This Is the One Joke Val Kilmer Wouldn’t Do in ‘MacGruber’
Give the late Val Kilmer credit for good taste and common sense. While Kilmer was an extremely good sport while making the MacGruber movie, explained director Jorma Taccone on a recent episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast, there was one extreme gag that he refused to do. “We did want to cut his penis off and shove it in his mouth,” Taccone confessed. “That was the one joke that he did not want to do.”
That was “especially a good decision on his part,” noted Meyers.
The Late Night host couldn’t believe Kilmer would do the role at all. “I think not only would 85 percent of actors not want to play a character named Peter von Cunth,” Meyers said, “I think probably 99 percent of agents don’t want to call their clients and say, ‘Hey, there’s a part I think you’re perfect for.”
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Taccone was shocked as well. “Honestly, just for all of us being just such massive fans. Top Secret to me was the first movie that I saw where I watched it and was doubled over most of the time,” he said. “I can’t remember how old I was watching, but I was thinking I didn’t know that adults could be this funny.”
Meyers saw the dramatic Top Gun first and was blown away by the contrast to Kilmer’s Top Secret performance. “He does the absolute opposite pulls of what you think someone is capable of doing — so deeply funny and so heartbreakingly cool.”
Why did Kilmer agree to take part in MacGruber’s table read and eventually the movie? No one knows for sure, but the Magic 8 Ball says “Lorne Michaels.” “Val hosted SNL in 2000,” remembered Meyers. “I’m sure, like a lot of people, he had an incredible experience and then felt indebted to Lorne. And so Lorne probably pulled the strings to get him there.”
From that first table read, Will Forte could tell that Kilmer was crushing. “He was fantastic,” Forte said. Despite the MacGruber star’s propensity for focusing on what wasn’t working, “it was hard not to acknowledge how great he was doing.”
Like Kilmer in Top Secret, said Meyers, the key to MacGruber was the actors playing the comedy like it wasn’t comedy. “It’s always the risk when people who are known as serious actors get invited to host SNL,” he explained. “Sometimes they push it too far as to what they think comedy is. But (Kilmer) really understood the game.”
It was Kilmer’s confidence that impressed Taccone. “It was just this bravery to be himself at all moments,” he said. “And that’s what made him unnervingly captivating to me. He’s just fearless.”
Fearless enough to try anything, and brave enough to tell the director his penis joke was stupid.
