The filmmaker torn to shreds by Val Kilmer: “I hate him”
Over the years, several filmmakers have taken Val Kilmer to task over his questionable on-set behaviour, especially in the 1990s.
Kilmer’s Batman Forever director, Joel Schumacher, famously called the actor “psychotic” and nearly came to blows with him while shooting the movie. Similarly, The Island of Dr Moreau’s John Frankenheimer had such a tough time with the star that he said he wouldn’t cast him again, even if he were making a biopic about the actor’s life. In 2004, though, Kilmer unleashed his own tirade against another director he worked with, claiming to hate him and dubbing him a failed actor.
When Kilmer signed up to star in Spartan, a political thriller about a former Marine enlisted to track down the president’s missing daughter, he committed to working with one of the most acclaimed playwrights of the last 40 years. The project was David Mamet’s ninth directorial effort in a career that had always seen wider acclaim in screenwriting and theatre. In those arenas, he was the foul-mouthed, acerbic scribe behind Glengarry Glen Ross, The Untouchables, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and The Verdict. In movie directing, however, he made considerably less well-known efforts such as Oleanna, State and Main, and Heist.
Spartan ended up being another marginal effort for Mamet in terms of commercial success and critical acclaim. While his unique skill with dialogue – the colourful, creative aspect of his writing that had always sung – was praised yet again, the movie was dismissed as a pretentious, ponderous film with a misfiring ending.
Perhaps the movie’s poor performance annoyed Kilmer. Maybe he believed he was catching Mamet on the downturn instead of the upswing. Either way, when the star sat down to record the DVD commentary track for the movie, he was in no mood to simply let viewers in on some frothy behind-the-scenes details or funny stories about the shoot. Instead, he eviscerated Mamet from minute one onwards, delivering an extended putdown that was both shocking and darkly amusing.
“He’s cruel,” Kilmer said of his director at one point, with no hint of humour. “He hates actors, having failed at the profession himself. There were a lot of tears on the set.”
The Kiss Kiss Bang Bang star claimed Mamet would purposely break him down emotionally in front of everyone else on set, almost as if he was trying to make him cry. “He wouldn’t do it in the trailer,” Kilmer grimaced. “I hate him.”
To the horror of Mamet die-hards everywhere, Kilmer also took umbrage with his trademark sparse, minimalist dialogue that leaves much to the viewer’s imagination. Kilmer claimed, “He writes in a lot of particular and sometimes complicated rhythms. That’s why it’s so frustrating when he cuts all the good stuff. He messes up his own rhythm. I don’t understand him, except that he needs help.”
Amazingly, Kilmer still wasn’t done with raking Mamet over the coals. He claimed Mamet was guilty of nepotism in a way that hurt the film, pointing to one particular scene in which Kilmer had to act opposite Mamet’s rabbi, who wasn’t much of a thespian. “I’m not even kidding,” Kilmer stressed. “It sounds like I’m kidding, but that guy I just shot is David’s rabbi.”
Kilmer even accused Mamet of making his assistant put together The Spartan Times, a weekly newsletter that would highlight Mamet’s great contributions. “She would follow him around and write down any humorous thing he said or make up stuff that she could attribute to David,” he groused. Then, as if to add insult to injury, he took a jab at Mamet’s fashion sense.
“What I find amazing is his courage,” the disgruntled star sarcastically noted. “To still wear a beret in 2004, you gotta have guts.”
One could be forgiven for imagining that such a recording wouldn’t have actually made it onto the official Spartan DVD. Stunningly, though, no one at Warner Brothers must have listened to it because the entire 106-minute character assassination was present and accounted for when the disc hit shelves. Mamet, presumably, was unamused – or maybe he never listened to it, either.
