top dog

This Val Kilmer Documentary Has Been Shooting for 40 Years

Photo: EuropaNewswire/Gado/Getty Images

Somewhere, somehow, we have a feeling Mark Twain is happy about this. Amazon Studios announced today that it has acquired the rights to Val, a documentary about the fascinatingly complex career of Val Kilmer. The film is described as being a creative tour de force drawn from Kilmer’s personal archives, as he has been “documenting his own life and craft through film and video†for over 40 years. There were apparently “thousands†of hours of Kilmer’s footage to comb through for Val, footage that began when the actor had his breakthrough role in 1984’s Top Secret! “At least once a day for years I looked around and got this bittersweet feeling that there are a thousand reasons that this project could’ve been shipwrecked,†Kilmer said in a statement. “I mean, what could a film look like of a man filming himself, sometimes daily, years at a time?†Val will be released later this year, and we’ll prepare by rewatching Willow.

This Val Kilmer Documentary Has Been Shooting for 40 Years