Australia- The film Wonderland is now playing in Australia. The following comments are found in an interview Val Kilmer does with The Daily Telegraph:

“Another director full of praise for the 43-year-old actor is James Cox (Rock Star) who worked with Kilmer on Wonderland. ‘I could not have got a more committed pro in this role,’ Cox gushes.

Kilmer portrays legendary porn star John Holmes and his demise into a world of depravity that ultimately led to his suspicion in the grisly 1981 murders of four people at an apartment on LA’s Wonderland Avenue.

The most famous male porn star ever, the anatomically gifted Holmes is shown living a squalid reality before his pitiful undoing.

The movie begins with Holmes no longer the king of the porn industry, out of the business, addicted to cocaine and involved in a strange romantic triangle with his wife (played by Friends star Lisa Kudrow) and teenage girlfriend Dawn (Kate Bosworth).

It was hardly going to set the box office alight given the R-rated material but the film reinforces Kilmer’s long-standing habit of taking risks with his roles, even if he initially turned it down.

Kilmer says he wasn’t interested in a movie glorifying and obsessing on the porn industry. The film’s producers sent him the script anyway, asking him to consider the smaller role of gangster Eddie Nash (eventually played by Eric Bogosian). “But then I found he (Holmes) didn’t like his business . . . and that side of him intrigued me,” he says. “Holmes also had this strange triangle relationship with his wife.

“They didn’t sleep together anymore but they were still really close and he was really, really in love with this young girl and still going and making porno during the daytime like a brick layer.

“He’d come home and never talk about it and they’d all barbecue and watch TV and make cookies.

“It was really weird and kind of this perfect Hollywood story.”