Almost Fired
In Val Kilmer’s 2020 autobiography, I’m Your Huckleberry, he admitted that he was almost fired from Martha Coolidge’s Real Genius. Like Back to the Future, this film began filming in November 1984. Had Val Kilmer been fired, he would have been compared to Eric Stoltz. Coincidentally, Martha Coolidge would later work with Eric on Some Kind of Wonderful in 1986 before she was fired. Back to Real Genius, John Cusack was the other contender for the role of Chris Knight. The name suits Val because he went on to play The Dark Knight in Batman Forever (1995) whereas Chris Conoley definitely suits the more nebbish Cusack. I doubt that Cusack would have replaced Val since he was already filming Better Off Dead in November 1984.
If you thought that Eric Stoltz was bad with his method acting, check out what Val Kilmer had to say about auditioning for Real Genius in his book: “I handled the whole audition arrogantly, and I’m afraid that arrogance might have won the day. The character was wildly arrogant, with reason. He was the smartest person in the “smartest” school. As soon as I arrived, the assistant to the assistant to the assistant said Where’s your headshot?”
“I don’t believe in them, was my terse reply. The assistant was so taken aback she didn’t quite know what to do. She whispered into the phone, and I went in to see director Martha Coolidge. Also in the room was a pre-spiky hairdo Brian Grazer - a Hollywood mogul in the making. I did all this in the character of the part I was looking to play - Chris Knight, a wise-guy science whiz who finds a way to disrupt the CIA’s demonic plan to exploit his talent.”
“I also brought four proper French croissants , and proceeded to devour one. The buttery crumbs dripped down my shirt, and everyone just stared at me like, Is this guy for real? I’m not sure Martha or Brian knew what to do with me. I was standoffish but also committed. Very soon after we shook hands, Brian said he had to go, and stood up. I stood up immediately, and said something like, But didn’t you say you were the…what was it? The…um, um…product man? What was it?”
“The producer,” he said. “That’s right,” I said. “Yes,” he said, “but you stay and talk to Martha, she’s the one you need to…”
“But you’re the money guy! You’re the one I want to spend time with. Wow. How DO YOU DO IT? Get people to fork over millions for this crap! You must be amazing! I will go where you go.”
“I babbled on following him out and down the elevator and tried to get into a cab with him, but that’s when he finally drew the line. No crazy actor was going to get into his cab. Somehow I was rewarded for all this silliness with the role. Also I remember demanding double the money I had any right to. I think that might have done the trick. I always think a forty-dollar hamburger MUST taste better than a Wendy’s.”
Let’s get back to Back to the Future. August 1984 was when they began casting it. Eric Stoltz had just finished acting in Mask - a film that Val Kilmer wanted to be in since his lover Cher was going to be the star. Val wasn’t in a position where he could audition for Back to the Future because he was going through a globe-trotting phase. Going by the miniscule upload on the WorthPoint auction site, the first draft was revised July 29, 1983. This was a month before the U.S. release of WarGames. This completely changes the notion that the film was written to cash in on the success of Revenge of the Nerds (released on July 20, 1984). In early August 1984, Martha’s Joy of Sex was released except she had been fired from that movie despite having her credit retained. The movie is a comedy that only earned 4 million in the U.S. despite it originally being a National Lampoon production.
If you thought that Eric Stoltz was awkward at the table-read for Back to the Future, check out what Val Kilmer had to say about Real Genius in his book: “A cast member remembers something I don’t - that after I’d been given the lead, I did the first read-through on my back, never giving eye contact to anyone, my focus completely on the script. It sounds like something a twenty-four-year-old young rocker like me would do. I have a vague memory of lying on the large plastic dining tables they fold out for events like this. Anything to establish the absolute weirdness of the guy was fine by me, so I probably did do it.”
Unlike Eric Stoltz, Val wouldn’t have lasted as far as six weeks had he been fired as planned. Val went on to say: “Rehearsals were tricky. As one of the few female directors working in Hollywood at the time, Martha had my admiration, but she didn’t see the humor the way I did. She identified with Chris Knight’s headmaster - a villain/buffoon - and not with Chris himself. By giving the headmaster too much respectability, she undercut his laugh lines. I did my best to impose my comedic choices. This caused friction, so much so that one evening I came from the set to a message on my answering machine from a colleague who said he’d just been asked to audition for the part of Chris Knight in Real Genius. In other words, MY part.”
In a 2010 interview on the Kickin' it Old School blog (which was archived on a new blog called Rediscover the ‘80s), Gabe Jarret said: “We got along fine, but I always got the feeling that he didn’t want to share the screen with a 15-year-old punk.”
In a 2011 interview for the same blog, Martha Coolidge said: “Val was the best guy for the part, but not so easy to work with. He was intellectually challenging and erratic, not so surprising since that was the character. It was a big demanding part and he often avoided working by asked a lot of questions and was sometimes late to the set and moody. He was almost in every scene for about 75 days - and I'm sure he was nervous. I've learned to give young actors space and discipline, encouragement and pushing when they need it. I like actors with ideas and he had many. Ultimately, we gained a lot of trust and worked very well together. He gave a hell of a performance.”
In a June 1995 article about Val Kilmer, producer Brian Grazer said: “He would just evaporate. No one could find him.”
In a 2017 Reddit AMA, Val was asked why there hadn’t been a sequel. He typed: “I pitched it forever 15 years to Brian Grazer who produced the original. He would always smile that wonderful smile of his and do nothing.”
Back to Val Kilmer’s memoir after the day after he found out about being almost canned after footage was in the can: “I ran over to see Brian Grazer the next morning. He was bouncing a golf ball off his wall in a rhythmically hypnotic pattern. “Hey, man,” I said, “are you trying to fire me?” Brian turned beet red. “Martha says you’re scaring the cast members,” he responded. “You’re not giving them a chance to be funny.”
“The jokes aren’t funny, Brian. And it’s not funny when the headmaster is trying to be Hamlet. Come to rehearsal. Give me a little breathing room and I’ll spread my funny around. You have some very talented comedians in the cast, but comedians always try to be funny. I get that, but it’s not the comedy jokes the movie is about. It’s about how all these smart kids don’t know what my character is goign to do next. That’s what I’m establishing. Martha just doesn’t get my humour. That doesn’t mean it’s not funny. Here, I’ll prove it to you. Why is a Groucho Marx mustache funnier painted on than a real one?”
“Brian is very smart, and I could tell it bothered him to have to answer what everyone HAS to answer. “I don’t know, Val, Why?” he said with the slightest bit of condescension. I really liked him and didn’t like putting him on the spot like I had with Martha when I asked her the same question. “I’m sorry, Brian, I’m not trying to give you a hard time. The answer is ‘Who the hell knows why, it just is.’ Comedy isn’t intellectual. You laugh or you don’t. If you want, I’ll stop making the film better and get right down to the television laugh track it sounds like everyone is into.”
Val Kilmer concludes the story about how he was almost fired like Kelly Emberg from Weird Science (also made in late 1984): “Brian relented. Martha relented. I was rehired before I was ever fired. Martha let me make my own weird T-shirts, one of which I carried the exhortation Surf Nicaragua. Decades later at Comic-Cons, I see fans wearing Real Genius custom-made T-shirts that feature a gorilla I borrowed from the logo of my stepdad’s secret men’s club. Despite the fundamental disagreements between me and Martha, the movie made good money.”
It grossed US$13 million versus the 20 million of Val’s last film: Top Secret! John Cusack’s The Sure Thing (filmed from March to April 1984) grossed 18 million in March 1985. Cusack’s Better Off Dead grossed 10 million after being released in late August 1985.
Also released in August 1985 was My Science Project but that only earned 4 million. It came out on August 9. Seven days earlier marked the release of Weird Science, which earned 38 million. The star of that film, Anthony Michael Hall, was actually in the same boat as Val Kilmer in that they wanted to star in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987) but Anthony was closer to getting the role than Val despite the latter having more credibility with Tom Cruise’s Top Gun (1986) whereas Anthony would later do a similar movie to Top Gun called Into the Sun (1992). By this point, Val was known for being directed by Oliver Stone for The Doors (1991) after Stone directed Cruise for Born on the Fourth of July (1989).