But the 2000s were less kind to Kilmer as money woes and fading career prospects steered him toward the direct-to-video circuit.įor Hollywood fanatics, Kilmer drops plenty of names and behind-the-scenes tidbits. Then came his Hollywood emergence as the baby-faced star of 1980s movies such as “Top Secret!” “Real Genius” and “Top Gun.” The 1990s brought an eclectic mix of hit films, including “Batman Forever,” “Heat” and “Tombstone” (the movie whose script lends “I’m Your Huckleberry” its title). “Just as I am a composite of all my characters,” he writes, “each character I’ve played is a composite of me.”Īs a theater prodigy, Kilmer was accepted to Juilliard’s drama department when he was 16, making him the youngest student admitted up to that point. As far as Hollywood case studies go, Kilmer’s career proves plenty worthy of deconstruction. (He is a literary obsessive who admires Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and Samuel Beckett, after all.) Crucially, he shows a willingness to analyze his own image. Kilmer’s tone is raw and reflective as he weaves poems into his expressive prose. Later, he says an angel appeared on his 24th birthday, pulled the actor’s heart from his chest and replaced it with a bigger one. At one point, Kilmer claims to have foreseen the future in his dreams. What follows is a zigzagging ride through Kilmer’s distinctive life and career, penned by a spiritual storyteller with no qualms about indulging in his eccentricities. When he asserts that picking up “I’m Your Huckleberry” is like slotting a couple of quarters into the “pinball machine of my mind,” he is not overselling the experience. That doesn’t mean Kilmer, 60, is at a loss for words. After the movie star’s 2015 throat cancer diagnosis and surgery, he writes that he sounds like “Marlon Brando after a couple of bottles of tequila.” Kilmer adds: “It isn’t a frog in my throat. Val Kilmer acknowledges early in “I’m Your Huckleberry,” his absorbing but uneven memoir, that speaking doesn’t come easily to him nowadays.
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