By VAL KILMER (Simon & Schuster; 2020)
Let’s face it: most celebrity biographies are dull affairs, written by vastly over-priviledged and uninteresting people. This memoir, by a famous movie star, poet and Mark Twain enthusiast, is the product of a celebrity who is over-priviledged without question, but not uninteresting.
The filmography of Val Kilmer is an unfulfilled one. He can be a great actor on occasion (as in THE DOORS and TOMBSTONE), but the majority of his roles, and the movies they grace (which include the unimpressive likes of TOP SECRET, BATMAN FOREVER, RED PLANET and TWIXT), are unmemorable. It certainly doesn’t help matters that, as he acknowledges in these pages, Kilmer has a reputation in Hollywood for being an irrepressible pain in the ass.
Yet Kilmer has led a mighty charmed life, beginning with his So Cal childhood. He denies that he comes from a rich family, yet spent his early childhood in the now-abandoned Surfridge section of Playa Vista (in its day some of the most lucrative real estate in LA). Later residences include a vast ranch in New Mexico and, a beachfront house in Malibu (his idea of “living in moderation”) and a Hollywood Hills mansion. Kilmer’s love life has been similarly charmed, with Cher, Ellen Barkin, Joanne Whalley (who for a time became Joanne Whalley-Kilmer), Cindy Crawford and Daryl Hannah numbering among his romantic partners.
All this is related in a voice that’s exactly as you’d expect given Kilmer’s reputation for behavior that’s egomaniacal and pretentious. Beginning with the words “Dear Reader, I have a crush on you,” the book weaves in snatches of Kilmer’s poetry (with titles like “Progress Proves the Infinite” and “Big Deal Haiku”), magical realism (in one passage Kilmer describes a meeting with the “Angel of Life”) and a great deal of proselytizing about the glories of Christian Science, the religion in which he was raised.
Kilmer is not hesitant to take full credit for the success of certain movies in which he appeared (during the filming of 1985’s REAL GENIUS he claims he told producer Brian Grazer that “If you want, I’ll stop making the film better and get right down to the television laugh track it sounds like everyone is into”), and unafraid to let his pretentions take center stage (he says Batman “could be a character out of Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES” and claims at one point to have been “Swallowed by mother earth”). He also gives his take on his participation in the notorious 1996 ISLAND OF THE DR. MOREAU (he blames director John Frankenheimer for its failure) and his defection from Hollywood in the early 00s in favor of B-movie fare (“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”).
His life ultimately took some dark turns, with Kilmer claiming that, in the wake of his traumatic break-up with Daryl Hannah, he hasn’t had a girlfriend for “twenty years” (actually fifteen). He also contracted throat cancer in the late 00s, which took a major toll on his health and led to the loss of quite a few plum movie roles. He bounced back, though, after being cast in the upcoming TOP GUN sequel and finding fulfillment as a graphic artist; of his paintings he admits “I wasn’t sure if people actually liked them or just wanted something made by Val Kilmer, but I didn’t care.”
And it seems that now, well into his sixties, Val Kilmer’s spirits are high, as he concludes the book with the quintessentially Kilmer-esque observation that “I believe I am on a flight that, day by day, is generated by the poetry of my heart.” He is, as they say, a character, and this book appears to reflect his mercurial personality quite well—something that, depending on your point of view, you can take as either a recommendation or a warning off.