Kilmer is refreshingly honest about his diminishing fortunes, about his 2,000-acre ranch in New Mexico, famous for its herds of roaming buffalo, of which he now owns just 200 acres.
"No buffalo at present," he says. "Twenty-five years later, it's strange not to own a horse, or have a wife [Kilmer was divorced from his British actress wife, Joanne Whalley, in 1996], no dogs. ... For a while I was feeding over 100 domestic animals and 1,000 wild animals a day. ... Now it's just two ungrateful children. My daughter is 21 — she's been 21 for about 16 years now. And my son just turned 18."
The last time I interviewed Kilmer was in 2004, on the Paramount lot, when he was rehearsing his role as Moses in musical The Ten Commandments, staged at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. It received a critical drubbing here. At that time, he was telling a photographer about how he'd bought a new Pontiac GTO sports car for his son, then only 8, because he wanted the boy to have something Kilmer never could have had when he was 8.
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Kirk Douglas Theatre
9820 Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
Category: Theaters
Region: Culver City
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"Ah yes, The Ten Commandments...," Kilmer reflects, again gazing into space. "It's hard to believe ... [a long pause] that happened. That was a story as large as the parting of the Red Sea would allow. People were open to it in France [where the musical premiered], but in retrospect, it didn't make a whole lot of sense to bring it to L.A."
Then back to business: "My business plan was to get lucky. My second business plan was to get lucky again — except that the business world imploded a few years ago — so my plan of having all my eggs in a ranch basket, I couldn't follow through. ... I was a couple of action movies shy."
The movies that catapulted Kilmer to stardom — Top Gun, Top Secret!, Batman Forever and The Doors — are relegated to his early career. More recently, he's been appearing in an eclectic assortment of sometimes highly respected indie films, such as South African filmmaker Michael Oblowitz's The Traveler, and Harmony Korine's short "The Lotus Community Workshop," which is part of a collaborative film, The Fourth Dimension.
Kilmer refutes the perception that he turned down another Batman film after Batman Forever. "I didn't turn it down. I was under contract to do The Saint when Warner Bros. neglected to tell me they were planning another Batman. ... I asked them if they could wait [but] they had rose-colored glasses about rushing it into production. But I think Joel Schumacher was concerned about how he was being perceived as a director. ... It wasn't a fact that I didn't want to do the picture because of him, but he sort of talked that way. He started a story that persists ... " — though Kilmer suggests that Schumacher has now made peace with that past. "I think he agrees with the billion-dollar profits we made, that people liked it. I think all is forgiven."
Years later, Kilmer says he's doing what he does best — character work.
"Citizen Twain works because it's a comedy and people laugh — I'm not asking them to do more than that. I still laugh at his jokes that I read 13 years ago," he says.
Twain understood and loved America as James Joyce loved Ireland, Kilmer adds. His love was effervescent. That, says Kilmer, is what he's trying to capture.
Citizen Twain starts June 28 at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. Call (213) 628-2772 or go to centertheatregroup.org/calendar for tickets.
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