The awful movie Val Kilmer is adamant he didn’t ruin: “The film is just as bad when I’m not in it”
Few actors have torched their own career quite as effectively as Val Kilmer. In the 1990s, he was a bonafide A-lister, collaborating with acclaimed directors like Oliver Stone and Michael Mann. He even donned the iconic cape and cowl as the Dark Knight, and from the outside, it seemed his trajectory could only go upward. Unfortunately, Kilmer became his own worst enemy, with reports of difficult on-set behaviour alienating many in Hollywood. The situation came to a head with a disastrous 1996 box-office bomb, for which Kilmer was partially blamed—though he remains adamant it wasn’t his fault.
By the time Kilmer received a call inviting him to come on board director Richard Stanley’s ill-fated 1996 version of The Island of Dr Moreau, he had just wrapped up the tense production of Batman Forever. Director Joel Schumacher later revealed that he had been told horror stories about Kilmer’s antics and was even warned not to hire him to play the titular superhero. However, he had worked with other actors whose reputations preceded them and ultimately had no issues, so he decided to hire him anyway.
Unfortunately for Schumacher, though, this time, he should have heeded the warnings because he found Kilmer to be “childish and impossible”. Shockingly, he reportedly even wound up in a pushing match with the star, who he claimed was being “irrational and ballistic with the first AD, the cameraman, the costume people”.
He later told Vulture that Kilmer was – and this is a direct quote – “psychotic”.
So, perhaps New Line Cinema should have known what they were in for when they hired Kilmer as a late replacement for Bruce Willis, who dropped out of Dr Moreau at the last minute. To make matters worse, the studio had also cast Marlon Brando in the picture, who could never be accused of being a chill guy to work with. The two massively egocentric stars reportedly clashed, even though Kilmer considered Brando a hero. It led to the Apocalypse Now icon supposedly dressing Kilmer down by telling him, “Your problem is, you confuse your talent with the size of your paycheck.”
Aside from Kilmer and Brando butting heads, there were a myriad of other problems with Stanley’s Dr Moreau production. For one, Stanley was fired after only three days and replaced with the veteran Birdman of Alcatraz helmer John Frankenheimer, who – if possible – liked Kilmer even less than Schumacher did. They fought over anything and everything, and after the movie was finished, Frankenheimer raged, “Even if I was directing a film called The Life of Val Kilmer, I wouldn’t have that prick in it.”
The Island of Dr Moreau ended up being a dud at the box office, and it received a ton of bad press surrounding its harrowing production. Naturally, as the star of the film and one of the primary causes of bad blood on the set, Kilmer took a lot of the flak—although, in 2017, he refused to accept that he dragged the final product down in any way.
“I got blamed for ruining the film, even though I died two-thirds of the way through,” Kilmer grumbled to Deadline. “And the film is just as bad when I’m not in it.”
Kilmer admitted some “very fine execs” saw their careers hit seriously choppy waters because of the fiasco but also claimed others blamed him “without ever getting the true story”. He even alleged that one particular executive dined out on stories of his supposed bad behaviour for years at Hollywood soirees.
At the end of the day, though, it was all water under the bridge for Kilmer. “Oh well,” he shrugged. “Win some, lose some”. He even called the shoot a “beautiful experience” and praised the “dear hard-working crew” before no-selling any alleged feud with Brando by remarking, “I love Marlon and was so lucky to be able to call him my friend”.
