by Val Kilmer
When it came to marital discord, Joanne and I certainly knew the territory. The additional fact that Edgar Allan Poe, inventor of the horror genre, would be following me about in ghostly form was also attractive. I’d have some great scenes with the brilliant Bruce Dern, and because Francis was doing it on a shoestring budget entirely at his own property in Clearlake, a hundred miles north of San Francisco, it looked like an easy shoot. It wasn’t.
Back in 1986, Francis’s twenty-two-year-old son, Gio, was killed in a speedboat accident. My character, the down-and-out hack novelist, experienced the same pain when his daughter died in a similar accident. The scene of her death is an ongoing visual motif. My character suffers in ways that Francis suffered. My character feels the heavy weight of guilt that Francis felt. Francis admitted as much during the press conference that publicized the movie. He explained that parents, no matter the circumstances, are never free from the guilt of not being able to save their child. I think of my own dad and my brother Wesley.
I might also mention that I was friends with Gio’s last girlfriend, the chic costume designer Jacqui de la Fontaine Getty. We had met while she and Gio were dating but in a rough patch. At a certain point I realized she had initially wanted to be my friend just to make Gio jealous. I was anxious to make sure Gio knew I had nothing to do with generating troubles between him and his girl. She had only told me they were a couple once we were out on a date, and the date ended at that moment. Eventually, it was all breezy between the three of us.
One summer, I was in DC filming my documentary on the nuclear dilemma and set up a meeting with Gio to tinker with and gush over a brand-new thing at the time: playback and editing on video cameras. We had a date set but he blew me off and went out on a speedboat with friends instead. That was the day he died. Francis’s life was more of an opera than all three Godfather films combined. His son was gone. Strange miracle: three months later, Jacqui discovered she was pregnant with Gio’s child. Francis and Ellie (his rock-steady wife) were over the moon. Jacqui was adopted into the family, and Gia was born.
Life’s circular poetry: Gia is now a dear friend and collaborator to my son, Jack.
In any case, Twixt was an attempt to deal with Francis’s guilt. He told me he was supposed to see Gio that fateful morning but overslept, and was haunted still by the thought that he might have saved his son had he been on the boat. The film, Francis told me, was based on a recurring dream in which Francis woke up before he could figure out the ending. For all its shortcomings, and there are many, it was nonetheless a noble and brave attempt by Francis to give dramatic life to demons that had been haunting him for so long.
* * *
Then there was Déjà Vu, directed by my old friend Tony Scott. I jumped at the chance to work with him again as well as with the remarkable Denzel Washington. What a treat to finally hang with Denzel in a deeper way than chatting for a few minutes while dropping our kids off at the Center for Early Education. I admire not only his dedication to his craft—he’s among the finest actors of his generation—but his devotion to theater and the work of the immortal August Wilson. And perhaps most of all for the work his foundation does for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.
I make mention of two other films, neither masterpieces, that nonetheless gave me the pleasure of working with Curtis Jackson, a.k.a. 50 Cent. Our movie Streets of Blood was a cop flick set in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. Curtis turned out to be not only a kind and gentle man but a mighty good actor. (And his own memoir, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, is one of the best entertainer memoirs I’ve ever read.) I watched him hone his natural-born chops while he indoctrinated me into the current verbal histrionics of hip-hop, an art form I initially came to appreciate through the stupendous work of Nas, Tupac, and Biggie. Many of its practitioners today—Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar, to cite two—are artists with dazzling poetic powers. Like Curtis, they are among our most soulful storytellers.
With 50 Cent at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles, 2009
Curtis returned the favor. Acknowledging my willingness to give him a few acting tips, he rewarded me with a 1965 Impala convertible. This was a man who clearly understood me. Curtis and I had such an easy rapport we reunited on a second film, Blood Out, where Curtis is a big-city detective while I play an unredeemable scumbag operating in the world of human trafficking. I strolled into the film’s final scene, my hair down to my shoulders, my nefarious empire on the verge of collapse, and thought about what Marlon might have done at such a moment. He’d have smiled. Which is just what I did. Sometimes B movies are a blast.
POEMS ARE MADE BY FOOLS
Walking down to where the first tree
Met the first leaf
I search for the primitive spoor
Of me.
Setting north
We go back and forth
There are no walls to the sea.
—Okavango Delta, Botswana, 1987
Land
Like my father, I was unstoppable. I was swallowed by Mother Earth. The land called to me, from her armpit or her belly, and I answered. For how could I not? Who was I, a mere mortal, to disobey her? No. That was simply not an option. Some of us know how to walk away. From money. From heartache. The Kilmers, though, stay, and stay, and then stay some more.
I think of THE Juilliard. Of Japan. Of artistic merit. And then I think of the rust belt. Of America. What is art, and who is it for? What did I give up?
I knew which movies would be good before I took the roles. I knew exactly how much money they would make. I’ve always been good at numbers games. But I had a life outside of work. Twain says, “The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” We all have to pay our dues. It just so happens I had to pay mine at this strange, warped midpoint in my life, rather than right at the beginning.
I had a vision from the time that I was a kid. The dream was to create a commune. A place where artists and believers in profound ideas would congregate and live. The dream was based on this nonlinear sense of time and space. Come whenever, stay forever. I imagined investing in Picassos and Giacomettis and Basquiats and then letting friends and neighbors rent or borrow them. A time-share, in the truest sense. An everything-share. If you were having an engagement party and wanted to impress some city friends, you could display all the collective art on your property as you wished.
The dream appeared to be coming true. A few comrades had become family. Sam Shepard, in all his grit and glory; Gordo, in all his regal majesty; Betty and Jane, the platonic lover ladies who had brought me to the wilderness in the first place, their plain names a disguise for their strange and wild beauty.
The commune I drafted in my mind and heart would put Marfa, Texas, to shame. My land for this commune had streams and brooks that glistened in the heat. Some gorgeous estates have two or three such waterways. Well, on my land there were eleven. Can you imagine anything more blissful or holy? I cannot.
There were over a hundred domestic pets as well as beloved creatures from towering bison to rabbits, from llamas to horses to pigs and goats. And then the wildlife. A mountain lion lying in the sun by the river, just for fun. A cougar spotting me spying him and then bounding up a dry arroyo from boulder to boulder, as majestic as the USS Enterprise. Those cats dancing on the riverbed are as important to me as any Love I’ve ever known. Have you seen a hummingbird’s silver glow? I have seen it, and I see it still in the eyes of my children, huddled up without making a sound, while the sleek and rarely seen fox eats the spilt bird food that has fallen in the night by the wind. I am trying in this perfect silence to teach my children something they could never know otherwise. What is the spirit of the fox, really? They are not the thieves made out to be in children books, no. Oh, if I could only come up with it for my children. Then out of the silence it is Mercedes who offers us the rare truth, whispering, “They are the perfect blend of dog and cat.” Yes, that is it, you perfect child on this perfect moonlit night. You have captured the magic for us all. S
hame on all of us who cannot trust ringtail raccoons on our property for a single evening. Even more shame on the manufacturers of man-made winds that kill bald eagles soaring through the sky. We must even stop the butterfly, stick it with pins and frame it. These are the things that matter to me now, and they were the things that mattered then.
I mismanaged my money and wound up broke. You’ve heard the excuses before—Dad’s debt, divorce—but those excuses don’t begin to excuse the real reason.
I called Coppola. “Francis, I feel like a fool. I’m going to have to sell my ranch. It was this utopian dream. It was unrealistic. How will I ever forgive myself?”
He calmly said, “Val, you have to stop beating yourself up. Artists take risks. That’s what we do. My own flops are legendary. You’ll have your art community, Val. Mark my words.”
I smiled. I got out of bed. I started problem solving. The property was worth thirty million dollars, and I owed twelve.
Improbably and fortunately, I had befriended Hank Paulson, once head of Goldman Sachs and secretary of the treasury under George W. Bush. It took Hank to set me straight. He saw what was coming.
“I don’t want to impinge on our friendship,” I told him half a year into the recession, “but I need financial advice.”
That’s all I had to say.
“You’re looking for a buyer for your wildlife preserve, aren’t you?” asked Hank.
I said yes, and he told me the dead-serious truth: there were probably no more than twelve people in the universe wanting a gigantic parcel of land in New Mexico, and he knew every one of them. Because he was a wildlife guy, and he knew all the wealthy wildlife guys—fly-fishermen specifically. He said, “All the guys that could buy your ranch, or would, are trying to sell theirs. They won’t get half. If anyone offers you half, take it. Half is the new hundred percent. How much is it appraised for?”
“It’s worth thirty million dollars,” I said, “and it has six miles of private river.”
“How much is it against?” he asked, referring to my mortgage and loans.
“Twelve.”
“Any offers?” he asked.
“One.”
“How much?”
“Fifteen.”
“Take it.”
“But, but, but, that means I’ll wind up making a measly—”
“And you’ll be lucky, Val. Take the fifteen and run. Our old world is over.”
I ran.
And I wound up in Malibu.
In a quaint and modest cottage by the majestic, sparkling sea, with dolphins literally flipping outside my front door.
Living in moderation in Malibu was a very practical move, to be followed by a majestically impractical one. This time, though, I scored. I put the rest of the money into my man Mark Twain and finishing my one-man show about him, Citizen Twain, which I intended to eventually turn into a screenplay for a film I would write, direct, produce, and star in.
I had once been circling around and dreaming about the idea of Cate Blanchett playing Mary Baker Eddy in the film. I’d been writing about Twain and the founder of Christian Science. We were on the set of a very respected director and having lunch in the makeup trailer. I said to her I couldn’t give her the script just yet. As far as proof of the quality of the production, she should see my one-man show ASAP, which she promised to do. This was before I lost my voice. I had been praying for guidance, about how one Mind directs us all, and with her husband a director also and me being so old to start directing, I thought suddenly to simply explain what my strengths were. I whispered to her, “Cate dear, I swear on my life this is what I will bring to you every hour of every day: a room that’s quiet and waiting for you, waiting for you to enter that safe place, where you are able to do the best work of your life.” Almost instantly she looked up and away and began to weep. I held her hand. It is one of my most treasured moments on a film set even though the camera was half a mile away. Finally, she wiped her tears away with a tissue I had gotten her and she whispered to me by way of an apology, “I can’t remember the last time that’s happened.”
I also thought of Meryl Streep. In a very vivid dream once, in a pitch and plea for her to play my Eddy, I promised Meryl a witch’s spell of endless youth and beauty. She took the Dorian Gray–style bargain, and I delivered. The mystical deal was sealed. I awoke, but the dream remained.
At this point, I had been working on both the one-man Twain play and the Twain-Eddy film script for fifteen years. If I could play a euphoric Jim Morrison or a comedic Doc Holliday, if I could be faceless Elvis or insane John Holmes, I could surely be Mark Twain. And I was. I created him with all the ferocity at my command, this man on the fringes of society and in the center of celebrity, mocked, misunderstood, lionized, belittled, emboldened by the bravery of indiscretion, reduced by mismanagement of entrepreneurial dreams. An American through and through. The American. Thinking these thoughts, day after day, year after year, running off to make B movies to pay the bills, I walked the beach at Malibu. Mark Twain walked with me.
I was having dinner with friends when I ran into Robin Williams, who buzzed around the restaurant to eight different tables, allowing the electric lightning bug inside to lead him on. His brilliance blinded the room. I saw Robin as Twain’s son. Twain was like that. Inspiration struck and kept on striking. I completed the one-man Twain play as I worked on draft after draft of the Twain-Eddy script. Twain would have to stand alone first. He was, I saw, a stand-up comic. That was the form of the show I crafted. I found makeup wizards to transform me. I found art houses willing to let me workshop. Audiences were loving it. I’d never been happier.
Before performing a full-tilt version, I wanted a more elaborate warm-up. The opportunity came from a woman who managed the singer-songwriter Ryan Adams. She was panicked. Ryan was headlining the Walt Disney Concert Hall that night, and the opening act had canceled. Disney Concert Hall had recently opened in all its post-structuralist Gehry gravitas, and it was a big deal. The manager was calling for help. I racked my brain to think of musicians I knew who were in town. I drew a blank. And then I heard myself say what needed to be said.
“I’ll open as Mark Twain.”
“What? What are you talking about, Val?”
“I’ll call my makeup team. They’ll work their magic and turn me into Mark. I’ve been workshopping a one-man show with me as Twain. It’ll be weird. It’ll be funny. No one will forget it. Trust me.”
And amazingly, she did.
I was unrecognizable as Val. I went onstage screaming highlights from the show, inventing on the spot. I riffed about Walt Disney and America and the ridiculous grandeur of the space. And I got deep. “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” I had done enough theater to know I had the audience. I paused and bowed. They roared. And the announcer, satisfied, declared, “Thank you. Val Kilmer as Mark Twain.” In that moment, fulfilling some sort of cross-generational destiny, I was at peace.
As Mark Twain in Citizen Twain
I toured groovy theaters and landed in a culminating few weeks at the storied and relaxed Pasadena Playhouse. The show begins with Twain coming back to the USA today, drunk as all hell but sharp as a tack. “They say living in California adds ten years to your life… I think I’ll spend them in New York.” He returns to earth because he must offer an apology to Mrs. Eddy for lying about her being a plagiarist, which he did, and also because, like myself, he’s in need of applause: “I was born modest but it wore off.” When the audience claps, he admits, “Aw, that’s like angels lickin’ me.” He also has plenty to say about the state of the world, his caustic wit is a breath of fresh air. “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that bother me. It’s the parts that I do understand.” He preaches; he pontificates; he evokes Mrs. Eddy: “Happiness is spiritual, born of truth and love. It is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to share it.” Twain is irreverent, finally getting t
he chance to talk back to a rude grade school teacher. When she asks all the idiots in the classroom to stand up, he stands up. His teacher looks at him and asks, “Why do you feel you are an idiot?” He replies, “Well actually ma’am, I don’t. I just hate to see you standing up there all by yourself.” The audience howled. As writer, director, producer, and star, I had my mojo back, all thanks to Mark.
I’ve always loved one-person shows. The best actor I have ever seen on Broadway was in a one-person show: Bruce Springsteen. I went to see it four times. Who else could tell the story of rock and roll like that? He’s the only one who could take up that mantle. The story (the history of rock and roll) could not be told until now. He’s the only one honest enough to get the job done. The Boss left his body, sweat, and soul on the stage. He testified openly. He was startlingly good. I remain inspired by his purposeful candor and storytelling wizardry.
With Bruce Springsteen after a performance of Springsteen on Broadway
GIVE OVER TO THE CAUSE
Rock & rollers are suckers for love
And I’m trying to get out of here to make the gig
But she’s crying in the bathroom at Hollywood and Vine
She wants us to step back
Not to coalesce
To progress
Of course, none of it matters
As the sun rises and we bow in reverence and celebrate her eternal charms, our eternal mother, our masterpiece, our reverie
I’m not confused
I’m just singin’ the blues
I will wait for you.
—Hollywood, California, 2019