There was some sad news yesterday as we learned that Tombstone, Top Gun, The Saint, and, most importantly, Real Genius actor Val Kilmer died. I mention this because he was very likely the only movie star of that particularly rarified class that I actually knew, sort of, a little bit, because I briefly worked for him around 2012.
It was a time of a lot of transition for Val and for me, too. I had just started working at Jalopnik, starting the career I’m still excited to be in today, and I had a one-and-a-half-year-old kid, and was still climbing out of the financial hole that comes with a few years of trying to start a company and then teaching design at a public LAUSD school. So any side work was appreciated.
Val was transitioning from focusing on movies to his one-man show about Mark Twain, called Citizen Twain. At the same time he wanted to focus more on his art – he painted and wrote poetry, I think?– which he would feature and sell on his website. It was this site that led to me and my wife, Sally, working for him.
Sally did social media for him – this was just starting to be A Thing, and I did graphics/design and some HTML stuff for his site. I really can’t remember how the hell we got this gig? Oh wait – we had a friend whose girlfriend was his personal assistant! That’s right. Man, I forgot about whatshername!
Anyway, this meant that I ended up talking to Val on the phone an awful lot, usually as he was driving somewhere in his Jaguar convertible. He was a very approachable and kind person to talk with, witty and charming, but he also very often sounded high as a kite. I think it was just how he tended to talk, very slowly and with long pauses mid-sentence, but sometimes it made me a little concerned that the voice on the other end was piloting an automobile.
Speaking of cars, let’s note at least a couple car-related things about Val Kilmer to keep to our theme here. Perhaps most notable is that he owned, for well over 20 years at least, a 1969 Pontiac GTO, originally a light metallic blue:
…and then the car later had a full body-off restoration and emerged an imposing glossy black beast, which went to auction in 2017 and 2021, where it sold for, I think, between $120,000 and $140,000, I can’t find exactly how much, but somewhere around there.
(Photo: Mecum Auctions)
The car is quite stunning, with an interior so white and clean it gives me perverse anxiety fantasies of sitting in the back seat with a chilidog in one hand and a rapidly melting Rocky Road ice cream cone in the other.
Did these ever come with an all-white dash like that, or is that custom? Also, the massive 400 cubic inch V8 is numbers-matching, and, interestingly, this rides on a Ford 9″ rear end, which seems to be a popular mod for GTOs.
Also notable when it comes to cars and Kilmer is that while Val may have played the second-most forgettable Batman (I think maybe George Clooney is first place there), he had what I think was the best not-Batmobile, but Brucewaynemobile, this 1952 Jaguar XK120:
What a fantastic not-Batmobile! The cars Bruce Wayne drives when not wearing his getup tend not to get to much attention or are kind of lazy choices (Lambos, limos) but I think this one was inspired. It has a sort of below-the-surface Batmobile feel to it, while maintaining an external air of genteel gadabout.
There was also his role in the remake of The Saint in 1997, where he replaced Roger Moore from the original series and a then-unreleased Volvo C70 replaced the old Volvo P1800 used in the original show.
That was a big deal for Volvo at the time, and the movie acted as the car’s introduction, and was a big deal since it was Volvo’s first sporty coupé since that old iconic 1800.
Oh, and I suppose there is one more car-related thing to Val Kilmer: he was part of the Pixar Cars cinematic universe, as he was the voice of a jet fighter in the movie Planes, where his plane wore a helmet – I know, it’s weird – that had the same design as his character Iceman’s helmet in the 1986 movie Top Gun that helped make Kilmer a star:
As as the implications of wars being fought in the Cars universe, don’t worry, I asked all those hard questions to the creators years ago.
A commenter reminded me about the movie Top Secret that he was in, which was hilarious, and included one of my favorite jokes in any movie, a wonderful bit about someone feeling relieved to be tortured by Nazis:
Oh, and that movie also helped perpetuate the Ford Pintos-are-bombs urban legend!
Good stuff.
Val Kilmer was a good man and a talented actor, and even if my interactions with him were limited and short-lived, I feel fortunate that I got to know him, even in this limited way. He’s still our huckleberry.
I really liked him in The Saint. The movie wasn’t very well received at that time I think, but I thought he and Elizabeth Shue had great chemistry in it.
Val was a great guy. I got to meet him right after”Tombstone” was released. I recall being very impressed by him. He was a very normal guy. By the way, he and I have the exact same cancer. I’ve been fighting it for over a year now. When I was in the hospital, I often used Val as an inspiration when I’d get down. Very very sorry to learn of his passing.
Been a Val fan a long time. Two underrated films of his I really like is Thunder Heart and The Ghost And The Darkness. Along with all the other great films he was in, clearly the man could act. Going to have to read his autobiography now.
The Ghost And The Darkness rules.
While I realize the title names the lions, this is still how I refer to Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas.
RIP, Ghost.
Spartan is another highly underrated movie starring Val.
100% this. An excellent movie that doesn’t get enough love.
I looked up his movies list and was surprised at how many of them I’d seen over the years. Criminal that he never got an Oscar or even a nomination.
I rewatched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang a couple of weeks ago. Time to dig into the catalog for the ones I’ve missed.
Check out Spartan. It’s a David Mamet movie, so might not appeal to everyone, but I still watch it again every couple of years
I think I saw it. Will check anyway.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is still one of my favourite films…….. I don’t go out a lot.
The man had taste in cars. RIP. Life really kicked the poor guy in the nads as he got older. Or the throat as the case may be.
Real Genius was a great movie – so funny (and a DS as the hero car – fabulous)! Top Gun, well, the volleyball scene was fun as a gayling. But I was very much team Rick Rossovich, not Kilmer or Cruise.. The less said about the recent one the better.
Top Secret is funnier than Airplane, and I love Airplane.
George (Is it cold in here?) Clooney was definitely in the worst Batman movie.
It’s one thing to steal a movie, but stealing a movie like Tombstone is quite a feat. “Poor soul, you were just too high strung”.
I saw “Tombstone” in the theater a week after it came out. Even without the subject matter – said to be the most accurate depiction of the actual events surrounding the shootout at the OK Corral ever put to screen at the time – I would have wanted to see that movie if you’d simply told me the cast. It read like a list of many of my favorite badass actors: Kurt Russell, Bill Paxton, Sam Elliott, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, a not-yet-famous Billy Bob Thornton, and even a cameo by Charlton by-God Heston.
That’s the murderers’ row of actors that Val Kilmer stole that movie from. Tied with “Some Like It Hot” as my second favorite movie of all time. One look at my profile photo will tell you number one. But although Doc Holliday definitely got the most great and quotable lines, for my money, the single most badass line in the entire movie comes from Wyatt Earp: “You die first, get it? Your friends might get me in a rush, but not before I make your head into a canoe. Do you understand?”
Real Genius. I remember being a kid watching the scene where Kent’s DS is reassembled in his dorm room, with the suspension rhythmically cycling up and down (this was truly a great sight gag). My dad, a car mechanic that worked at an import specialty garage, laughing and saying something about those weird green balls being the reason why the gag worked. One of those little moments that inspired a lifetime of interest in cars.
Ha – as an Alabama kid who had no clue what kind of car I was even looking at, I didn’t truly get the joke for another 20 years yet, after I found out what a Citroen was. I can confirm that it was plenty funny enough even if you had no idea about the suspension – instead of actually getting the joke, I marveled instead at what sort of robotics those nerds must have gotten up to under that car to make it do that.
But I’m still trying to figure out how they got it into the room.
“It’s a moral imperative”
“Self-realization. I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, “… I drank what?””
“You mean, like, right now, or…?”