Thou shalt rock

It’s a rehearsal on a sound stage at Paramount, the studio that produced Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epic “The Ten Commandments.” But almost 50 years after the DeMille extravaganza, it’s not Charlton Heston, bronzed like a baby shoe, who’s playing Moses; it’s Val Kilmer.

In 2004, “The Ten Commandments” is not a movie but a live stage musical making its U.S. debut Sept. 27 at the Kodak Theatre, with Kilmer (“Batman Forever,” “Top Gun”) starring as Moses, the top gun in leading the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt.

Moses. Musical. Kilmer. What, was Mel Brooks already booked?

Kilmer acknowledges that when he tells friends about his latest project on the phone, he is usually met with a very, very long silence. “See? I can’t even say it without smiling,” he confesses, smiling.

It is strictly coincidental that the stage version is rehearsing at Paramount -- the soundstage just happened to be available, and large enough to house the musical’s elaborate Egyptian set. The creative forces behind “The Ten Commandments” also insist the production was not inspired by the movie, but by the 3,300-year-old story.

As far as borrowing the title goes, one may assume “The Ten Commandments” has a better ring to it than “The Sound of Moses” or “Little Shop of Plagues.” And the number 10 is, well, set in stone.

Still, watching a new take on the Biblical story on a Paramount stage, with the bearded Kilmer in a backward baseball cap belting out a pop-rock “Let my people go,” one has to wonder whether the choice of Kilmer as the man to part the Red Sea might just have made DeMille see red.

After all, Kilmer has made a career out of playing rebels, loners and antiheroes, including Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie “The Doors,” and porn star John Holmes in “Wonderland” in 2003. He’s also carried with him a reputation for being difficult, to put it mildly -- the kind of actor who makes a director regret not hiring Sean Penn.

John Frankenheimer, who directed Kilmer alongside Marlon Brando in the ill-fated “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” offered this widely-quoted declaration: “If I were making the Val Kilmer story, I wouldn’t cast Val Kilmer.”

But “Ten Commandments” director Robert Iscove and co-producer Charles Cohen insist that Kilmer is an intensely spiritual man, one of few actors capable of going wholly Moses. Besides, as Michael Keaton, George Clooney and perhaps Adam West might attest, you can’t play Batman forever.

Cohen acknowledges that he had some doubts at first about Kilmer because of his volatile reputation. “I was so afraid of that, but he is a very nice man,” says Cohen, who is producing the show with clothing designer Max Azria for their company BCBGMaxAzria Entertainment. “When he is not around, people are looking for him, they are worried, there is so much love for him. He sends flowers to people; those are small things, but they are important.”

He and Azria wanted not only a good actor but a good man to play Moses. “Our messages are very clear -- peace, love and brotherhood, nothing less than that,” Cohen muses. “I don’t care how big he is. He feels everything; he is a deeply religious man.” And Kilmer can sing: “He is amazing -- his voice is like old wine, it keeps getting better and better.”

Stage roots run deep

This is hardly the first time Kilmer has sung outside the shower: He did his own singing in “The Doors” and performed songs as an Elvis-like idol in the well-received 1984 comedy “Top Secret!.”

And, while Kilmer is best known for his movie roles, the actor’s roots go deep into theater: While at Juilliard, he appeared as Orestes, Macbeth, Richard III and Henry IV. In 1981, still at Juilliard, he and classmates wrote and performed “How It All Began,” a play eventually seen at the New York Shakespeare Festival with Kilmer playing the lead. In 1983, Kilmer appeared off-Broadway in “The Slab Boys,” and in that quintessential “I am an act-or” role -- Hamlet -- at the 1988 Colorado Shakespeare Festival.

Not only is “Ten Commandments” not Kilmer’s first appearance onstage, it’s his third time playing the role of Moses. “I don’t know what I’m learning from the story, but God’s not convinced yet, so I have to keep doing it over and over,” Kilmer jokes.

He voiced the title role in Dreamworks’ 1998 animated musical “The Prince of Egypt,” although the singing is credited to Amick Byram. In recent months he has completed recording the narration for a hip-hop gospel musical version of the story -- “Moses,” by composer-lyricist Walter Robinson. Financed by grants, including one from Steven Spielberg’s foundation, the musical was created in an effort to bring together the African American Christian and Jewish communities in Boston. Robinson says he recorded Kilmer’s narration to do some creative sound mixing for the production, tentatively slated to open in New York in the spring.

Producer Cohen says he and Azria originally did not want a “star” to portray Moses. “Their schedules, their moods!” exclaims Cohen, shaking his head. “And we always thought that our show, ‘The Ten Commandments,’ was bigger than any star; ‘Ten Commandments’ is a brand name.” Cohen is something of an expert on brand names; in 1986, he created the global marketing and communications company Pier Enterprises Inc., linking such big stars as Madonna and Cindy Crawford with big products including Pepsi.

The producers came to realize that a little star power couldn’t hurt. “The Ten Commandments” is an offshoot of “Les Dix Commandments,” created by Elie Chouraqui and launched in Paris in October 2000; it was Azria’s idea to launch a U.S. version, co-produced by Chouraqui’s company, 7Art. While Cohen refused to specify the show’s budget, he said that the special effects tab alone has ballooned to three times what they’d predicted, and about seven times that of the Paris production. “It’s much more than any Broadway production, much more,” he says.

Kilmer’s name first drifted into the producers’ consciousness through his friend George Acogny, “Ten Commandments” executive music producer. Kilmer had sought Acogny’s input because he was thinking about making a record, and Acogny asked him if he’d be interested in doing the show.

“I would never have gone out at this point in my life looking for a musical,” Kilmer says. “But I’ve always liked singing, and I have a lot of friends that are musicians.”

In a discursive post-rehearsal interview that leaps effortlessly from Scripture to movie script, from Moses and Martin Luther King to Oliver Stone, Michael Mann and Marlon Brando, Kilmer, 44, calls playing Moses a dream come true.

“I’ve been teaching my kids the Ten Commandments, and the way they are presented in this story is more appealing than in most children’s books,” says the actor, an active Christian Scientist who has two children from his eight-year marriage to actress Joanne Whalley-Kilmer. “To be involved with a character who is so uncompromising in his devotion to good is just not something I could have expected. He doesn’t want the job, which makes him an incredibly attractive guy, because how many of us are given opportunities and back away from them?” Kilmer continues. “Not to be too grand, but our country invites every citizen to be great. Martin Luther King said a man who is not willing to die for freedom shouldn’t be allowed to live in it. That to me is the key to Moses.”

Leap of faith

Making one of his trademark leaps, Kilmer says the same honorable approach is true of Stone, who directs Kilmer’s most recent film project, “Alexander.” In the film, which opens Nov. 5, Kilmer plays King Philip, father of Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell). Angelina Jolie -- with whom Kilmer has been romantically linked -- will portray Alexander’s mother.

Kilmer praises Stone for his respectful attitude toward the writers and historians who contributed to the “Alexander” script. He says the same of Mann, who directed Kilmer in 1995’s “Heat.” .

Stone, Mann and a handful of others -- including Brando, who coached Kilmer through his divorce from Whalley-Kilmer -- are exceptions to Kilmer’s overall impression of Hollywood. “I used to think it was cynical, but now I understand it’s a very honest place,” he says. “The big fat guy with the cigar wants the girl with the big breasts, and he says so.”

Kilmer expresses a near-religious commitment to acting: “There is one part of it that is potentially holy activity, and that is to represent our community -- like Shakespeare says, to hold a mirror up to nature,” he muses. It is that commitment, not an incendiary temperament, he says, that has led to his reputation as a Hollywood bad boy.

“The personality or identity that I do have, that I’m proud of, is as an actor,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to get rich, or trying to make friends. And because I spoke frankly, some people thought I shouldn’t have a career or something. But people are mean -- I sound like a child, but there are mean people, some people are mean.

“But I’ve always been very sincere. I think it’s an amazing privilege to be an actor, we get paid crazy money to do it, and spending every waking hour trying to make it as good as it can be -- that’s all I’ve ever tried to do.”

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Where: Kodak Theatre, Hollywood & Highland, 6801 Hollywood Blvd.

When: Opens Sept. 27. 8 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday. No performances Sept. 28.

Ends: 2 p.m. Oct. 31

Price: $35 to $105

Contact: (323) 308-6363 Kodak Theatre, Hollywood & Highland, 6801 Hollywood Blvd.