“It was really graphic”: The fine margins that robbed Val Kilmer of being David Lynch’s muse
Hollywood has many ‘what could’ve been’ stories, and the tale of Val Kilmer missing out on becoming David Lynch’s muse is arguably one of the most interesting.
Well, not exactly that you have to imagine him becoming FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, but if Kilmer had landed the role of Paul in Dune instead of Kyle MacLachlan, then perhaps Lynch might have found a new muse to cast in various projects, and the actor’s career might have looked very, very different.
Kilmer made his feature film debut in 1984’s Top Secret!, while MacLachlan made his debut that same year in Lynch’s critically panned Dune. His adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel missed the mark, the source material too dense to fit into Lynch’s two-and-a-half-hour runtime, and suddenly, MacLachlan’s burgeoning career was hanging in the balance.
In A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch’s Dune – An Oral History by Max Evry, production office assistant Craig Campobasso revealed that various actors were screen tested for the role, but Kilmer remained the primary name in the running for a while. “Val was actually the number one choice up until Kyle did his screen test,” he said.
In the end, MacLachlan, despite his limited experience, proved to be the most capable. Calling Paul “not an easy character,” he added, “Kyle made it look easy, but if you saw all the other actors struggling…” Clearly, Kilmer wasn’t ready for the part, but Lynch wasn’t going to give up on him just yet. A few years later, he was up for the role of Jeffrey in Blue Velvet, but even that wasn’t meant to be.
MacLachlan bagged the role, which marked his second movie and his second collaboration with Lynch, a success that brought him back from the brink following Dune‘s failure. Meanwhile, Kilmer landed the part of Iceman in Top Gun, which catapulted him into the mainstream, far away from the surreal and psychosexual charge of Blue Velvet. Their careers were heading on rather different paths (well, that’s until MacLachlan and Kilmer starred alongside each other in The Doors a few years later).
Kilmer failed to win the part of Jeffrey, it turns out, because he was just too scared. “I said no to Robert Altman twice, and David Lynch, although David Lynch I remember, because the second film I turned down was Blue Velvet, because it was really graphic and I was just too shy back then,” he told Attitude.
He admitted that he just wasn’t ready when he was young, and he has had some regrets over turning down iconic roles because he was too “naive”, explaining, “I said ‘no’ to a ton of really wonderful directors, and looking back now, I can’t remember the reasons why”.
MacLachlan owes a lot to Lynch, whose trust in the actor spawned a long-lasting creative partnership, and a few years after Blue Velvet, which really marked him out as a compelling leading man, he was cast as Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, a seminal TV show that made him one of the most beloved characters of all time. The pair became best friends, and the former served as somewhat of a muse to Lynch, such that Kilmer’s face in his place is a rather impossible prospect.
