I don’t write much about Hollywood movies or celebrities on here. But today, I was saddened to hear that Val Kilmer passed away.
It’s a weird thing to say – but the movie Real Genius had this really huge, oversized influence on my childhood.
Chalk it up to me being a child of the 80’s, to us having cable and HBO. And to this movie being on repeat (and me watching it, repeatedly) oh so many times.
This is going to be a bit of a ride, bear with me.
In the 1980’s, I was into Heavy Metal. Mostly hair metal at first. I was trying to move away from the musical instruments my parents forced me to learn (piano, violin) and was trying to learn how to play guitar.
There were a lot of elements that were standard to action thrillers. But there were also a lot of unexpected twists/moves that deviated from what I was expecting from a standard thriller movie. The dialogue was really great, and it wasn’t until much later that I realized it was written by David Mamet (no wonder).
“I lived the boys and their comedy, but it took me 25 years to ‘enjoy’ not knowing what is going to happen on a set. My acting training is formal and I was fresh out of Hamlet-land and the Julliard School. The boys always wanted me to have more fun, but I wanted to be good and I took it all way too seriously.”
Overall, the “marketing” at the event wasn’t oppressive. There were a few banners posted up around the movie theaters, and a few small signs, and the bags… but beyond that, it was fairly low key. A woman greeted the audience at the start of the movie, and though I expected her to go into some shpiel about the car… she didn’t. We watched a brief 2-3 minute commercial, and the movie began pretty much immediately.