Top Gun actor Val Kilmer surprised everyone when he revealed that he has been documenting his life and career on video for the past 40 years and has now collected over 800 hours of footage.
A feature-length documentary was the natural conclusion to his meticulous chronicle, and when Kilmer mentioned to filmmaker Leo Scott that he would digitize the footage, the idea for “Val” was born.
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Scott served as editor for “The Lotus Community Workshop,” a segment featuring the actor in the 2012 anthology series “The Fourth Dimension,” and eventually helped digitize it. He also brought in his collaborator and co-editor Ting Poo (“Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405”) to make the documentary, which will stream on Amazon Prime Video starting August 6.
Scott and Poo served as both co-directors and co-editors, organizing and digitizing the tapes and helping to tell Kilmer’s story and shape it into the powerful film that has garnered awards buzz.
The film begins with archival footage of Kilmer and Tom Cruise on the set of Top Gun in 1986 before moving to the present day and telling the story of Kilmer and his battle with throat cancer. After an operation on his windpipe, he can barely speak, so his 26-year-old son Jack – who sounds an awful lot like his father – provides the documentary’s commentary.
“We wanted to bring in the idea of a narrator,” explains Scott. “It was beautiful to hear his son say, ‘My name is Val Kilmer and I’m an actor.'” The next scene switches to Jack Kilmer recording this line in a booth.
Scott and Poo had toyed with the idea of putting this reveal at the end, but by putting it at the beginning, “it became clear early on who was doing the voiceover, and you could get lost in the story,” Poo explains.
The editors knew they didn’t want a four-hour film, so the challenge was the sheer volume of footage. Poo says it was difficult to decide what to cut. “It was about being strict about what to leave out and what to keep,” he says.
“Val” switches seamlessly between past and present, retracing Kilmer’s one-man show “Citizen Twain,” adapting notorious flops like “The Island of Dr. Moreau” (1996) and hits like “Batman Forever” (1995), and simultaneously addressing his health problems.
“We didn’t make a documentary, we made a film,” says Scott. “And Val plays herself.”
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