Portraying porn star John Holmes

Val Kilmer indulges in excesses in James Cox's true-life murder mystery Wonderland

Playing real-life anti-heroes is becoming a habit for one-time heartthrob Val Kilmer. First there was Jim Morrison in The Doors, then came Doc Holliday in Tombstone, artist Willem DeKooning in Pollock, the voice of Moses in Prince of Egypt, crazy Colonel John Henry Patterson in The Ghost and the Darkness, the title character in Billy the Kid, and Ray Levoi in Thunderheart.
Now in James Cox's Wonderland, 43-year-old Kilmer portrays porn legend John Holmes who, along with his teenage girlfriend Dawn Schiller (Kate Bosworth) gets involved in a quadruple homicide that happens in a house on Wonderland Avenue in the Laurel Canyon neighbourhood of Los Angeles in 1981.
During the '60s and '70s, Holmes was a prominent actor in the adult industry known for his prodigious endowment, but by 1978 he became so hooked to cocaine he was unable to function in porn films anymore. However, to support his growing drug habit, he started working for a drug dealer who went by the name of Eddie Nash (Eric Bogosian). This "job" was not enough to pay Eddie for all the dope he was doing, so he made a desperate plan to rob Nash's home, which boasted cash and jewelry worth more than $250,000. Nash figures out that Holmes is behind the crime, and forces him to finger his accomplices, including Billy (Tim Blake Nelson), David (Dylan McDermott) and Ron (Josh Lucas).
Tandem talked to Kilmer when he was in Toronto recently.

Did you have to watch a lot of John Holmes movies to play Holmes?
"I didn't, but there is a very good documentary called Wad that I watched, and had all these wonderful silly interviews that he did and I mean he's such a character, he's out of his mind, he was literally driven mad, I think, by his cocaine addiction. If you watch six interviews in a row, he tells four different stories of about how he got started in pornography. It's just for whatever entertains him in the room. And then very early on I met Dawn Schiller and Sharon Holmes [played in the film by Lisa Kudrow], who never divorced him even though I guess he got really high and married someone else in Las Vegas. I talked to them quite a bit and then pieced together things that were important to the story."

Was he true to his character?
"I think so. The fact that he made 2,000 films, probably slept with 5,000 women and hated it. He didn't like his business at all. I think he really loved women which most men, you know are properly terrified or correctly live in fear of women, or sadly we don't understand them so we treat them badly. And he really loved women, he loved making them happy. He loved making people happy. But even though he hated this business, he really loved his girlfriend and he was dedicated in these odd principles that he lived by, he remained very dedicated to his wife. Once he got strung out on the drugs he was unable to be responsible to either of them and he just kept coming back and trying again. So that really gripped me."

Some say John's charisma was that he was so dumb, that it made him more likeable, because he was a despicable person in many ways. Do you see that side of Holmes?
"He didn't make that many really great decisions. Like M.C. Gainey, who plays a detective said, 'That was a bad cocaine decision.' He was gonna take these four idiots and let'em into Eddy Nash's house and somehow get away with it. It's just not anything you'd do sober. He was kind of an idiot savant in a way, he really was a world-class hustler he would find what it is that you liked and give you something. That's what's charming about him and that he really treated these women really well until the drugs took over him. In this story if you do drugs, you suffer."

To stretch that a bit, is there a parallel between his desire to please and what an actor does in many ways to try and please?
"There isn't anyone in pornography that I met that didn't say that it's the lowest rung on the entertainment ladder. But it's the same thing, it's entertaining, it's just that people take their clothes off. Hustling's different than acting. I don't know if it's that interesting to try and define it. For me the acting that I enjoy, is when it's a genuine gift. It's such a special feeling when you are sharing in a safe environment something dramatic. It's a rare feeling. I always got a lot out of it so it's the kind of acting I've tried to pursue."

Is it what draws you to play real-life people the chance to research their lives?
"No, it's not that I've sought out to do biographies, they're usually pretty risky projects, they usually don't work. I've been really lucky in the ones that I've done. I loved Kirk Douglas' Doc Holiday, but it had nothing to do with reality. It was this carryover of these other versions that had been done, kind of stories that just got put on film, but not anything to do with the truth. And the character that the writer wrote in Tombstone is more accurate than anyone has ever tried to do and that was just very satisfying to play."

Did you worry that you were going to have to take your pants off during this?
"No."

Did you experiment with what it was like to walk around with an appendage like that?
"I didn't have to." (smiles)

Do you believe that Holmes committed the murders?
"You know from knowing what the criminal mind is like, it makes sense that that guy would have made him be in the room 'cause then he'd own him. On the other hand Eddy Nash is really smart, crazy too. He was just as high as John was, but successful and survived. You know he lived. No one else lived and Eddy Nash survived. And it's kind of hard to believe that he would want something that stupid involved in the crime. It makes sense that he would have him get him into the room. But Sharon says he came over to the house like we depict him in the film. It's awful. She was a nurse and got him into a tub and immediately was trying to find the wound because she thought he was in a car crash. Imagine the moment where you're looking at your husband covered in blood and find out it's not his blood. And she says that he said in the tub that night that he was forced to participate in the murder so they wouldn't kill everyone in the room. So he probably did. It does sort of fit. The guy needs to get forgiven. And she keeps forgiving him. How much more outrageous can you be besides taking her credit card and racking up $50,000 and he's smoking an ounce of free-base a day and drinking a bottle and probably smoking a bag of weed and any other drugs he can find. And she still is forgiving him."

Why didn't they kill John?
"I think Eddy Nash loved him. He had an operation to be like him. Pretty, pretty weird story."

In you conversations with the real Dawn and Sharon did you discuss their sex lives at all?
"Not really. I mean, I don't know if it's inappropriate. He made 2,000 porno films. But I never was curious to hear them say it because it's weird when you play a role -I'm sure you can relate to it as a writer - you just get a sense of things that track and things that don't. You know, if you smell a rat in a certain part of the story, you fix it or get rid of it. And I knew from getting to know him as a character and Sharon's life and Dawn's kind of what the answer would be. Also, I really liked them and they suffered so much 'cause of this guy. They're just both a real inspiration. Sharon said - I should make sure I always say this too on behalf of her - that because he died of AIDS, that she'd be very active about telling his story, that maybe it could do some good. But about Dawn and their relationship, I just knew that he was very romantic and so I knew that that was more important to her than the physical experience."

How was Dawn?
"Amazing. She's gotta timeline which is so dramatic to reach. She has a photographic memory. She's writing a book. It's so dramatic because you see at this point in 1979 when he stops fighting the free-base and just goes and it's 600 days of hell. He sold her as a sex slave. Later sold her to Eddy Nash on her 19th birthday for coke money. Pretty awful."

Having had the two loves of John's life on the set, did that make things easier or more difficult for you?
"Just 'cause of the nature of the shoot, with so little time, there was a lot of energy that could have been diffused. I always liked it when they were around. Sharon's word was always, 'That was so creepy that you know that John did that.' Sometimes you get into a rhythm where you don't need to intellectualize, you just know things."
Wonderland is currently playing in local cinemas.

Publication Date: 2003-10-26
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3286