via Conor Friedersdorf, Chuck Klosterman reports on Val Kilmer who is thinking about running for governor of New Mexico:
He's weird in ways that are expected, and he's weird in ways that
are not. I anticipated that he might seem a little odd when we talked
about acting, mostly because a) Kilmer is a Method actor, and b) all
Method actors are insane. However, I did not realize how much insanity
this process truly required. That started to become clear when I asked
him about The Doors and Wonderland, two movies in which Kilmer portrays acutely self-destructive drug addicts. Late in Wonderland,
he wordlessly (and desperately) waits for someone to offer him cocaine
in a manner that seems excruciatingly authentic. I ask if he ever went
through a drug phase for real. He says no. He says he's never freebased
cocaine in his life but that he understands the mind-set of addiction.
The conversation evolves into a meditation on the emotional toll that
acting takes on the artist. I ask him about the "toll" that he felt
while making the 1993 western Tombstone. He starts talking
about things that happened to Doc Holliday. I say, "No, no, you must
have misunderstood me. I want to know about the toll it took on you." He says, "I know, I'm talking about those feelings." And this is the conversation that follows:
Me: You mean you think you literally had the same experience as Doc Holliday?
Kilmer:
Oh, sure. It's not like I believed that I shot somebody, but I
absolutely know what it feels like to pull the trigger and take
someone's life.
You understand how it feels to shoot someone as much as a person who has actually committed a murder?
I
understand it more. It's an actor's job. A guy who's lived through the
horror of Vietnam has not spent his life preparing his mind for it.
He's some punk. Most guys were borderline criminal or poor, and that's
why they got sent to Vietnam. It was all the poor, wretched kids who
got beat up by their dads, guys who didn't get on the football team,
couldn't finagle a scholarship. They didn't have the emotional
equipment to handle that experience. But this is what an actor trains
to do. I can more effectively represent that kid in Vietnam than a guy
who was there.
I don't question that you can more effectively
represent it, but that's not the same thing. If you were talking to
someone who's in prison for murder and the guy said, "Man, it really
fucks you up to kill another person," do you think you could reasonably
say, "I completely know what you're talking about"?
Oh yeah. I'd know what he's talking about.
Let's
say someone made a movie about you--Val Kilmer--and they cast Jude Law
in the lead role. By your logic, wouldn't this mean that Jude Law--if
he succeeded in the role--would therefore understand what it means to
be Val Kilmer more than you do?
No, because I'm an actor. The people in those other circumstances don't have the self-knowledge.
Well, what if it were a movie about your young life, before you became an actor?
I guess I'd have to say yes.
Okay,
so let's assume you had been given the lead role in The Passion of the
Christ. Would you understand the feeling of being crucified as much as
Jesus?
Well, I just played Moses [in a theatrical version of TheTen Commandments]. Of course.
So you understand the experience of being Moses? Maybe I'm just taking your words too literally.
No, I don't think so. That's what acting is.
I
keep asking Kilmer if he is joking, and he swears he is not. However,
claiming that he's not joking might be part of the joke. A few weeks
later, I paraphrased the preceding conversation to Academy
Award--winning conspiracy theorist Oliver Stone, the man who directed
Kilmer in 1991's The Doors and 2004's Alexander. He did
not find our exchange surprising. "This has always been the issue with
Val," Stone said via cell phone as his son drove him around Los
Angeles. "He speaks in a way that is propelled from deep inside, and he
doesn't always realize how the things he says will sound to other
people. But there is a carryover effect from acting. You can
never really separate yourself from what you do, and Val is
ultrasensitive to that process."