![]() ![]() Kilmer’s guilelessness in recounting his life so directly, without interruption, is disarming and perhaps a bit obfuscatory. He flies to fan conventions and screenings for his now most popular films, waving and signing autographs, while in voice-over explaining that he expects to feel embarrassed at such events, promoting a long-gone version of himself. Cue parts in the less-than-serious Top Gun and the spy spoof Top Secret! and eventually Batman, which required a suit that prohibited him from emoting - or even breathing, really - the way he needed to. Moreau.) We see him finding his way at Juilliard as a raw-talent 17-year-old and realizing, in an early Off Broadway play where he’s pushed down the call sheet, that he’s desperate to be taken seriously. (A highlight: his attempt to shoot the shit with a forlorn-looking Marlon Brando - his lifelong hero - on the set of the famously doomed Island of Dr. We hear Kilmer briefly addressing persistent rumors that he was “difficult” or “hard to work with” on various film sets while watching footage of him on those same sets. We see grainy, kooky footage of Val and Wesley as a slaphappy kid before learning (via Kilmer’s son Jack’s voice-over) that the actor’s brother drowned in their family’s hot tub after an epileptic fit. ![]() Val, which premieres at Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, is a genuinely surprising and strange movie that vacillates between emotional extremes at an almost minute-by-minute pace. What amounted is something singular and fascinating: a look at the actor’s far-famed, occasionally tumultuous career and personal life, seen almost entirely though his eyes. Kilmer shot through his alternatively transcendent and traumatic experiences playing Doc Holliday, Batman, Jim Morrison, and Iceman he shot through the rosy glow of the beginnings of his marriage to Joanne Whalley and the protracted crumbling of it he shot through his 2017 diagnosis of throat cancer and the subsequent treatments that rendered him almost unable to speak and he shot through his obsession with and efforts to turn his own version of Mark Twain’s life story into a theater show and, hopefully, someday, a completed film.Ī few years ago, Kilmer joined forces with directors and editors Leo Scott and Ting Po and began sifting through the thousands of hours of footage Kilmer had amassed. He started shooting video as a kid on his father’s California ranch, making 16mm remakes and parodies of his favorite movies with his late brother Wesley. Val Kilmer has been appearing in other people’s films for nearly 40 years, but, as is revealed in his new documentary, Val, he’s been filming himself for even longer. Photo: Michael Tighe/Donaldson Collection/Getty Images The actor says he’s been filming himself for decades, and now his footage is a surprising and strange documentary, Val. ![]()
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