Moreau,” where Kilmer comes across a morbidly obese Marlon Brando on a hammock, and Brando implores him to “give us a shove” so he can keep on swinging back and forth.ĭespite his health problems and a career that carried as many setbacks as triumphs, Kilmer comes across as a self-deprecating, thoughtful, likable and almost jovial figure with a wicked sense of humor and a deep appreciation of artists, writers, poets, actors, thinkers. We also see some bizarre footage shot during the making of the ill-fated “The Island of Dr. He resigned himself to just showing up and standing for as long as he could, while the likes of Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey chewed up the scenery. Kilmer talks about how the suit in “Batman Forever” was so constraining, he could barely move in it and couldn’t hear what the other actors were saying. We see Kilmer’s homemade and quite sophisticated audition tapes for “Full Metal Jacket” and “Goodfellas” and “The Doors,” and while he wasn’t cast in the former two films, he delivered a performance for the ages in Oliver Stone’s trippy biopic. From this point on, Kilmer’s camera is omnipresent, whether he’s backstage with fellow hotshots Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon, goofing around with his buddy Rick Rossovich (who played Slider) on the set of “Top Gun,” bantering with Kurt Russell while making “Tombstone,” or getting married to his “Willow” co-star Joanne Whalley, the mother of his children Jack and Mercedes. Still in the grips of grief, the 18-year-old Kilmer left California for Juilliard. When Val’s younger brother Wesley died after having an epileptic seizure in the family’s hot tub, Val was devastated and notes now, “Our family was never the same.” With Kilmer’s son Jack providing the voice-over narration of his father’s words, “Val” features home movies from Kilmer’s childhood, where Val and his two brothers made elaborate homemade spoofs of “Jaws” and other films on the family’s California ranch, which was formerly owned by Roy Rogers. “I’ve kept everything,” says Kilmer, as we see him going through dozens upon dozens of boxes of videotape. Kilmer addresses all of that and much more in this documentary from Leo Scott and Ting Poo, who do a remarkable job of weaving together present-day footage of Kilmer with a gold mine of video footage shot by Kilmer himself, who was an early adopter of amateur video and took his cameras along everywhere he traveled. Revisiting his long-ago prime could be viewed as the lowest thing an actor could do, says Kilmer, but when he interacts with fans who have genuine and abiding affection for him, he feels “grateful rather than humiliated.” (The meet-and-greet before the “Tombstone” screening is a much more uplifting experience than the Comic Con signing, as fans connect with Kilmer and tell him how much his work has meant to them.) It’s a profoundly sad sequence in the fascinating and insightful and often beautifully moving documentary “Val” - and yet one has to admire Kilmer’s willingness to allow the cameras to keep on rolling, not to mention his candor as he acknowledges much of his income these days comes from attending events such as Comic Con, a screening of “Tombstone” in Texas, etc. Kilmer signals he needs a break, and we see him vomiting into a trash can before he is wheeled out of the convention, with a blanket covering his face so nobody can see it’s Val Kilmer. Amazon Studios presents a documentary directed by Leo Scott and Ting Poo.
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