The Best of Val Kilmer's TV Interviews
by Mermoz
Print interviews usually have more depth; most video interviews are only about 12 minutes long. But video interviews give you a chance to hear and see Val Kilmer speaking his own words. Fans who are familiar with Val Kilmer solely from his work in the movies often come away from his interviews with an entirely new impression.
In the January issue of VKN, we asked readers to vote on the video interviews that best show different things about Mr. Kilmer. People found it hard to remember what was said when, and judgments like "Which was the funniest?" or "What had the best interaction with the interviewer?" are, of course, subjective. For many of the questions, there were nearly as many different interviews picked as there were people answering the survey!
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Starting with BATMAN FOREVER, Val made five movies in a row with little break: BATMAN FOREVER, HEAT, THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS, and THE SAINT. During work on THE SAINT he also took weekends and days to work on THE PRINCE OF EGYPT. He made no publicity appearances for HEAT and his personal contribution to publicity for THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU consisted of a few clips taken on set. When he returned in the fall of 1996 to do publicity appearances for THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS, he often found himself forced to field more questions about his reputation than he did about the movie. This continued with publicity for THE SAINT, where the idea of "bad boy reformed" dovetailed with the "origin of The Saint" plot of the movie itself. People who answered the survey question about Val's reputation had lots of GHOST and SAINT - related interviews to choose from, but some people picked none and others picked ones from an earlier era: possibly considering that Val has rarely done an interview where he hasn't had to address some question about his reputation, whether it was a reputation for choosing odd roles or a reputation for living out in the middle of nowhere.
Few interviews run long enough for Val to respond in any detail about his acting career, or get the chance to talk about his youth. It's always interesting to hear him talk about his movies and why he has made the career choices he has. His anecdotes about his childhood include visiting the set of the Batman TV series and living next to Roy Rogers. The E! UNCUT special, which is a half hour long, uses quotes from many different interviews to put together a retrospective and was considered the interview that tells you the most about Val's youth and career.
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In any interview over the years, it's not hard to get Val talking about what is close to his heart -- his children, Africa, Native American causes. His adoration for his two children shines through any time he speaks of them, and his being a Daddy who's played a few characters that are well known to children (Batman, Moses) makes for some amusing anecdotes. The Rosie O'Donnell interview for AT FIRST SIGHT, in which Rosie and Val swap stories about their Batman-obsessed sons, got a majority vote both as the interview which was best at showing Val as a father, and was also overall favorite.
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