This is an excerpt from a far-too-brief-but-incredibly-interesting article on Val Kilmer, written by Chuck Klosterman and published in Equire on July 1, 2005:

Kilmer’s self-awareness with respect to his fame seems to partially derive from his familiarity with other famous people. During the two days we spend together, he mentions myriad celebrities he considers to be friends–Robert De Niro, Nelson Mandela, Steve-O. He tells me he dreams of making a comedy with Will Ferrell, whom he considers a genius. At one point, Kilmer does a flawless Marlon Brando impression, even adjusting the timbre of his voice to illustrate the subtle difference between the seventies Brando from Last Tango in Paris and the nineties Brando from Don Juan DeMarco. We talk about Kevin Spacey, and he says that Spacey is “proof that you can learn how to act. Because he was horrible when he first started, and now he’s so good.” We talk about the famous women he’s dated. The last serious relationship he had was with Daryl Hannah, which ended a year ago. During the 1990s, he was involved with Cindy Crawford, so I ask him what it’s like to sleep with one of the most famous women in the world. His short answer is that it’s awesome. His long answer is that it’s complicated.

“Cindy is phenomenally comfortable in the public scene,” Kilmer says. “With a great deal of humor, she describes herself as being in advertising. She’s an icon in it; we actually talked about her image in relation to the product. And I was uncomfortable with that. We got in a huge fight one night because of a hat she was wearing. The hat advertised a bar, and I had a certain point of view about the guy who owned the bar, and I was just being unreasonable. But I knew we were going to go to dinner and that we’d get photographed with this hat, and I was just hard to deal with. It was a really big deal.”

This is the kind of exchange that makes talking to an established movie star so unorthodox. Kilmer remembers that his girlfriend wearing a certain hat was a big deal, but he doesn’t think it was a big deal that the girlfriend was Cindy Crawford. Crazy things seem normal, normal things seem crazy. He mentions that he is almost embarrassed by how cliched his life has become, despite the fact that the manifestation of cliche includes buffalo ownership. However, there are certain parts of his life that even he knows are strange. This is most evident when–apropos of nothing–he starts talking about Bob Dylan.

Make sure you read all of it. It’s good.

Related posts:
Tombstone, and whither Val Kilmer
From the same friend: Signs, a short film by Patrick Hughes
From a friend: Struck, a short film by Milena Ferreira, Taron Lexton, and Nathan Lorch, starring Bodhi Elfman
Friend and photographer Jarnah Montersino in Cambodia