My Val Kilmer Story
When I was head writer for The A.V. Club, I volunteered for anything that sounded halfway interesting. We were popular and influential. Some of the things I experienced seemed too good to be true, like when I was invited for an all-expense paid trip to Brazil to attend a half-assed film festival by the country’s minister of culture.
That seemed like the kind of thing that might be a sinister ruse that would lead to me bleeding out after my esophagus was removed in a filthy room in South America. Nope! It was legit, and if I were not amid one of the most intense depressions of my life, I probably would have had an amazing time. There are elements of it that I remember fondly, but it is a surreal torment to be in the fun capital of the world when your brain won’t let you have fun.
I was invited to be a speaker at the Juggalo March on Washington and spent a surreal weekend at Robert Evans’s home, consulting on his half-remembered follow-up to The Kid Stays in the Picture, The Fat Lady Sang.
I’ve got a lot of memories. Some of them are good! I feel like I’ve had terrible luck and tremendous luck and precious little in between.
I wasn’t quite as fearful back then. I didn’t know I was autistic or had ADHD and wasn’t quite so terrified by the world and the prospect of talking to other human beings.
And I wanted to do the best possible job to avoid getting fired.
One year, we were offered the opportunity to conduct Q&As at Chicago’s big comic book convention. I’m not entirely sure, but I think it might have been C2E2.
When I learned that Val Kilmer would be one of the opportunities, I eagerly volunteered. He’s a legend! My love affair with Kilmer began when I was just a child, and Top Secret! and Real Genius blew my eight- and nine-year-old minds.
Yes, I saw those movies more than once before I cracked double digits age-wise. I remember my dad, in particular, being a fan of Top Secret!
Top Secret! is also famously “Weird Al” Yankovic’s favorite movie. My friend Will Harris wrote the Airplane! The boo, Top Secret! writer-directors, the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrahams grew up partially in the suburb of Shorewood, Wisconsin, and went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, like I had, so I had a lot of personal connections to Top Secret! and its creators.
I probably saw Real Genius four or five times in various mall multiplexes.
I’m told he did work after that, but it would still be impressive if Val Kilmer’s entire legacy were those two movies.
On the day of the convention, I met Kilmer very briefly. I don’t think I’m projecting, but he didn’t seem overjoyed to be meeting me. But he was polite and said hi and that he’d be seeing me shortly.
I was very nervous to interview Val Kilmer in front of a large and excited audience. When I interviewed somebody, I usually had a list of 25 to 30 questions. If it’s a really organic interview and everything is flowing, you can get away with asking fewer questions, but if things go Pete Tong, you end up asking all of your questions, with time to spare.
That’s what happened to me when I interviewed Ghostface Killah. He seemed angry and confused that he was forced to talk to me, and “answered” something like 30 questions in 15 minutes.
So my first dumb question to Kilmer wasn’t even a question. I said, “You were the youngest person accepted to Juliard”, which I admit is some weirdly James Lipton/Inside the Actor’s Studio pretentious type shit.
Kilmer was not impressed with the question. I think I might have asked one or two more before he said, “This isn’t that interesting. Let’s throw to the crowd!”
I experienced two intense emotions simultaneously. I was kind of insulted. I’d like to think I was a good interviewer. I had the advantage of massive curiosity wedded to a lot of weird specialized knowledge.
Kilmer was giving me the gong. If this were Showtime at the Apollo, then the gifted actor would be Sandman Slim sweeping me offstage after my first few questions bombed.
The other intense emotion I felt was relief. I instantly felt much less nervous and more confident. I wanted to interview Val Kilmer before a live audience but that prospect scared the shit out of me as well.
Instead of conducting a Q&A, I acted as Kilmer’s sidekick and fact-checker. Whenever he got stuck, I would say the movie or entertainer he was talking about.
The hour flew by. That would not have been the case if I had been in charge instead of mostly being along for the ride.
The crowd loved Kilmer. He was everything you’d hope he would be: funny, smart, and charismatic. He was a real movie star. He had an aura. He had presence.
Without a shred of irony, I can say that it was an honor to essentially have Kilmer pull an audible and X me out of the equation during our Q&A so he could talk directly to his public.
It was an experience I will never forget, and one that speaks to what a strange, remarkable and impressive person Kilmer was, and how much we lost when he got desperately ill and died young.
You can pre-order The Fractured Mirror here: https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan didn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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