The Value of “VAL”

There is a moment in “Val” The Autobiographical documentary from Val Kilmer ( available on Amazon Prime) That became a sort of nexus point from which for me everything else extended outwardly from. The moment not only encapsulated Val Kilmer the person, but also Val Kilmer the actor. It takes place early on in the film when Kilmer takes us back to some of his footage from Juliard. He’s learning from the great acting professor Peter Kass, who at the moment is watching him perform a monologue of Hamlet, Kass sits there almost completely and perfectly still until Val finishes his monologue. I’ve been there many times as an actor myself. In the eons of suffocating time that existed between my final words and the teachers first words I felt besieged with anxiety almost instantly. Being in that particular position is one that I still find far more daunting than being in front of the camera or an audience. It is there that Val's and “Val”’s journey began for me, because it’s the authentic beginning of almost every actors search for validation. This is one of the more poignant subtle points the doc makes. Once Kilmer is done, Kass barely takes a beat and then unleashes a barrage of fascinating and controversial words in a sentence about acting. Words that would come to define for me what the issue with Val Kilmer's career would end up being. Kass asks kilmer for a summarization of what he was doing, what he was going for, what motivated him. Kilmer answers something to the effect that because he didn't have this experience that he then relied on something akin to it to try to bring some truth. Kass's reply is as swift as it is sure; “ Yes you have had this response” - Kass says, “There are no limitations to the actor’s capacity to create a capacity to have experienced even that which is not a conscious experience in your life”. Kass would continue that it is because of his belief in these words that he does not align with the (Uta Hagen) school of thought around substitution. For the uninitiated “Substitution” is the acting philosophy that when you have not experienced the exactitude of a certain experience (let’s say death of a dear friend) you substitute it with something akin, so that you may not have lost a friend but you have experienced varying forms of loss in your life and you may use and lean on that in the stead. I don't agree with Kass's assertion without boundaries. The assumption that even on a some conscious level you have experienced every single experience lacks empathy and is a problematic assertion inside and outside of the school of acting. To make a quick example involving race, if a white person believes there is no experience that is foreign to them that a black person could experience, then problematically, outside of acting it could lead them to lack empathy towards a number of situations that are specific to black members of society, and in the school of acting it could lead to them believing that they could take on roles that they absolutely shouldn't have any business taking on. Regardless of what side of that school of thought you fall on, Kass's words do hold importance, and betray a certain truth over the rest of Val Kilmer's documentary. Because as you watch the rest of his life and career unfold through the length of this documentary it starts to become apparent that the the bulk of the issues that seem to have stalked a good number of Kilmer performances as well as the issues that marred his choices sprung forth from the fact that the lesson that Kass tried to impart to Kilmer was never fully absorbed.

Kilmer's documentary as one person's attempt to try to be honest with us the audience about what their life was and how it quantified itself and who they'd like us to see them as in “Val” can sometimes ring hollow, pale, and underwhelming at points. There are many moments that betray it as a piece of work that tries very hard to convince us of who Val Kilmer thinks he is, but is in that very last sentiment as contextualized by an actor searching for meaning things and of them from within a documentary in combination with its very personal look into the mental struggles of actors as people who are in constant need of validation that “Val” finds immense power and is endlessly fascinating in a way that many docs I don't think are. Haunting every single inclination in this narrative of what Val Kilmer wants to convinces us of - is this longing and sense of dread (that grows as the movie goes along ) that hes not connected to the thing which he most desires in his heart. It is no small thing to acknowledge the vastness of capability self doubt has to harm actors careers both before and after they are established. Working consistently in an industry that holds validation like some very treasure it becomes imperative at times that you carry yourself with an exaggerated sense of surety around your abilities. In my experience actors who were assured of themselves and their ability despite all logic pointing to the opposite, or an exaggeration go farther than actors who have all the talent in the world but do not feel assured in who they are and in what they bring to the table. Peter Kass's words, contextualized another way says to me that Val Kilmer the actor, and Val Kilmer the person never trusted that either was enough, so much like he did in that monologue he has constantly resorted to creating all these exaggerated and performative over corrections to a non issue. In essence Val Kilmer is a very gifted actor who because he was insecure about that ability over corrected by constantly trying to “act” his way into the pantheon of the actors that molded him. I see it as much in his choices here as in his career. Whether in conversation about his brother, or his bits on other actors, “Val” in terms that maybe the doc itself doesn't understand is the story of a man who couldn't reconcile the fact that he was in fact a character, and a character actor and not the next Marlon Brando. He claims at the beginning of the documentary to have understood that there is no such thing as a small role but there is a palpable sense of regret and covetousness to the way that he talks about Tom Cruise. As with the lesson Mr. Kass tried to impart upon him he never really internalized that idea that there is no such thing as a small role, it’s merely something he said to avoid actively looking into the truth of that statement. So much about acting is choices both in your actual work and about the work as in the business. A video from Will Smith's YouTube channel has been making the rounds and it speaks exactly to his acumen while demonstrating a self awareness that made Will Smith Will Smith, and Val Kilmer Val Kilmer in juxtaposition, hell it even involves Val..

You go on enough auditions and on those auditions talk to enough actors you get the sense that a lot of people go into roles either looking for how it may maximize their career or looking for how it may maximize them as an actor. Both of these involved an immense ego, so that even when they say something as philosophically sound as “the roles spoke to me” this is the way in which they perceive that and it is funneled through that ego and that rigid imagining of importance. “I want to be a star because I want to be important” or “I want to be an actor's actor because I want to be important”. Val Kilmer doing everything within his power to go after roles like “Full Metal Jacket” ( not a bad fit ) and even more so Henry Hill in Scorsese's “Goodfellas” (Not remotely a fit) is far more powerful a statement on why Val kilmer's career ended up as it did, and insight to who Val Kilmer is and what motivates him than anything else he could say in the documentary as well as any of the myriads of stories we've heard as to why Kilmer's career didn't end up where his talent said it could. Listening to Jack Nicholson discuss his reasons for turning down “The Godfather” and “The Sting” to make “The Last Detail” and “Chinatown”, you hear an actor who is very confident about his abilities but also one who is very sure of what is for him and what isn't for him, it would seem like decisions that one might regret end up being the same decisions that powered a legendary career. When you watch the audition tapes Kilmer turned in for these roles he so coveted it is very clear just how magnificently talented Val Kilmer is and that in every possible interpretation and iteration of the word “Stage kid” Val Kilmer represents it. That constantly “on” energy, that joy, the actor version of that annoying but talented singer who will not only sing but over sing a made up song about your being stopped at traffic light for too long ( yes this is an actual experience of mines ) never disapated and it's fun to watch when you love actors. The problem isn't that Kilmer can't “sing”, the problem is that he didn't know the importance of finding the right tune. Kilmer took the most superficial and wrong headed aspect of what Peter Kass had to say, the part that says you can play anything, and left behind the deeper meaning to be excavated; that instinct to want to act everything doesn't need to exist, when you truly understand the emotion and understand the role then you can just allow yourself to exist within it and relax. The roles that Kilmer became most known for, Tombstone, Heat, Top Gun even, the ones he is most hailed for (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is also in there ) curtailed that instinct to ACT as loudly and overtly as that famed Jon Lovitz character from SNL for quieter, bone marrowed acting that showed the well and depth of Kilmer's talent when he understood and trusted in his own natural presence and power. They were also almost none of them (Save the Doors) starring roles.

In a very interesting segment of Variety studios “Actors on Actors” feat. Kevin Bacon and John Lithgow, you see Kevin Bacon admit to and discuss some of these very same anxieties that Kilmer talks about and it becomes even that much more fascinating when you see how Bacon is mentioned by Val Kilmer as one of the people who took a role he desired. You even see Bacon discuss much like Kilmer, the very specific kind of actor he wanted to be ,and those aspirations definitely live in the same zip code of the ones mentioned by Kilmer. So begins this sort of trajectory of two actors who were in fact very close and near in terms of skills and where they could have gone ,and landed, but then you watched the trajectory split as Kevin Bacon discusses what his final analysis was. It starts at around the 25 minute mark…

Bacon settled into who he was as a person, and what he meant to Hollywood in ways you can tell Kilmer still hasn't made peace with. Once Bacon did that, he had the kind of career he wanted without the iteration necessarily aligning with he original idea, this kind of flexibility is ideal. I think most actors struggle to some extent with the competing ideas of what kind of actor they came into the game to be and what kind of actor Hollywood may see in them and I consider the sort of self awareness needed to actually be able to match yours with Hollywood's one of the most difficult but defining characteristics of movie stars, which is one reason there are so few of them. Not all or even most character actors struggle with themselves as accessible, valuable, and desirable in the marketplace of Hollywood, but that is by far the pool where you will find most of them. In Capitalism your productivity within the marketplace is tied to your value as a human being it stands to reason that many actors fall under the weight of this very specific and very persistent purgatory. So what “Val” does is speak to us on an unconscious level - of all of Kilmer’s deflections, protections, and vulnerabilities in constant and inconsistent conversation about his brother, in the usage of his own son and daughter in in home videos, in reflections on still guarded jealousies of other actors, and especially in his acting. It speaks to us consciously of all the things that Kilmer himself was never conscious of during the active parts of his career, and the profundity of those things is the value of “Val”.