I learned this morning from the Dooger Val Kilmer had passed. And on Liberation Day of all days.
Those that know me well are fully aware that Kilmer's Doc Holliday is my favorite cinematic portrayal, bar none. Just an absolute tour de force of charisma and confidence masking infirmity and belying the deepest of loyalties. I could go on.
Kilmer's Chris Knight, on the other end of the thespian spectrum, is a brilliantly madcap performance, all big gestures and broad comedic glee. That role is well within my top 10 comedy performances.
That one dude could give us both, in addition to so many other great on-screen efforts (with range from Top Gun's seething Iceman to Top Secret's giddy Nick Rivers to the brooding criminal Chris Shihirlis in Heat to melting into Jim Morrison's character in The Doors) was remarkable. In very meager tribute, here are a few of my favorite things:
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Seems like a good day to wear the hat
ReplyDeletewould that my head was smaller. or the hat bigger. but i'll do my best.
ReplyDeleteJust saw this too. A criminally underrated actor. RIP.
ReplyDeleteKilmer also deserves mention for tongue-in-cheek, noir-ish crime caper "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" (if "Die Hard" is a Christmas movie then KKBB is definitely a Christmas flick) and "Thunderheart," a solid murder investigation film in which he plays an FBI agent of Native American heritage looking into crime on tribal land. As Rob said, man had range. RIP.
ReplyDeleteHe played something like 25 different people in The Saint.
ReplyDeleteIt's Liberation Day
ReplyDeleteIf I roll out tariffs and make them all pay
Will my soul be okay
I can't tax my demons and keep them away
It's Liberation Day
I'd like to lock every damn lib'ral away
If I was a man, I'd have something to say
But I'm just an asshole who fights every day
I'll fight 'til this asshole's last living day
I'll fight 'til this asshole's last living day
Don't do Isbell like that.
ReplyDeleteHe was a weird dude. Chuck Klosterman's 2005 interview with him is epic.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a64364072/val-kilmer-interview-2005/
Me: You mean you think you literally had the same experience as Doc Holliday?
Kilmer: Oh, sure. It’s not like I believed that I shot somebody, but I absolutely know what it feels like to pull the trigger and take someone’s life.
You understand how it feels to shoot someone as much as a person who has actually committed a murder?
I understand it more. It’s an actor’s job. A guy who’s lived through the horror of Vietnam has not spent his life preparing his mind for it. He’s some punk. Most guys were borderline criminal or poor, and that’s why they got sent to Vietnam. It was all the poor, wretched kids who got beat up by their dads, guys who didn’t get on the football team, couldn’t finagle a scholarship. They didn’t have the emotional equipment to handle that experience. But this is what an actor trains to do. I can more effectively represent that kid in Vietnam than a guy who was there.
I don’t question that you can more effectively represent it, but that’s not the same thing. If you were talking to someone who’s in prison for murder and the guy said, “Man, it really fucks you up to kill another person,” do you think you could reasonably say, “I completely know what you’re talking about”?
Oh yeah. I’d know what he’s talking about.
Let’s say someone made a movie about you—Val Kilmer—and they cast Jude Law in the lead role. By your logic, wouldn’t this mean that Jude Law—if he succeeded in the role—would therefore understand what it means to be Val Kilmer more than you do?
No, because I’m an actor. The people in those other circumstances don’t have the self-knowledge.
this post notwithstanding, today is perhaps the stupidest day in the history of our republic. we just announced tariffs on four uninhabited pacific islands, among many, many other catastrophically moronic choices. hold your loved ones close, and your retirement accounts closer.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletestay safe out there today, friends. epic global moronism is afoot in the land.
ReplyDeleteon a much brighter note, it's husky gamedaaaaay! your ladies take on regional rival woodgrove in the final non-district match of the season. woodgrove knocked us out of the regional tournament one game short of qualifying for states last season. teams are evenly matched, both play hard. should be a fun one. you can watch on nfhsnetwork.com if you want to see me prowling the sidelines.
ReplyDeleteGood luck Rob. Eye of the Tiger!
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't seen the Kilmer documentary, it's worth viewing. It's a bit depressing. He's clearly on his way out, seemingly alone, and broke due to a couple of poor business decisions - He was the Grand Marshal at Apple Blossom a few years ago. Guys like Val should not be doing Apple Blossom.
Though his resume is hearty, he's one that could have been, imo, sniffing the Mt. Rushmore of thespians. His exit saddens me.
Bud Kilmer was a dick. I don’t understand all the love.
ReplyDeleteWell played, Marls. Well played.
ReplyDeleteI was always team Sonny.
ReplyDeletenew we defy augury is timely and insightful. couple of notes for the creator:
ReplyDeletetom wolfe's 'man in full' is *not* a great book. it's 90% great and 10% the author scrambling to finish it in time to turn it into his publisher.
how does one correctly pronounce lancashire and mispronounce yorkshire in the same sentence?
i'll hang up and listen.
Lookit rob, cross-commenting to bring traffic to SoD. A Man in Full might not even be 90% great, it has a lot of cringey attempts at depicting hiphop culture.
ReplyDeleteRob is great brand ambassador.
ReplyDeleteI’m live in sunny St Petersburg Florida, where I’ll soon wonder what made me travel all this way when I could have live streamed most of it from home.
I’ve seen the charlotte airport be pretty bad before, but today was a few steps beyond. Total chaos. Shit broken, people sprinting desperately to make their connection. I just made mine.
The missus had a miserable trip back from NOLA yesterday. (Different than my bad episodes where I missed a flight or lost my ID.) Ended up in an Arlington hotel for the night. Among other debacles, she said the security lines in Precheck were miles long. Has the Moronsignor now defunded TSA?
ReplyDeletei forgot about the terrible hip hop stuff in "a man in full"!
ReplyDeletebut i fondly remember the horse breeding scene-- and i'm a sucker for tom wolfe, he swings for the fences in every scene. the dave kingman of authors.
heated exchange in the english office between my buddy and one of the few trumpy teachers upstairs, about tariffs and stocks. she said "what goes down goes back up" and for the sake of my retirement, i hope that's true.
The horse breeding scene is preposterous. Netflix adapted the book to a miniseries--they diverged significantly but the horse scene made it through untouched. When your Trumpy colleague said "what goes down goes back up" did you make an erectile dysfunction joke at her husband's expense?
ReplyDeletewillful ignorance, the stock in trade of the trumpy.
ReplyDeleteYeah, things are terrible, but they won’t always be.
ReplyDeleteNot a positive. See if you can understand that.
A not insignificant chunk of my wife’s compensation is stock in the company. It went down 13% today because of our Liberation. Swell.
ReplyDeletePlease, Trumplestiltskin, liberate us from our money.
i have also been liberated from some funds today . . . truly frees up your soul to not have the burden of accumulated wealth.
ReplyDeleteNBA Channel showing a Jazz-Bucks game from Jan 1990. Karl Malone crusher. Checked in on it out of curiosity and it’s hard to turn away. Jack Sikma, Thurl Bailey, Mark Eaton, Fred Roberts, Alvin Robertson, and of course Stockton and Malone. Good fun.
ReplyDeletealso freed from the tyranny of retirement. will work in perpetuity, as the elites wish.
ReplyDeleteyour huskies fell, 2-0, this evening. frantic early, gave up a goal on a great strike from 20 yards - player should've been marked. switched the formation to get better support in the midfield and stabilized. expressed my frustration with our effort at halftime and was rewarded by significantly better work rate in the second. pushed the whole team forward in the final five minutes to get the equalizer and gave up a goal on a counter-attack with 15 seconds left. bygones. lotta ball left. stay on target.