“I was buzzed about being Batman but hardly for artistic reasons,” Kilmer wrote. However, when it came to accepting the role in the mid-1990s after Michael Keaton bowed out of playing the character, Kilmer is more frank 25 years on than your typical junket interview soundbite. When it comes to discussing the Dark Knight, the actor is entirely gracious to the character and Batman’s biggest fans-noting how much he admires their enthusiasm at Comic-Cons.

The memoir also provides an outlet for Kilmer’s personal musings about his career and private life, including, yes, his time as the Batman. Luckily, the prodigious artist also recently released a memoir about his various exploits, Val Kilmer: I’m Your Huckleberry.Īffecting an authorial tone that’s more conversational and intentionally scattershot-he introduces his book as though the reader is about to enter a “pinball machine” inside his mind-the book covers some of the same ground as the documentary (and glosses over some of the doc’s most painful elements, too). Relying mostly on the vast reams of camcorder footage he saved over the course of his life, the movie observes as much as it enters Kilmer’s mind. Yet as good as the doc is, its impressionistic view of the actor’s life tends to leave some of his sardonic musings and general conviviality off the screen. Hence the film must must talk about his time as Bruce Wayne in 1995’s Batman Forever. Melancholic and wistful, the film documents Kilmer’s eclectic career as a rising movie star in the 1980s and ‘90s, and his more recent battle (and victory over) cancer. It’s easy to see why after the premiere of the documentary Val, a new release from Amazon Studios and A24. Val Kilmer is back in the public conversation.

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