Interview by: Joe Lalia JoeLalia@TheCinemaSource.com

For his latest project, eccentric actor Val Kilmer takes on a role in Spartan, the tale of a "lone wolf U.S. government secret agent', written and directed by David Mamet. Kilmer's performance in the film is full of 'Kilmeresque' subtleties and is as compelling as some of his best known roles, I dare say even more so than that of Jim Morrison, in The Doors movie. At a recent press junket Kilmer responded to questions about the latest role in his diverse career.

Why this film'

'I'd probably do anything with David Mamet'I just love his writing' I was excited just to talk to him about it before I read it, which we did, and I just really loved it.'

Do you see similarities in the characters you've played'

'For a long time I just tried to use the various opportunities to explore acting, probably to the detriment of my career.'

I heard you had to do some weapons training for this movie. What was that like'

'The training was just a lot of intense practicing of what we do in the film. For Derek Luke it meant running a lot. I knew the same weapons, I just was familiar with them from other films. It was just fun guy stuff.'

In addition to shooting guns and fulfilling his desire to work with Mamet, Kilmer got some other perks from perks being a part of this film (not to mention his sizeable fee). One wonders, could there be any downsides'

'There really weren't any downsides. The worst part about working with David Mamet is that he's a really tough editor of himself. If he thinks something's already gotten across he'll cut it. The film really works, I'm really proud of it, so it's hard to argue with him. But there was just a lot of fun things he ended up cutting.' (I.e. look for the DVD)

Kilmer elaborates, as most actors are wont to do:

'This is probably the least Mamet-like sounding movie, and I think it's his best screenplay, just because I think it's a really good story for film, and he (Mamet) has just grown as a writer in relation to film, which is a tricky business.'

At many points in this interview, Kilmer would unintentionally leave a question posed before him unanswered, in favor of pursuing a fascinating if less relevant angle; but Val's not entirely to blame for his digressions, some of our questions are questions only in a loose interpretation of the word'some are merely topics for the actor to speak on. In this case, we wanted to know something about how he developed his Spartan character:

'Eric Haney, the advisor, would say things that just don't make any sense when you hear it abstractly, then when you get into the actual action of going and retrieving a body, he'd say, 'well, first thing you do, is probably hit her, you gotta control her''it just sounds so awful, but when someone is hysterical and they don't know what's happening, it's the only way because milliseconds count, and if they hesitate, you're all dead.'

Can Spartan be taken as a metaphor for our times'

'People around the president in this film have decided for him that it's best to lie to the country. In our lives we've experienced that happening on a large scale, and it'll happen again. This film invites the audience to look more carefully at what gets said in the media and whether it's true or not.'

Is Val himself interested in the world of espionage that makes up so much of this film'

'It's just such an interesting world, these men that really identify themselves beyond patriotism in the conventional sense. Eric Haney experienced a very similar scenario. He had a CIA directive and he was told where the enemy was, he went and killed them, and it was a US guy, he looked at his dog tags, and he had trained him. It couldn't get any more poetic than that, and awful. And it turned out that it wasn't an accident. It was a manipulation of their talent and our money, our investments and our security. So he ended up writing this book, and its message is essentially the same as David's, in that if you live beyond the law, especially in espionage, very often the country won't defend you anymore, because it's just the most expedient way to defend themselves, by cutting everyone off. These men, their training is just to do whatever it takes to get the object or person, and they're just real good at it, they're real good at killing. And most of them get killed. I think it's Lechery that has one of his characters observe that a government is defined by it's spies, by what they are willing to have a spy do, covertly or overtly, that defines the character of the nation. And when you look at it that way, this is a wonderful story, because it brings up how powerful the government is and that relationship to the media that is more often than not questionable.'

And last, but maybe most importantly, what did Val take from the experience of working on Spartan':

'I'm sure there are bitter mean guys out there but I've been very fortunate and met guys that have become basically philosophers and have a kind of sensibility about life that's very precious'everyday I was so grateful to be an American, to just be so healthy, and take the kinds of opportunity you get as an actor to take a peek behind the veil of reality a little bit and enjoy it in a safe environment, like we get to do in watching a movie. You get to experience something that hopefully you don't have to in real life but you get to take away the value of the human experience.'