If you’ve been reading any Vanyaland film coverage over the last several years, you know that we’re big fans of Val Kilmer, one of the most real, insightful, and weirdest dudes to come out of the Studio System in the modern era. Sure, he was in tons of iconic movies playing equally iconic people — Doc Holliday, Batman, Jim Morrison, hell, even John Holmes — but there was always a different side to Kilmer, a pensive one that would often emerge in interviews or his art or his stage show. Now, after surviving throat cancer and publishing his memoirs, Kilmer’s opened up his private vault of home movies, spanning through his early days making movies with his brothers and friends all the way through him inhabiting the biggest roles of his career, to a pair of documentary filmmakers, and the resulting documentary, Val, is an up-close look at one of the most bizarre — and iconic — careers in Hollywood. Amazon dropped a trailer for the film earlier on Tuesday, and man, it looks like something special.
Take a look:
Here’s a synopsis:
“For over 40 years, Val Kilmer, one of Hollywood’s most mercurial and/or misunderstood actors has been documenting his own life and craft through film and video. He has amassed thousands of hours of footage, from 16mm home movies made with his brothers, to time spent in iconic roles for blockbuster movies like ‘Top Gun,’ ‘The Doors,’ ‘Tombstone,’ and ‘Batman Forever.’ This raw, wildly original and unflinching documentary reveals a life lived to extremes and a heart-filled, sometimes hilarious look at what it means to be an artist and a complex man.”
Val hits select theaters on July 23, and it’ll also be available for Prime Video subscribers to stream on August 6. Color us extremely, extremely interested in this one.