Val Kilmer leaves such a vast legacy as the world mourns the news of his death at 65. There’s so much to be said about his charisma, his range, his smolder, his volleyball skills, his work ethic. But we need to honor what might be his most transformative performance, as Jim Morrison in The Doors. Jimbo, the most ridiculously pretentious egomaniac in rock-star history, seemed so excessive that no actor could play him, but Val Kilmer was up to the task. He plays Jim as the over-the-top tragic hero that Oliver Stone envisioned — except for Kilmer, the tragedy is that Jim wasn’t quite pretentious enough.
Nobody but Kilmer could have made this work. He makes The Doors one of the pulpiest and best rock biopics by throwing himself into it with zero sense of shame. He sang all the vocals himself. Hell, he takes Jim as seriously as Jim did, which is an achievement.
Val is so magnetic in the movie because he’s the only person onscreen who isn’t embarrassed to be there. Everybody else was a hot young movie star in 1991, and every one of them seems to be blinking at the camera asking, “Why exactly am I wearing hair extensions and love beads to play someone who thinks ‘ride the snake to the ancient lake’ is deep poetry in 1967? How did this happen? Why am I pretending to take Jim Morrison seriously?” Val, however, isn’t pretending.
The other three Doors are played by Frank Whaley, Kevin Dillon, and Kyle McLachlan, all looking miserable. Poor Meg Ryan — she has the blank stare of a movie star who’s thinking, “Wait, I’m America’s rom-com sweetheart here, so who the hell signed me up to play a wasted junkie groupie whose idea of a good time is babysitting a drunken rock moron in motel rooms?” McLachlan just begs with his eyes, “Please don’t tell Mr. Lynch. This wasn’t my idea.”
But Val? He believes this man is a poet, a prophet, a shaman. He is not the least bit surprised by all the sex, drugs, and flattery that America has chosen to shower upon him. He’s the only actor in 1991 who could have worn these leather pants with no irony at all.
And because Val is so hot — as was Jim himself in his prime — he conveys the idea of a man who believes hotness and profundity are the exact same thing. This makes him the perfect Oliver Stone hero. He consents to let the world worship him, but it doesn’t impress him a bit; he surveys it all with his passive deadpan, not far from the Iceman or Doc Holliday. He resists any temptation to play Morrison as a joke. Carousing outside the Whiskey a-Go-Go, yelling “I am the Lizard King, I can do anything,” he really means it. “Isn’t that irony?” he muses. “Teenage death girls want my dick, not my words.”
He and Meg Ryan make a perfect couple, since they both believe Jim is the hottest dude in the universe. Ryan was coming straight from When Harry Met Sally, the role that made her a superstar, so she could not possibly be more out of place in the rock sleaze, bringing all her wholesome twinkly Meg Ryan energy. She keeps calling him “Jim Morrison,” as in, “You get off that motel balcony with that whiskey bottle, Jim Morrison,” like she’s Aunt Bee or something.
But Kilmer believed in the Jim myth all the way. “I primarily saw myself playing a poet,” Kilmer recalled in his memoir I’m Your Huckleberry. “The story to me was Jim’s glory and then his demise, the Greek fleet waiting to sail him into his fate, to die with rock & roll in one mighty catastrophe. Jester, warrior, performer. Maybe, if I tried hard enough, I could break through and reflect his light, free his mind, and through some Bacchanalian surge of prowess, offer healing to myself, to Jim and everyone watching.”
Val feels right at home in this movie, where everyone else looks anxious and uncomfortable, so you can’t take your eyes off him. Onstage, he really belongs there. Getting blown in an elevator, he looks like he was born getting blown in elevators. His best scenes come when he goes up against actors who can match him for confidence. Christina Fulton is Nico, the Warhol Factory chanteuse, and she struts into the movie with pure malice, serving notice this clambake belongs to her now; Kilmer lights up when he’s got her for competition. He also meets Kathleen Quinlan — a rock & roll legend in her own right, 17 years after American Graffiti. She’s the muse who introduces him to pagan sex rituals. “You ever try drinking blood?” Quinlan asks. They frolic around her hippie pad. “They used to wander the hills of ancient Greece — the Bacchae! The first witches! Wild women, looting, fucking, eating animals raw!” Val is wearing a towel around his waist, for some reason, as if he’s shy about showing the camera his ass. It would never occur to him to be embarrassed about this.
Kilmer was always great at playing rock stars — he had that totally focused narcissistic intensity, going back to his faux-Elvis in Top Secret!, Nick Rivers. (Why is he named Nick? “My dad thought of it while he was shaving.”) He was one of Hollywood’s top faux-Elvises, in an era when Hollywood was crawling with them. (He had another great Elvis moment in True Romance.) It’s ironic that there were just a few years between Top Secret! and The Doors, the parody shlock-rock cartoon and the Serious Artist, yet he brought the same sullen glower to both roles.
It’s more than just looking hot in leather pants. It’s more than just looking like you belong in those leather pants. No, it’s looking like those leather pants are a moral choice you make out of existential duty, a choice that falls only to those who have a date with destiny.
Spoiler: At the end of The Doors, Jim dies in a Paris bathtub, which was controversial at the time, because as all true Doors fans knew, Jim faked his death and fled to Africa. (Nobody ever saw the body except Pamela, who died soon after, and don’t get me started about the phony French death certificate.) I like to think Jim Morrison is still out there, only 81, living undercover back in the U.S.A., still watching this movie in his La-Z-Boy. No doubt he approves. R.I.P. to Val Kilmer, an actor who was never afraid to break on through to the other side.
From Rolling Stone US
