Post by tzinana on Jul 27, 2005 5:00:09 GMT
BECOMING MORRISON: A VAL-IANT CHALLENGE KILMER'S PORTRAYAL MORE THAN SKIN DEEP
By RYAN MURPHY
The Miami Herald
March 3, 1991 (1st Part)
LOS ANGELES -- The resemblance between actor Val Kilmer and rock and roll icon Jim Morrison is so uncanny that when meeting Kilmer for the first time, one's jaw acquires a nasty case of carpet burn. The initial, uncontrollable reaction is to gape.
That done, you find yourself asking for Kilmer's driver license for rock-solid proof that the Lizard King has not risen from his Pere-Lachaise tomb in Paris and slithered all the way to a California hotel for an interview.
Kilmer -- who plays Morrison in the just-released Oliver Stone film The Doors, which details the singer's life and times -- has Morrison's carved-from-granite, Michelangelo bone structure, his heavy-lidded stare, even his late-phase jelly belly (more about that later). In fact, the only thing that Morrison possessed that Kilmer lacks on this sunny Sunday afternoon is Morrison-like hair, unruly as a tumbleweed in that groovy 1960s, sun-flecked,
drive-all-the-girls-crazy way.
Kilmer's hair is short, dirty blond and sticking out at a thousand angles, a coif that appears to have been styled by Edward Scissorhands. Up until August of last year, he explains, he did have Morrison-length hair. But then he broke out the shears -- to regain his sanity.
"When did I cut it?" he asks. "About 45 seconds after the film wrapped. Believe me, it was easy to leave him, because he had this absolute terror raging within him. I mean, on a good day, if he was feeling all right, he'd go jump in front of a police car. He was always chasing death, and I'll tell you, it was a delight to let him go."
Yet, even though playing Morrison before the cameras for six strenuous months took its toll, the rewards for this little- known actor likely will prove to be astronomically positive. In upcoming weeks, it will be Kilmer's face, not Morrison's, that peeks out from T-shirts and MTV concert clips as DoorsMania is rekindled. More importantly, Kilmer's portrayal of the
rock demigod is being widely lauded in a film that has drawn mixed reviews.
"Val," says Meg Ryan, who plays his tortured drug addict girlfriend in the film, "is going to be huge after this film hits. He did an amazing job. He was Jim."
While "being" Jim was indeed taxing and at times even painful, he would do it all over again in a heartbeat, Kilmer says. "Imagine," says the actor with a sly smile, "getting paid to play a schizophrenic . . . "
Morrison's dangerous multifaceted personality, of course, is the propane that fueled his legend, the reason for his lasting fame. His fondness for alcohol and hallucinogens, and his seething artistic restlessness, made him a man of a thousand faces and moods.
Some remember Morrison, who died at the age of 27 in 1971, as a sensitive soul who dreamed of being a poet and cursed his pop popularity. Others remember him as a rogue who manipulated those around him and was so out of control that at one point he locked his girlfriend in a closet and set the doors ablaze. (She escaped.)
Both of these views of the man are in Stone's film, as well as several others. What is surprising is not how they are presented, but that a movie ended up being made about Morrison's life at all.
Interest in mounting a movie about Morrison began to accelerate in 1980, following Francis Ford Coppola's use of the Doors' The End as the musical signature of his 1979 film Apocalypse Now. That same year, No One Here Gets Out Alive, a Morrison biography, shot to the top of the best-seller lists, and an Elektra Records Doors Greatest Hits package sold two million copies. Between 1980 and 1990, the Doors sold a total of 45 million records, more than they had when their lead singer was alive.
So, to no one's surprise, Morrison's life story became a hot property in Hollywood in the early '80s. Although the three surviving members of The Doors refused to sell their song catalog to various producers interested in their days of wine and poses, screen treatments got done nonetheless. For a while, Brian De Palma and John Travolta worked on a Morrison biopic, and some members of The Doors themselves toiled on a film version. By 1985, however, the project was dead, drowned in a quagmire of legalities and creative differences. Enter Oliver Stone.
Stone long had been an admirer of The Doors. He claims theirs was the first rock and roll he ever had heard. As a soldier fighting in Vietnam, their music, he says, provided the sound track of his fighting experience. "Jim Morrison," he says, "was my Elvis."
After his breakthrough success with 1986's Platoon, Stone whipped up a screen outline of Morrison's adventures with drugs, sex, his girlfriend Pamela Courson and life with The Doors. The surviving members of the group, knocked out by Platoon, agreed to cooperate.
The Doors, a project four years in the making, eventually secured a budget of $40 million. The Doors themselves received a flat fee of $750,000 for the movie rights to their story.
"Oliver's a heretic," Kilmer says. "He manages to get big budgets in this town, which acts like it's so liberal when actually it's quite conservative. And this film was a nightmare to get made. . . . Maybe Scorsese could have done a good job, sure. But when all is said and done, nobody could have done this movie but Oliver."
Stone says no one could have portrayed Morrison but Kilmer. Although five other big-league actors pursued the part, the filmmaker says Kilmer was his first and only choice. "I saw Val in Willow, and then in Top Secret, where he had a couple of numbers and proved he could sing," Stone says. Then, of course, was the remarkable physical resemblance.
Kilmer, however, says he never was really sure that he was Stone's top choice. To persuade the director that he could tackle the part, he wrangled up a couple of friends and made an audition tape in which he slithered about Jim-like before a video camera and
sang Doors hits. He also hired one of the best makeup men in the business, and had himself fitted with an expensive Morrison wig and beard that he paid for out of his own pocket.
A graduate of Juilliard, Kilmer, 32, says the process by which he became Morrison is not that mysterious.
"You never actually become someone else," he says. "It's your experience you work with, your brain. Part of it was mimicry. He was from the South, he had a casual, affected delivery. I used that. And he was very impish."
Kilmer says he grew up with no special fondness toward Morrison or The Doors. He didn't even like the Doors' music when he was a kid, he says. Once landing the role, however, Kilmer quickly became educated in the ways and wiles of Morrison. He dredged up old video performance tapes and studied his every gesture, wiggle and wink. But most helpful to his performance, he says, were his conversations with the members of The Doors and with other people who loved and hated Jim. Everyone, Kilmer says, had a different take on
the man.
By RYAN MURPHY
The Miami Herald
March 3, 1991 (1st Part)
LOS ANGELES -- The resemblance between actor Val Kilmer and rock and roll icon Jim Morrison is so uncanny that when meeting Kilmer for the first time, one's jaw acquires a nasty case of carpet burn. The initial, uncontrollable reaction is to gape.
That done, you find yourself asking for Kilmer's driver license for rock-solid proof that the Lizard King has not risen from his Pere-Lachaise tomb in Paris and slithered all the way to a California hotel for an interview.
Kilmer -- who plays Morrison in the just-released Oliver Stone film The Doors, which details the singer's life and times -- has Morrison's carved-from-granite, Michelangelo bone structure, his heavy-lidded stare, even his late-phase jelly belly (more about that later). In fact, the only thing that Morrison possessed that Kilmer lacks on this sunny Sunday afternoon is Morrison-like hair, unruly as a tumbleweed in that groovy 1960s, sun-flecked,
drive-all-the-girls-crazy way.
Kilmer's hair is short, dirty blond and sticking out at a thousand angles, a coif that appears to have been styled by Edward Scissorhands. Up until August of last year, he explains, he did have Morrison-length hair. But then he broke out the shears -- to regain his sanity.
"When did I cut it?" he asks. "About 45 seconds after the film wrapped. Believe me, it was easy to leave him, because he had this absolute terror raging within him. I mean, on a good day, if he was feeling all right, he'd go jump in front of a police car. He was always chasing death, and I'll tell you, it was a delight to let him go."
Yet, even though playing Morrison before the cameras for six strenuous months took its toll, the rewards for this little- known actor likely will prove to be astronomically positive. In upcoming weeks, it will be Kilmer's face, not Morrison's, that peeks out from T-shirts and MTV concert clips as DoorsMania is rekindled. More importantly, Kilmer's portrayal of the
rock demigod is being widely lauded in a film that has drawn mixed reviews.
"Val," says Meg Ryan, who plays his tortured drug addict girlfriend in the film, "is going to be huge after this film hits. He did an amazing job. He was Jim."
While "being" Jim was indeed taxing and at times even painful, he would do it all over again in a heartbeat, Kilmer says. "Imagine," says the actor with a sly smile, "getting paid to play a schizophrenic . . . "
Morrison's dangerous multifaceted personality, of course, is the propane that fueled his legend, the reason for his lasting fame. His fondness for alcohol and hallucinogens, and his seething artistic restlessness, made him a man of a thousand faces and moods.
Some remember Morrison, who died at the age of 27 in 1971, as a sensitive soul who dreamed of being a poet and cursed his pop popularity. Others remember him as a rogue who manipulated those around him and was so out of control that at one point he locked his girlfriend in a closet and set the doors ablaze. (She escaped.)
Both of these views of the man are in Stone's film, as well as several others. What is surprising is not how they are presented, but that a movie ended up being made about Morrison's life at all.
Interest in mounting a movie about Morrison began to accelerate in 1980, following Francis Ford Coppola's use of the Doors' The End as the musical signature of his 1979 film Apocalypse Now. That same year, No One Here Gets Out Alive, a Morrison biography, shot to the top of the best-seller lists, and an Elektra Records Doors Greatest Hits package sold two million copies. Between 1980 and 1990, the Doors sold a total of 45 million records, more than they had when their lead singer was alive.
So, to no one's surprise, Morrison's life story became a hot property in Hollywood in the early '80s. Although the three surviving members of The Doors refused to sell their song catalog to various producers interested in their days of wine and poses, screen treatments got done nonetheless. For a while, Brian De Palma and John Travolta worked on a Morrison biopic, and some members of The Doors themselves toiled on a film version. By 1985, however, the project was dead, drowned in a quagmire of legalities and creative differences. Enter Oliver Stone.
Stone long had been an admirer of The Doors. He claims theirs was the first rock and roll he ever had heard. As a soldier fighting in Vietnam, their music, he says, provided the sound track of his fighting experience. "Jim Morrison," he says, "was my Elvis."
After his breakthrough success with 1986's Platoon, Stone whipped up a screen outline of Morrison's adventures with drugs, sex, his girlfriend Pamela Courson and life with The Doors. The surviving members of the group, knocked out by Platoon, agreed to cooperate.
The Doors, a project four years in the making, eventually secured a budget of $40 million. The Doors themselves received a flat fee of $750,000 for the movie rights to their story.
"Oliver's a heretic," Kilmer says. "He manages to get big budgets in this town, which acts like it's so liberal when actually it's quite conservative. And this film was a nightmare to get made. . . . Maybe Scorsese could have done a good job, sure. But when all is said and done, nobody could have done this movie but Oliver."
Stone says no one could have portrayed Morrison but Kilmer. Although five other big-league actors pursued the part, the filmmaker says Kilmer was his first and only choice. "I saw Val in Willow, and then in Top Secret, where he had a couple of numbers and proved he could sing," Stone says. Then, of course, was the remarkable physical resemblance.
Kilmer, however, says he never was really sure that he was Stone's top choice. To persuade the director that he could tackle the part, he wrangled up a couple of friends and made an audition tape in which he slithered about Jim-like before a video camera and
sang Doors hits. He also hired one of the best makeup men in the business, and had himself fitted with an expensive Morrison wig and beard that he paid for out of his own pocket.
A graduate of Juilliard, Kilmer, 32, says the process by which he became Morrison is not that mysterious.
"You never actually become someone else," he says. "It's your experience you work with, your brain. Part of it was mimicry. He was from the South, he had a casual, affected delivery. I used that. And he was very impish."
Kilmer says he grew up with no special fondness toward Morrison or The Doors. He didn't even like the Doors' music when he was a kid, he says. Once landing the role, however, Kilmer quickly became educated in the ways and wiles of Morrison. He dredged up old video performance tapes and studied his every gesture, wiggle and wink. But most helpful to his performance, he says, were his conversations with the members of The Doors and with other people who loved and hated Jim. Everyone, Kilmer says, had a different take on
the man.