I’ve heard enough stories about Val Kilmer being nuts that I believe them, and true to form, Kilmer joined the Black Lips onstage at Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin over the weekend, taking a chainsaw to an amplifier, screaming non-sequitirs, making out with the band, walking in a walker, and eventually chopping off clumps of his own hair with a knife. You know, actor stuff. Supposedly the performance was being filmed for a Terrence Malick movie, a movie I like to think is entitled “An Average Day in the Life of Val Kilmer.”
On Friday, Kilmer hopped onto the Fun Fun Fun Fest stage with the Black Lips and Terrence Malick’s film crew, the latter of which, reports Rolling Stone, was there to capture the actor’s performance for an untitled film also starring Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, and Natalie Portman. Or was it all just a warm-up? In between chain-sawing through stage equipment and giving himself a surprise haircut, Kilmer told the Austin crowd, “Did they tell you we’re making a movie? We’re not. We’re practicing making a movie.” Regardless of whether the performance was being filmed as a rehearsal or an actual scene, the footage may never see the light of day; Malick recently surprised both critics and his To the Wonder cast when he deleted Rachel Weisz, Michael Sheen, Amanda Peet, and Berry Pepper entirely from his romantic drama.
During the performance, Kilmer further provoked the audience by asking them if they’d like to hear him perform as Jim Morrison, whom he portrayed in the 1991 biopic The Doors. “Do you wanna hear some Doors songs? Well, you’re 20 years too late. No Doors here. We have some windows . . . got some garage. But we’ve got no Doors.” [VanityFair]
Haha, that is a good one, Val Kilmer, we’re all just spitballin here.
I’ll admit, I was not at Fun Fun Fun Fest to gauge audience reaction, but I think Val Kilmer may have overestimated the desire of a bunch of 22-year-old Austin hipsters to hear an actor sing a song their parents were conceived to because he was in a movie about it 20 years ago. That said, I would’ve completely lost my sh*t if he’d sung “Skeet Surfin‘.”
God damn I love Top Secret.