I'm Your Huckleberry

by Val Kilmer

  I don’t want to stop talking about Daryl. I want to remember the morning we awoke in her exquisitely refurbished barn in Telluride. Leaning against a wall was a remarkable piece of art, a long, wide plank of wood. I saw it as a daring piece of avant-garde sculpture. I had to know the name of the sculptor. Daryl laughed and said, “It’s just my snowboard.” I looked it over again and realized she was right. But who made it? “Jake Burton Carpenter,” she said without a hint of pretense. “He invented the modern snowboard. He said he’d never made one for a woman. This was his first. The weight, the strength, the design, the split tail. Isn’t it fun?” Of course it was fun. Of course she’d be the first woman for whom Burton would fashion a snowboard. I imagined that the first ladies’ tennis racket was made for someone like Daryl, a six-foot-tall Amazonian tower of delicate power, that same kind of woman who inspires men to invent myths, blow up castles, and leave their queens.

  The next day Daryl and I hit the slopes. She disappeared so quickly it was like sleight of hand. By the time I caught up, she was surrounded by a group of guys who had either spotted her or chased after her. They all stood on a perch where world-class snowboarders paused to stare at the peasants. I wanted to die. They were legitimate X Games champs and gold medal winners, men who owned mountains and countries. They considered Daryl their equal.

  As best as I could detect, Daryl contained no negativity. Even a man she had dumped, the world’s most eligible bachelor—John F. Kennedy Jr.—continued cultivating her company. During the Daryl/John-John courtship, the press went wild because Daryl wouldn’t say a word about Jackie. The media manufactured a nasty buzz over a supposed rivalry between Daryl and Jackie. Lies. Daryl and Jackie adored one another. They forged an indelible friendship. Daryl was incapable of describing Jackie’s last days without weeping. Jackie asked Daryl to come into her bedroom, sit by her side, and listen to her final stories. Far more than speaking, listening is the ultimate act of Love. Daryl also spoke the unvarnished truth. At the Academy Awards, in her golden dress and tinted eyeglasses, her hair dramatically coiffed, she stood apart. On that night of nights, her way of being was so effortless, so absurdly attractive, yet so mocking of the event that claims legitimacy in lifting one artist above another.

  “Why burden an actor by suggesting the finest moment of his life is inferior to someone else’s?” she asked me. “If I ran the Oscars, I’d re-language the awards. No more absolutes. No more certainties. No more ‘best.’ Instead, ‘A recognition of a defining performance.’ ‘An acknowledgment of a fearless reenactment.’ ”

  Daryl uttered the most intimate words any woman has ever spoken to me. We had rented a cabin along the Southern California coast. It had been a long day under a punishing sun. My skin was still pulsing. Night had fallen. A cool breeze offered welcome relief. We were both reading scripts. In the distance, an owl’s hoot, a nightingale’s song, the rustle of leaves. We stayed silent, focused on the pages before us. And then, for no apparent reason, we stopped and faced one another. Eerily, we seemed to be breathing as one. A new harmony. An almost frightening closeness. The owl and songbird, the rustling of leaves, the light of the moon upon Daryl’s face. And then her words:

  “Val,” she whispered, “if we marry and have a boy, can we name him Wesley?”

  She touched, opened, and healed my deepest wound, deepest wish, deepest loss. I was moved for days. I floated on a cloud. I knew I would love her with my whole heart forever. That love—invisible, ephemeral, and infinite—has lost none of its strength.

  At a Lakers game with Daryl Hannah

  I made mistakes with Daryl. Maybe it was possessiveness. Maybe it was ego. Friends I respect swear by analysis, whether the Freudian or Jungian variety. Friends I respect employ life coaches to help them understand when and why they go off the rails. Millions follow a spiritual path based on those famous twelve steps. I do feel that I am a stepper. By that, I mean that I believe we need to keep on steppin’. I believe in moving forward toward the ultimate goal: unification with a loving God. At the same time I continue to lead my life on the run. Lord knows I’ve suffered heartache with women. But Daryl was by far the most painful of all.

  Suffice it to say, I would have done anything to win her back. God’s perfect plan of peace sometimes cannot be understood yet must be followed. I followed a decidedly imperfect path. And yet our connection remains a beacon of hope for the disjointed and lonely.

  Hiding from God

  I reflect on a thousand and one evenings when, alone, I sought comfort in music. The music might have been John Lennon singing about his “beautiful beautiful beautiful boy.” It could have been Van Morrison playing his “healing game” and doing his “moondance.” It could have been screaming Led Zep or Janis Joplin demanding that I take another little piece of her heart. It could have been Jack White or the Black Keys or Rage Against the Machine. It could have been a muted Miles whispering “So what?” in his kind-of-blue mode. It could have been cinematic scores that, despite being called cornball by hard-nosed critics, fill my heart with joy—soundtracks to epics like Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago. It could even have been Tony Bennett looking for lost love in San Francisco.

  I had foolishly ended things with Jaycee and then foolishly ended things with Daryl. I had overbought land. I was house-poor and alone. I was still fighting for custody of my kids. I could feel the recession looming as well as a downturn of my career, which until this point had been starry and surreal. I suppose you could say that, for the first time in my life, I was unlucky. And I was unready to face the music. I was hiding from destiny. Hiding from myself. Ultimately I came out of hiding and began to think outside myself. It’s how Love works. What blesses one blesses all.

  I began to shyly apply the lessons I learned about my gift of healing, the lessons of Love that lead to more of an attitude of service. For example, I had become very close with several members of a family who were all born in another country. They have tremendous talent in a wide variety of artistic endeavors and also a great deal of inherited pride. They are not the type of family that go around blurting their feelings and concerns. So it was with great worry that I met with one of the sisters who expressed to me her fear that her brother, who was a photographer and also my friend, was teetering on the verge of death because of his latest battle with a new and brutal addiction to crack.

  Though I have played a few characters who used drugs—such as Jim Morrison, Danny Parker, and porn star John Holmes in the film Wonderland—I feel extremely grateful to say these substances have not played a role in my own story. As one of my spiritual practitioners once said of addiction, “It’s not necessarily a bad motive: to get out of the pain of mortality. We’re all trying to do that in various ways. The sad trapped abuser of narcotics or alcohol has just picked a technique that cannot get them to that peace.” Ah, to know that peace! What an occasion and cause to celebrate, achieving that peace! Well, the request from my friend was simple. Her brother was not answering his phone or the intercom of his apartment building but the family knew he was in there. And he had been in there so long they feared this time it may be for good. He might already be dead.

  This was quite a puzzle. How do you reach someone who can’t be reached? How do you get them to come out of their bat cave? The first step is getting them to see how close to the edge they are dancing. They know they are dancing with death, but do they know it might be last call and the blinding house lights are about to go on? And not the actual burning daylight of the sun, and the harsh slog back to reality it represents.

  Healing is always about an early step of conquering fear. First your own, of course, then the patient’s. But if the subject isn’t a patient, if they haven’t given their consent, you can’t go knocking around in their consciousness without permission. It is akin to trespassing in someone’s home. You wouldn’t go into your friend’s house and rearrange the furniture in their living room. Especially if that friend is blind. That would be worse than an act of misguid
ed Love. That would be an act of aggression.

  I couldn’t break down his door or bribe his landlord. I couldn’t even get inside his building. So how was I going to get to him? Suddenly it hit me. I called him and, employing my best groovy hipster cool Jim Morrison hypnotic voice, started to leave a message on his answering machine: “Hey man, it’s Val. Yeah, sorry to bug you but I just don’t know who else to call. ’Cause I’m going to this party with this girl and really need some high-quality—”

  He instantly picked up the phone.

  “Heeeeeey, Vaaal. How you been? How much are you looking for, man?”

  “Oh well, I don’t know. I don’t know measurements. Enough to make, say, four people really happy for a few days.”

  “Where are you? Do you have cash?”

  I gave him the name and address of a nearby dive bar.

  “I’ll be there,” he said. And then he coughed. He coughed like his lungs were going to come through the phone and get all over me.

  And so I found myself at a smelly dive bar in the middle of the night trying to spread the love of Love, trying to save a life. I waited for a while. I admit several times I gave up on him showing and imagined his funeral. Then there came a slap on my back, the hand sliding over my very expensive black leather jacket and, in an exaggerated movement, gently indicating I was to bring my right hand up to grasp his right hand in a sort of handshake-massage-embrace hug, which magically culminated in his handing off to me a rather sizeable amount of cocaine. Which I pocketed like that Disneyland magician whose sleight-of-hand magic maneuvers mesmerized me as a child.

  Before me stood a praying mantis in dark sunglasses, a crumpled leather coat, and three-thousand-dollar black denim from Japan. Two women were with him. They were thin as rice paper, too, and functioning I would guess on day number three or four of a mad drug run. I couldn’t quite figure out whether the shorter of the two tall women was wearing any sort of top. She seemed to have covered herself in various kinds of feather boas that made up a sort of top but really they were more like a garnish. They introduced themselves but their indeterminate accents made their names intelligible. It was as if they were speaking a secret vampire language.

  I whispered to my friend, “I’ll meet you outside in two minutes.” Then I went to the bathroom and flushed the drugs down the toilet, hoping it wasn’t going to break my bank to pay for it.

  Outside the bar, I led him away from the girls and into a side alley. I dropped the hipster-stoner voice and said, “I came to find you.”

  I saw by the look in his eyes that it was game over. He knew everything and was not about to stand there for even thirty seconds and be lectured by his sisters through me. I boxed him into a doorway so he couldn’t escape. He smelled like death. Get to it, Val, and let Love rule. Let Love rule your entire being and your heart and mind and tongue.

  “It’s not just your sisters. There are a lot of people out here who don’t want to see you die. I’m one of ’em. I am about to start a new film. Maybe I can get you a job as the set photographer. It’s a medium-size film so the pay might be pretty good. What is the name of the girl that doesn’t seem to be wearing a top? She looks familiar.”

  “She designs clothes.”

  “Well, she forgot to put them on.”

  “No, she didn’t. Why, you like her? Take her.”

  “No, no, nothing like that. We all want you to not die. And I know this is really hard to hear, but you need to let us help you not die. You have to let the people who love you, love you. It’s worth it. Believe me.”

  Well, he did. He made a full recovery. He did a few specialty shoots for films I was in, and ended up getting married and has two beautiful children and never sees vampires anymore.

  So yes, I’ve seen redemption in my life. The only thing holier than a crucifixion is a resurrection.

  Kiss Kiss Kiss Goes the Indie, Bang Bang Bang Goes the Downey

  (Sung to the tune of Judy Garland’s “The Trolley Song”)

  Reality kept demanding I get gigs that paid. I haven’t counted how many movies I’ve made. I don’t want to, because for a long period of time, I had to make movies for money. There are worse things I could’ve done.

  Yet I have here described myself as a man with lofty goals, and I have a solid two decades’ worth of work that I’d describe as less than lofty. On the other hand, I was blessed that in this extended period more than a few scintillating scripts came my way. When they did, I grabbed them. One of them came a little before the films I’ve just mentioned.

  Robert Downey Jr. and I had met only once on a long evening, when during an awards dinner we circled one another like Holliday and Ringo. Everyone knew of Robert’s struggles with addiction and pain. The studios had steered clear of him because he was uninsurable. He had hit bottom. But he had also gotten clean. All I knew was that Robert’s brain was a masterpiece of creativity. He was smart as a whip.

  Shane Black was willing to take a chance on Robert and convinced his producers to cast him in the lead of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. A few days later, CAA called and asked me to read the script written by Shane. He had become one of Hollywood’s hottest screenwriters after penning Lethal Weapon at just twenty-two years old. Now he was set to make his directorial debut. (He would go on to direct Iron Man 3 and The Predator). CAA was excited. After reading thirty pages, so was I. I called my agent back and spoke only two words: “I’m in.”

  With Robert Downey Jr. at the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

  The first day of rehearsal, I introduced myself properly to Robert. We riffed and then rehearsed. But I could never stop laughing. Even when we started shooting. I’ve never been so unprofessional; I’ve never ruined so many takes in my life as I did on that film, just because I couldn’t stop laughing. Robert was a lightning-fast, off-the-wall wit. We had great flow. Ever since I sat in awe of The Kentucky Fried Movie as a kid, I’ve understood comic rapport is one of the greatest joys an actor can experience. Robert facilitated that experience for me in remarkable fashion. He’s an actor with the sensitivity of an artist and the mind of an academic.

  His character, Harry Lockhart, was the leading man, and mine his buddy, an openly gay detective named Perry van Shrike but referred to as “Gay Perry.” I wanted to unpack and unlearn every gay cliché that Hollywood had slammed in our faces over the years and play him as a man, a great detective, who happened to love other men. The film turned out to be a hoot. If it’s now seen as a cult classic, the reason may be its meta nature. I’ve always been drawn to meta, as in metaphysical or metaphor or metamorphosis Meta basically means “self-reflective.” Kiss Kiss Bang Bang could be described as a meta noir, a wildly comic reflection of those delicious forties black-and-white detective melodramas complete with earnest gumshoes like Fred MacMurray and black widows like Barbara Stanwyck. Shane turned the genre on its head and morphed it into a romp that’s slyly self-conscious about itself as a clever screenplay and the tradition out of which the screenplay is born.

  I recently saw the film again and was reminded what Raymond Chandler, who is to noir what Louis Armstrong is to jazz, wrote in his introduction to his collection of short stories Trouble Is My Business. Chandler breaks down the difference between a murder mystery and a detective story. In the mystery, solving the crime is everything. But in the detective story, it’s all about great scenes. “The scene,” wrote Chandler, “outranks the plot.” Shane understood that. So did Robert. But Robert took those scenes one step further. He played them with such bold athleticism that when Kiss Kiss Bang Bang proved successful, his career took off in another direction. He crushed it with Iron Man. A super-actor became a superhero, and I couldn’t have been happier.

  * * *

  Other films of mine are less remembered but remain close to my heart. Bloodworth came and went with little notice, but I dearly cherish the moment in which my character, a bad-boy neglected son, faces his father. His father is the immortal Kris Kristofferson, a compo
ser whom Willie Nelson justifiably ranks with Gershwin. Beyond the sublimity of his singing and songs, Kris is a strong screen presence. He possesses the lanky, laid-back cool of Gary Cooper. In Bloodworth, he’s an aging country singer who’s wandered back home to face the damage he’s done by deserting his family. As his son, I am the supreme sufferer. And so I, playing the profligate son, have the rare privilege of sitting by a lake next to Kris, playing the repentant father. We fish together. The lake is calm. The sun is setting. The talk is minimal. But the feeling of fishing with my make-believe father has me thinking of another father who ran in and out of my life in ways that continue to mystify me.

  * * *

  When Francis Ford Coppola calls, actors come running. Because I had once refused to make that run—years earlier, when I had turned down The Outsiders—this time I ran like hell. It was an especially strange call because it involved starring in a faux horror movie written, produced, and directed by Francis. It was Twixt, a film in which he asked me to star as Hall Baltimore, a fourth-rate horror novelist down on his luck. The lead actress and my wife in the film was a woman who had captured Francis’s fascination and admiration: Joanne Whalley. The fact that she would play my wife, who is unhappy in our marriage, was not a drawback. We had resolved our custody dispute to the point where the kids were spending time with both of us. I actually liked the idea of working with Joanne again. (By the way, Francis is unabashedly bonkers for Joanne, who he told me he thought of as a modern-day Clara Bow.)