BWW Interviews: Val Kilmer Chats about his New Show CITIZEN TWAIN

On a Tuesday afternoon in April, Val Kilmer and I spent over half-an-hour discussing Mark Twain and the horrors of war and oppression. "We go back to the Stoneage every time we throw a rock," he says about midway through our conversation and his eyes light up. "I just gave you the best quote of the day."

Kilmer has been in Dallas for more than a week enjoying the city and promoting his newest project CITIZEN TWAIN, a one-man show about Mark Twain that he plans to eventually turn into a film. Kilmer's tour played the Hollywood Forever Cemetery earlier this month and opens for a four day run at the Wyly Theatre on Thursday. My question of "why Twain, why now?" led to an extended conversation about our continual struggle with violence and prejudice.

"Mark Twain had very upfront opinions that he cloaked in humor," Kilmer says, clearing his throat quote Twain in a thick, Southern drawl about the way in which the church used God to justify slavery. "It ain't those part of the Bible I can't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do understand."

Kilmer isn't the first actor to grow attached to the person of Twain. For 59 years, Hal Holbrook has performed MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, a one-man show about the American humorist, which he performed at the Performing Arts Center in January 2012. But Kilmer has done his homework, even chatting with Holbrook before launching his show.

Kilmer believes the two shows don't overlap as much as one might think. In MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, Holbrook focuses on the witty writings of Twain with recitations from a variety of texts. But Kilmer is more focused on the messages Twain was putting out into the world.

"Twain was such a great artist, he found a way to shift your consciousness long enough to gain some safe ground where you could trust hearing something that from anyone else you just wouldn't allow it," Kilmer says. "As things go even today. In honesty, if I was as hard-hitting in my show as he was in every subject I think people would actually leave."

As Kilmer gains momentum with CITIZEN TWAIN, he has plans to turn it into a film that focuses both on Twain and on Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Although Twain was a public critic of Eddy and they never actually met, Kilmer has drawn parallels between the two.

"They were both rebels," Kilmer says. "I think my favorite part about this whole adventure is being connected to these two geniuses."

And in our conversation, Kilmer was far too excited about this project to talk about anything else. "I don't look back," he says, although he quickly shut the copy of Arts + Culture magazine that lay on the table in front of us when he reached the line that read "former Hollywood hunk." Feigning shock, he brushed his blonde hair back and asked, "Former? Former?" Although, I'm fairly certain he would still make a pretty good wingman.

See Val Kilmer in CITIZEN TWAIN April 18 - 21 at the Wyly Theatre, (2400 Flora St). Tickets are available at www.attpac.org or 214-880-0202.

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