Val: 5 unforgettable scenes of the documentary on Val Kilmer
The actor of Willow, Heat, The Doors, Batman Forever or even the saint, filmed herself all his life, and pulled a fascinating document.
Valve has changed the title, but it was the documentary of Ting Poo and Leo Scott, who created the event during the 2021 Cannes Festival, which returns this Sunday on Arte, as part of an evening dedicated to the actor. His name is now Val Kilmer: a life between Top Gun and The Doorsand it is available for free on Arte.TV, preceded by an excellent reputation. He will follow the programming of Heart of thunder (1992), detective film by Michael Apted with also Sam Shepard.
With its thousands of hours of archives, Val kilmer had far enough to illustrate this autobiography wanting to show all the facets of an actor! The actor filmed in childhood, well before doing a theater school and unraveling in Hollywood thanks to Top Gun. By relying on these exceptional documents, the result is particularly intimate, the actor engaged in his career, of course, but also on his family, both his dramas and his happy moments, and his health problems. The result is a success, which challenges by its shameless and filter aspect, and which contains its share of revelations. Here are five sequences of Valve particularly striking. Watch out for spoilers, however: Better to see the film before reading more, if you want to enjoy the surprises.
Val: a crazy document on Val Kilmer, damaged but magnificent star (critic)
“Now that I can’t talk, I want to tell my life”
The documentary begins with the presentation of the concept, Val Kilmer explaining that he has filmed himself for years, recording his shows as well as behind the scenes of his films, one day dreaming of drawing a documentary on “Real life” of an actor. Except that there is a problem: operated several times since 2015 after discovering that he had throat cancer, Val Kilmer can no longer speak, forced to press a button that strongly distorts his voice to express themselves. If he ensures that he suffers less than what one might think when he saw him, he cannot tell his story over the duration of this robotic voice, and asks his son to take care of it.
Here is the young Jack in a recording room, reading a long text written by his dad, who discovers things on his own life (“Really ?”he exclaims in the middle of the document by reading one of the crazy anecdotes in Val). He even ends up very moved, in his father’s arms. If the actor can sometimes be immodest in this project, showing part of his intimate life and that of his children at the same level as his cinematographic experiences, this recording of Jack’s voice in his place works very well. It is the first strong idea of this documentary, which continues to mix public life and intimacy, and which therefore starts on this paradox: Val Kilmer recognizes that it was when he lost his voice that he wanted to tell his life.
Jack and Mercedes Kilmer presenting Val at the 2021 Cannes Festival
Childhood videos
Very quickly, Val Kilmer therefore shows us videos of his youth, when he remaky his favorite films with his brothers. Overflowing with imagination, they were able to train their parents in their delirium and seemed to have fun like crazy. Until the day when his younger brother, Wesley, died suddenly, drowning in the family jacuzzi, victim of an epilepsy crisis. A founding drama for Val, which will talk about it several times during the documentary, especially at the end when another family tragedy occurs. You can perfectly feel the vacuum left by this loved one when he decorates his student room with his brother’s drawings or that he shows some in the decor of one of his first films. Above all, in small touches, we understand that this idea of filming behind the scenes of his life as an actor comes directly from this happiness felt by turning these childhood films. One might think that the approach is narcissistic on the part of a person dreaming of shining under the spotlight by becoming a Hollywood star, but it is immediately deeper than that, Val showing how the passion of his little brother detected on him.
Top Gun Maverick: Listen to Val Kilmer’s artificial voice
“All the little ones want to be Batman. But not play it.”
Once determined to become an actor, Val Kilmer is therefore filmed on stage or behind the scenes, first in the theater alongside Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon, all the same, even if he admits to being disgusted to be relegated to a third role (!), Then quickly in the cinema. Among his significant roles of the years 1980-1990, there is of course that of Iceman in Top Gun (1986), a film he did not want to make at the start, and on the set of which he admits having exaggerated his competition with Tom Cruise. Kilmer returns to his career without a tongue of wood, sometimes being too sure of himself or making bad career choices. Like when he agreed to play Batman for Joel Schumacher in the mid-1990s, after being called by his agent just after visiting a cave in Africa, filled with bats. He sees a sign there, but once on the set, he discovers how lonely this role is. His costume prevents him from turning his head, and above all from hearing his partners correctly. If he keeps his mask for too long, it lacks air. So he ended up being directed like a robot, taking the poses requested by the director without conviction (“Count the number of times I put my hands on the hips, in this film … It’s a thing of Soap Opera, right?”) and delivering his replicas without really playing, where his colleagues Nicole Kidman, Tommy Lee Jones or Jim Carrey can have fun creating super-housing “Bigger than life”. “All the little ones want to be Batman …, He said after disguising himself in the company of his son or having shown him, kid, sitting in a Batmobile. But they don’t want to play it in the movies. “ It took an unloved blockbuster to understand it, and this is only an example of failure among others …
Val: Docu extracts behind the scenes of Top Gun, The Doors and Batman Forever
Turn with Marlon Brando (or his double?!)
If the shooting of Batman Forever is a striking sequence of the document – it has also been largely teased during its promotion – that of Doctor Moreau’s island In 1995 turned out to be completely surreal. Director Richard Stanley is ousted from the plateau by the New Line studio, and his replacement John Frankenheimer hesitates to leave in turn by wiping setbacks. The conditions of filming in Australia his complicated (a lot of expectations in damp outdoor decorations), and Marlon Brando, depressed following the death of her daughter, leaves little from her cabin, asking to be replaced by a lining for several scenes. Clashes are multiplying behind the scenes. Faced with a David Thewlis visibly disappointed to see the scenario being constantly rewritten and the shooting is late, Kilmer has fun seeing a false Brando, a certain “Marv”, responsible for replacing the star for the wide plans. He laughs less when the director refuses to repeat the actors as long as he has not stopped his camera, exceeded that he filmed behind the scenes of his blockbuster without his consent. Then he seems fascinated by finally discovering Brando, the real one, the one for whom he agreed to play in this project … Avachi in a hammock and appearing completely elsewhere, to light years of this nightmare shooting which has everything of a future flop. So many crazy memories, which would seem exaggerated if we were told in a book on Hollywood, but which are confirmed here by the archive images of which we cannot, like Val Kilmer, detach the gaze.
This is why Val Kilmer dropped Batman after a single film
Ransoms of glory
Multiple other sequences of Valve are captivating, like when the auto-film actor of hearings to try to convince filmmakers he admires to engage him, such as Martin Scorsese or Stanley Kubrick. The actor does not hide his failures, nor the sometimes negative benefits of his different experiences. Fully in his interpretation of Jim Morrison for The Doorsfrom Oliver Stone (1991), he admits having brought hell to life to his wife, the actress Joanne Whalley, in particular by imposing the music of the group in the background as soon as he was at home. We then understand that their divorce, mentioned a few moments later, is no stranger to these months of intense preparation for the film, and it is all the more sad that Kilmer presented just before his partner like her youthful love, the woman for whom he had a love at first sight when she played in a play of Danny Boyle in England, before they turn together in Willow. He had not dared to admit his love to her at the time, and managed to seduce her on the set of Ron Howard’s film, before marrying her. Val does not hesitate to show us memories of their wedding, as well as videos of their couple, young parents who crack for their babies, making the shock of divorce even stronger for the spectator, who takes the breakdown hard. Like the star.
Same process on the career side, where Valve Do not avoid the angry subjects, returning for example to his bad reputation as a slack actor, due among other things to his tensions with the director of Doctor Moreau’s islandbut not only. He is a little frustrating that he barely evokes his films from the 2000s and 2010 (we would have liked to know more behind the scenes of Kiss Kiss Bang Bangfor example, but we will just have time to glimpse Robert Downey Jr. to defend his colleague before moving on to something else). The fact remains that seeing him accept his situation as an actor Has Been is surprising, and very strong. That he participates in a projection of Tombstone In the middle of the desert or a painful session of autograph signature at the Comic-Con, Kilmer dares to be damaged. He is fully aware that his years of glory are behind him, and in addition to making it the observation without detour, he assumes this image, even if it means modifying forever that which the public had of him, making this Valve A documentary decidedly not common.
The return of Val Kimer to Iceman in Top Gun: Maverick, “a very special moment”
