Val Kilmer: Number One With a Bullet?

Will Val Kilmer, stepping into the Batsuit vacated by Michael Keaton for Batman Forever, hit one clean out of the park and become, at long last, a full-fledged movie star? If a more relaxed attitude toward his work helps, he just might. "It is kind of easy to go out and subdue the bad guy," he says about playing Batman. "I mean, my preparation as an actor is to get dressed."

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"I was sleeping in a cave full of bats, having just come out of the Kalahari Desert," proclaims Val Kilmer, trying his best to sound Hemingwayesque, but--clad as he is in shit-kickers, jeans and a two-day stubble --coming off more like Banana Republic. The actor carefully scrutinizes me to make sure I've absorbed the irony of how the screen's brand-new Batman had been camping out in the wilds with real, night-flying mammals when Hollywood sent the call. Satisfied that I have. Kilmer continues, "I was in South Africa with a brilliant artist. Bowen Boschier, who lives in the bush a portion of each year, doing research on an impossible movie project that I've been working on for nine years now.

"I hadn't had a shower in two-and-a-half weeks, I couldn't even be reached by airplane, my wife was in London," he says. "I had trouble with the Land Rover, so, while Bowen was off fixing the radiator, I --the complete wimp--thought, 'I'll call my agent.' It was almost a joke, for the phone value of saying, 'I'm in the largest desert in the world. Where are you?' My agent said, 'We're not having this conversation, but if it works out, do you wanna be Batman?'"

Somebody had to Michael Keaton had bailed at practically zero hour from fronting the third installment of the wildly profitable film series. Rumors flew, claiming that new Batdirector Joel Schumacher's wish list included the likes of Ralph Fiennes and Daniel Day-Lewis. Indeed, Kilmer opines, "It looked like it might not work out with Michael Keaton, so they asked Joel Schumacher, 'Who do you want for Batman?' When he said me, I asked my agent, 'Why? Who did they not get?' I'd met with Joel a couple of times before about other [movies]. I didn't know anything in terms of the cast, story or anything, but I said, 'Sure, sounds like fun.'"

Plenty lucrative fun, at that. According to his agreement with Warner Bros, for this and two more potential Batflicks, a document he describes as "phone book-thick," Kilmer could conceivably earn, with merchandising and all, in excess of $6 million for Batman Forever, with many more millions to roll in should there be further films in the series. Still, he insists, "It's no more job security than any other, because maybe they won't want to do another one." Then, with a self-contented grin, he adds. "Although from what they're saying, it's probable that they will."

I'm glad to see him smile since it's the first sign I've had that the often self-serious actor has any sense of humor whatsoever. But then, Kilmer is anything but easy to figure. I've quickly learned that to pose him any question is to invite an obtuse, not always coherent, frequently entertaining discourse that might touch on any theme from the poetic angst of Shelley to the power of the love beads he favors to his new-and-improved attitude toward the movie business. He is, as I was warned by people who know him, a piece of work: by turns sarcastic and friendly, puffed-up and self-spoofing, sincerely grounded and almost calculatingly off-centered. He often seems to be rehearsing for the Brando-type interview he plans to someday give Larry King.

Of course, what he needs before that can happen is a career like Brando's. No question, Kilmer's momentum has been regained ever since he stole everything but the cameras in Tombstone, playing the most glamorously terminally ill character since Greta Garbo in Camille. But there was a lot of inertia to overcome. After the success of Top Gun in 1987. Kilmer scarred in George Lucas's much-hyped-in-advance fantasy dud Willow, and later portrayed Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's much-hyped-in-advance bio dud The Doors, and either of these projects had the potential to yield mega results, career-wise, but both tanked. Other turns, in such blink-and-you-missed-'em movies as Kill Me Again (where, as in Willow, he played opposite his actress wife. Joanne Whalley-Kilmer). The Real McCoy, Thunderheart, True Romance, the still unreleased Dead Girl, or, for TV, such telefilms as Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid, did nothing to further Kilmer's standing in the industry.

Most of these career choices invite questions like. "Hey, Val, what the hell were you thinking of?" I decide to ask something else instead. "Can it possibly be true that you turned down such movies as Dune, Blue Velvet, Flatliners, Backdraft, Sliver, Point Break, In the Line of Fire and Indecent Proposal?"

"It may or may not sound pretentious." replies Kilmer, "but I've turned down, consciously and specifically, many jobs I knew would have been a pretty surefire way to go about making a lot of money, being recognized and gaining power in the industry." Why? Marital togetherness, for starters. "Many jobs I've turned down because Joanne got one, even where the job I'd turned down was clearly more of an advantage to me in the abstract than the job she had chosen was for her."

Then there are the weird vagaries of career heat, or lack thereof. He shrugs in a carefree way and says, "Nothing's ever guaranteed. It's all math, like, 'This guy has better numbers, so give the job to him.' If the business people think they can make money with you, it's not. like, a deep conversation that they have about you. Actors can get into a rhythm of working where the confidence (about them) is like the stock market. Someone 'feels' good, so they pay whatever, which gives other studios confidence, like, 'Those guys have good taste, they hired him,' so whether he or she is any good, you can do four or five jobs like that until you're discovered. This town is filled with mystery careers-people who aren't discovered, found out, and they keep giving money to them."

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