8/10/2023 0 Comments Val kilmer im your huckleberry![]() ![]() ![]() Every night we’d hit the San Diego nightlife. I commanded my camp because I had a tricked-out van. In the film, I was Iceman and Tom was Maverick. You guys are going to be kings.” Off set, the actors broke into two camps-mine and Tom’s, a reflection of the rivalry between our two characters. Every day he would exclaim, “This is incredible! This is beautiful! This is beyond belief. Ultimately, he overwhelmed my disdain for the project with pure unadulterated positivity. Tony loved the process, loved the energy of the set, loved the characters. Now video cameras adjust to let you film through the night, but it wasn’t like that back then. His was primly packed with pens, folded paper, and cigars, plus a monocle cinematographers use to examine the sun. We both had penchants for fishermen’s vests. Tony Scott’s British enthusiasm was the pick-me-up my ego craved. But Kubrick’s stubbornness sent me home, deflated. I was enchanted myself and had been shooting me and my friends since I could get my hands on a magical machine of my own. ![]() Self-taping was new at the time, and Kubrick must have been enchanted with it. In fact, we have stopped pre-production because of that last video. I am not supposed to say this, but he’s really interested. Eventually I befriended one of his “people,” who told me after my forty-eighth phone call in one week, “I’m sorry, Val. Side note: I once flew to London when I couldn’t afford a ham sandwich to sit in a hotel room with a single videotape in hopes of hand-delivering it to Stanley Kubrick. I was so accustomed to giving passion, less familiar with receiving it. I had never before been treated with such passion. He was a wrecking ball to my consciousness. And this kid we found, Tom Cruise, he has it, man, and you two together, and Kelly McGillis-you know her from Juilliard, she’s nine feet tall and utter perfection.” It’s not the lead, but I’m going to make you feel like it is. “I know you’ve been told this before, I know you’re a serious actor, but you are perfect for this role. He then proceeded to imitate aircraft sounds and motions as if we were six years old and as if there were no one else in the hallway. He blurted his truth in his chipper British accent: “I know that the script is insufficient, but it will get better, Val. The moment I got into the elevator, the director ran after me and slid his arm in to block the door. And yet, amazingly, I was told I had the part. I wore oversize gonky Australian shorts in nausea green. I showed up looking the fool, or the goon. I showed up at the audition because that’s what actors do when they’re asked to audition. Well, an agent doesn’t have to offer any other reasons when “the director is completely obsessed with you” comes out of their mouth. My agent, who also represented Tom Cruise, basically tortured me into at least meeting Tony Scott, saying he was one of the hottest directors in town and I could never afford to not meet with as many of them as possible, and also he was completely obsessed with me. ![]()
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