate… he let me study his movements. He also has a great sense of humor and a lot of inner strength. (He gave me) a lot to think about.” He also spent time with the real Virgil (Shirl Jennings). Val moved to New York three months before filming started, “which is really unusual,” according to Winkler.

  Jennings visited the set twice with his wife Barbra. Val noticed, “there are surprising similarities (among the blind people) even though the masseuse was from New York, Shirl is a Southerner and my friend is a Native American. There are certain similarities in movement and even in speech pattern, which was unusual.” Besides the two he also interviewed Paul Rutowsky, a blind jazz musician who has been a massage therapist in White Plains, N.Y., for the last three years Rutowsky, who has been blind since birth, said Kilmer was very interested in his “attitude,” as well as how Rutowsky learned massage therapy. Rutowsky says, “People who are sighted know very little about blindness, so you basically have to educate them and make it easier for them to help you.”

  According to Rutowsky, “(Val) asked me a lot of questions about daily living and how I perceive certain things,: Rutowsky said. “I don’t have a visual mind-set, so everything is perceived from the other four senses. If someone gives me directions to get to a certain place, I think of myself walking with my dog to that place.”

  Val also did different research, “A lot of work went into that. It was very difficult. I went to New York very early, I went to the locations quite a bit, but I also spent quite a bit of time with my eyes closed in my room, or with contact lenses on where I couldn’t see out on the street, in the subway or eating.” He had opaque contact lenses made and had friends walked with him around New York City. “It’s very peaceful being blind,”

  He also says, “Well, the main thing I did in New York City was just to go out into the city. It’s amazing…sometimes it’s even more painful, because people want to help you, and they force you. If you really stick with it and keep your eyes closed, your trust level and your just awareness of people's behavior or lack of it -- you can stand there for a long time saying, ‘Can somebody help me, please?’ Standing at a corner across the street. That was the main thing I did. It’s a fascinating thing.”

  “You either become a very positive person by your circumstances — you say ‘Okay, this is what happened, and today’s going to be a good day and I’m going to face life and enjoy it’ — or you become real bitter and angry. It’s pretty much up to you. In the case of Virgil, he decided when he was young, ‘I’m going to enjoy my life and make the most of it.’ And he’s a very witty guy, and he does. He likes his job, he massages a lot of women, takes them home.”

  ”It’s probably the hardest role I ever played... I also loved the story. The premise of it couldn’t be more simple or complex. What if you fall in love at first sight and you can’t see? This is a true story, but it’s a true love story, and I think that it’s really her love and belief that lead him to go through the experience and see. At the same time, she’s trying-the way we tell the story-to make him something that he’s not. At the end, would he have done it all over again? Sure. It was the experience of seeing her and understanding life in a deeper way. It really doesn’t even become about eyesight anymore. It becomes about life itself.”

  “In a way, you could take away the physical blindness part of this film, and it could be the exact same film. It’s a guy from out of town, and he’s never seen New York before. When I moved to New York and I was 17, it took me an hour and a half to go from 64th Street to 72nd Street. I was like the Beverly Hillbillies.”

  Val answers the question “Was it difficult to avoid eye contact with Mira and the other actors?” “Yes. It mostly depended on the scene. I have to say that most of the time, I was just experiencing it. That behavior suddenly became second nature--and it’s bizarre thinking back because I don’t have memories of those feelings. It’s almost like a dream state.”

  “It's hard to describe. I could hear with more than just my ears and I could swear that I could ‘hear’ smells and my torso became sensitive to the weather. In preparation for the role, I wore contact lenses so that I couldn’t see and I would go out into the street and the subway. It was very challenging...it became second nature. I didn’t need the contact lenses when filming began.”

  “Very complex, psychologically and physically. At the beginning, for example, he’s perfectly at ease. He’s got a great relationship with his sister, he loves his dog, he’s good at his job, he likes his job, he’s kind of a ladies’ man, he’s funny, he’s having a great time. But there’s a lot of things about being blind that are just more work than they are for us who are sighted.”

  “When you think about it, the states of mind where we’re conscious but we close our eyes are usually really wonderful states,” he said. “Some sort of stage of euphoria, unless we sneeze, or something really disastrous. But it’s interesting when you contemplate it because the body, in a positive way or because of a negative way, kind of shuts down. It says, ‘Sight, we don’t need it right now.’ And you go to a different state of mind.”

  Val also learned to skate for the role, “If I feel like a blind skater maybe I’m doing all right at that. No. I’m not a skater. I was raised in California. I challenge all the New Yorkers on the crew to a surfing match, cause they’re all zipping around, ‘You don’t do that like that!’ And I’m like, yeah, yeah, I know. But I’m blind! Isn’t it a lovely pond though? Can you see that? We made that.”

  Val enjoyed working with Winkler, “He’s really fantastic. I can see why he’s the most successful independent producer. I mentioned one day how the parenting plan worked with the custody of my children (I had every other weekend). He said, ‘Let me know which ones, (adding that) maybe he could let me off one Thursday so that I could make one of the weekends with my kids.’ I had every single one off except one, for three and half months. He went to enormous trouble to rearrange his schedule so that I could leave Thursday night and miss filming on Friday.”

  “It’s amazing that he did that,” Kilmer recalls. “Needless to say, whatever Irwin wants me to do, forever, I will do…he’s a very serious man about what he says...Irwin is an extraordinary man and his taste is the same as a producer as well as a director. I really enjoyed his honesty.”

  Interesting Facts:

  Val’s guide dog in the film is named after Rutowsky's own guide dog.

  Val says. “The first woman I was massaging right before Mira’s character comes in, Irwin Winkler told me afterward that her husband runs the studio. I kind of wished he told me that before-hand. (Laughs) I keep going back over it in my mind, would I have done the massage better or worse?”

  transcript from the Mark and Brian show KLOS 95.5, Los Angeles CA,

  Val Kilmer interview (transcribed by Lindsey of VK Newsletter):

  M/B: We have a guy here that really wants to talk to you. Tony on line seven. Hey Tony.

  Tony: Mr. Kilmer. You there?

  VK: Hi Tony.

  Tony: It is very much an honor to speak to you. I saw a movie with a friend of mine, “At First Sight,” and I have the same disease that you portrayed in that. And real recently you inspired me to...

  VK: You there?

  Tony: Yeah. (very emotional)

  VK: Yeah. Sure. (in a very gentle voice)

  Tony: ...to be a masseuse.

  VK: Oh, that's fantastic.

  Tony: So, the end of July, I am now certified.

  VK: That’s great. There are a lot of countries that really honor the blind and have styles and tradition of all those obvious aspects and talents. That’s great.

  Tony: You know, I love “Tombstone” and all the movies them guys have been talking about, but the only movie I think I have ever seen in my whole life
was the one you did.

  Val Kilmer Africa project

  Adrian Boshier is a man that Val wants to do a movie about. An Englishman born in 1939, he had a fascination with Africa his whole life. When he was sixteen his mother remarried and they moved to Johannesburg. He went into the bush with only a bag of salt for trading and pocketknife.

  He caught snakes, and when he learned that he could sell their venom he became a professional snake catcher, always releasing the snakes afterwards. He was exceptionally good at it, and he was sent for when a mamba was terrorizing a village.

  Boshier says, “It was extraordinarily evil. I don't normally feel that way about snakes, but this one was something different.” He fought with the snake and eventually captured it in a sack. An old man said it wasn’t an ordinary snake, but one with a great evil spirit. The crowd of onlookers chanted a new name for Boshier, RraDinoga and his totem became the snake. Snakes are very important to African culture and his status with the native people grew. He was never allowed to go without food or water.

  In 1959, he met with the elders of the Makgabeng to ask permission to go into the Makgabeng Mountains and explore the caves. They invited him into the kgoro (a courtyard used as a meeting place for men). Coincidentally he had an epileptic seizure, and they thought this meant a spirit possessed him. They granted him permission to go into the mountains and then invited him to sleep in the village that night, as the guest of the chief. The next morning after sleeping late Adrian walked out of the village toward the mountains. There he discovered previously unknown prehistoric cave paintings, which he began to record.

  In 1962 he married and took his artist wife back into the mountain caves to make copies of the paintings and met Walter Battis and Raymond Dart well known anthropologists of the time, who arranged for him to receive financial backing. Whenever he questioned the purpose of the paintings, the people continually evaded his questions. Carbon dating that was performed on various artifacts along with some human bones that were found proved that this was in fact the oldest known mining operation in the world.

  Boshier was invited to attend a meeting of the tribesmen to discuss the severe drought that had gone on for years. They thought that the spirits had been offended. They needed a set of sacred drums, but had destroyed them on the urging of missionaries. Boshier urged them to make a new set of drums, and telling them that white people wouldn’t avenge them for their actions. They needed sacred blood of the Great Mother, but it was not available in their region. He asked them to describe the details of this “blood,” and was certain it was red ochre that was being mined at another location he was involved with. He returned with it, and it was what they needed. Eventually they invited him to become one of their tribe members. They taught him the meanings of the cave paintings, and about tribal lore. He was thus instrumental in our modern understanding Africa.

  Val talks a bit about the project, “In fact, Africa itself is the main character in the drama I’ve been writing, which takes place mostly in South Africa and Zimbabwe. I’ve been working on this project for over ten years and hope to get it made as soon as I stop working on ‘The Saint.’ But after I’ve been working on it for so long, I’m in no hurry to compromise. I’ll see if it happens next year, or I’ll wait one more year. It’s very, very hard to shoot animals, and everything about it is difficult, so it has to be done right.”

  This fascinating man was responsible for Western civilization to rethink Africa, however not much is known about him, and Val will have to work very hard to complete this film.

  Joe the king

  10/15/1999

  Frank Walley, who played Robbie Kreiger in “The Doors” opposite Val, made an independent movie about his rather miserable childhood. He called on friends whom he had worked with to help him. Val played the role of Joe’s father for the modest sum of nothing! Walley also enrolled enlisted the help of Nathan Hawke who was only available for one day.

  Noah Fleiss (Joe Henry) was nominated for Best Performance in a Feature Film, Leading Young Actor by the Young Artist Awards. Whaley says, “I don't think this kid will ever give a performance like he did for this film. I think I caught him in his (prime) acting life. He was a blank slate, a clean canvas and he was able to mold this really brilliant performance that he gives in this film.”

  Whaley was equally happy with the house they had made, “Exactly the way I wanted it ... it was just like the house I grew up in.” Whaley credits Kilmer with choreographing a difficult scene where the size of the house became a problem. “(Kilmer) came up with the idea of how to do it. (He) Pulls the boy on the chair and himself into the kitchen into a close-up.”

  Val agreed to gain a substantial amount of weight for the film. Whaley says, “It took a lot of generosity and courage on Val's part to come out with his stomach like that. People were astounded when he came out with his gut like that. I’ll always be indebted to him … says a lot about who he is.”

  “Val would play around with the dialogue quite a bit,” Whaley explains. “The kid never did because I didn’t even want to waste time but I had no choice but to let the adults go.”

  Whaley had asked the production team to “Give me a car that looked like it was on its last legs. But they got me a car that ‘was’ on its last legs.” The car broke down in the middle of an important shoot, and the crew had to push it.

  The movie was shot in 28 days, and went on to receive rave reviews at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. It tied with Guinevere for the Waldo Salt screenwriting award. Trimark Pictures distributed the film around the US and Canada at local film festivals and in a very limited release in October, 1999.

  Three Days

  1999

  “Three Days” isn’t a regular movie, it’s a rockumentary about the band Jane’s Addiction’s 1997 comeback tour that started at the Slamdance festival. Val has a cameo role, along with Jewel, Marilyn Manson, Eddie Vedder, Anthony Kiedis, Alyssa Milano, Rose McGowan, Dennis Rodman, Hugh Hefner, John Frusciante, Goldie, Henry Rollins, Christina Applegate, Jesse Camp, Dennis Rodman, Stephen Dorff, and Corey Feldman.

  The movie is the second attempt at a rockumenraty about “Jane’s Addiction, it borrows a few scenes from its predecessor “Gift.”

  Spin magazine calls the intended audience, “people who just can’t pierce themselves enough.”

  Perry Farrell says this about financial motivation, “I don’t know how much money I have, and I don’t give a s**t. All I know is that if I want a sandwich, I can get one within an hour.”

  The movie was a semi-fictional look at their world, and Val’s part was no exception, even though he was playing himself (he refused a joint onscreen).

  Dave Navarro talks about Val’s role, “(Val) gave me a fossil of ..like...a billion year-old plant. He’s just into being Jim Morrison. I’ve hung around with the guy a few times and I think he is Jim Morrison!”

  Red Planet

  11/10/2000

  According to Val, this was the only movie he’s ever done to improve his acting career other than “Batman Forever.”

  Val says, “It’s a really smart story, and all the premises and principals that (director Antony Hoffman) based it on are science fact. They’re all plausible. So acting inside of a spaceship that’s very logical or a spacesuit that’s very practical (was easy). Even knowing that the NASA guys looked at our costumes and said, ‘Hey, a flashlight in each finger of the glove! That's really cool!’ was exciting. We’ll no doubt see that one day.”

  “There have been a lot of movies about Mars, so it wasn’t really dramatic for us,” he says. “Also, before we started shooting we knew we couldn’t compete with their (Mission to Mars) opening date, and it turned out to be fantastic good luck because (that meant) we had more time to add or adjust different things for our movie. The effects business is developing so quickly that just in the course of principal photography they found that they could do 10, 15, in some areas 30 percent more for less money. So we ended up with twice many effects shots
as Perfect Storm, just to give you an idea of the size of this picture. It’s beautiful stuff, too. Space is beautiful. The ship is beautiful. It’s going to be fantastic.”

  But everything can’t always go right. Val talks about shooting in the wilderness of Australia and Jordan. “Lorenzo di Bonaventura (of Warner Brothers production) would ask me all kinds of crazy questions, like ‘You see any snakes?’ because he’s a nature boy, too. He likes the tough country. His opening line to me always was, ‘I’ll be you’re the only guy who’s happy down there.’”

  “In Jordan there was nothing to find for miles around. One of the Bedouin, which they had hired as guides, did not come from that part of the country so he got lost with a part of the crew, while he was leading them home. It is very dangerous there, yet apart from the chance that you can be killed by thieves, and he landed at the Saoedische border where a lot of patrol and military vehicles are.”

  About the heat in the spacesuit he had to wear in the middle of the desert, “It really wasn’t that great an ordeal for me because the batsuit is (worse). Not many people know this, but it was invented during the Spanish Inquisition, and they buried that particular form of black rubber torture and then uncovered it for Batman for some reason.”

  There were also rumors that Val wasn’t getting along with costar Tom (Siezemore). “There were things going on with Tom that were personal that I got attached to. Like this (rumor), which is crazy, (about) a restraining order. As you know, it’s just impossible for an actor to do that to another actor on a movie set. He and I did a lot of stuff together to make this movie not just good but great, and it’s a real shame that things got interpreted in a negative light. Because the movie doesn’t deserve it. It doesn’t have anything to do with what the experience was or what people are going to see.”