The last month has been rough for a variety of reasons and, I’ll be honest, I’m struggling right now. So, for September, we’re going easy.
September’s challenge is to make a dent in Mark Twain, Ron Chernow’s recently released massive tome of a biography on the American humorist. You might be asking ‘why a dent? why not finish the whole thing?’
Well. It’s over 1,000 pages, y’all, and I have a business and household to run. I need to make sure my pets don’t die and I occasionally exercise and eat food, so a dent is what we’re going for. The good news is I’m 50 pages in and it’s fascinating. I think I’m becoming a Mark Twain fan.
This, of course, connects to Kilmer playing Twain on stage (see the above). By many accounts, this might have been his best role, enjoyed by a lucky few. Buried under make-up and prosthetics, he inhabited Twain not only on stage, but before the show, lounging in the theater throwing out witticisms. How fun it would have been to see.
His filmography from IMDB teases Citizen Twain, which is the supposed film of the one-man show. As far as I know, an incomplete version was screened once in 2018 (filmed in 2015) and then was never finished. Here’s hoping that changes sometime in the future. I would love to see it.
The Unbearable Lightness of Val Kilmer 