Hail And Farewell To Val Kilmer

The C&I crew is sending thoughts and prayers out to the family, friends, and many fans of Val Kilmer, the unforgettable Doc Holliday of Tombstone and the flamboyant Caped Crusader of Batman Forever, who passed away Tuesday in Los Angeles at age 65.

Kilmer, whose other major movie roles included legendary rock star Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s The Doors, a cocksure fighter pilot nicknamed Iceman in Tony Scott’s Top Gun, an FBI agent with Sioux heritage in Michael Apted’s Thunderheart, and a Special Ops officer charged with finding and saving a U.S. President’s kidnapped daughter in David Mamet’s Spartan, had been battling throat cancer in recent years. According to The New York Times, however, his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, announced that her father had died of pneumonia.

Jack Kilmer, Val Kilmer's son, provided the narration for Val, the acclaimed 2021 biographical documentary culled from hundreds of hours of video his father recorded throughout his career. (Jack read his father’s words, as Val had lost his natural speaking voice due to throat cancer treatment.) Variety described the film as “a revealing look at the sets he worked on and showing the actor to be an introspective thinker with an artist’s soul.”

C&I's Dana Joseph added: “In Val, Kilmer might be curating his legacy before someone else does less favorably. But even if that’s the case, Val is indeed a good and heartfelt movie.”

Val Kilmer was one of the few very actors credited with playing both Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp on screen. In 2012, nearly two decades after the release of Tombstone, he portrayed the fabled lawman as a lion in winter, recounting his early adventures for an inquisitive reporter in the direct-to-video Wyatt Earp’s Revenge. (Actor Shawn Roberts played the younger Earp in flashbacks, while Trace Adkins was cast as the protective father of outlaw brothers.)

In his 2020 autobiography I’m Your Huckleberry, Kilmer traced his fascination with western films all the way back to his appearance in the title role of a well-regarded 1989 film produced for the TNT network.

“I’m proud of the work I did on Billy the Kid,” he wrote, “ a made-for-TV western written by Gore Vidal, the towering member of the literati. In thinking about the role, I may have had in mind Brando’s Kid Rio, the hero of the only movie Marlon ever directed, One Eyed Jacks.

“That film was made when I was an infant. When I was an adult and Brando’s friend, he told me that at some point every film actor must make a western. When I asked him why, he answered with his famous half smile and the words, ‘You know damn well why.’”

“I presume the why has to do with basic Americanism. One way or the other, Americans have to deal with the West and its glorious, sordid, and sadistic past. Marlon knew that the West represents both our territorial salvation and our mortal sin, our gain and our greed. We fought lawlessness to create an even more lawless law, one that excused and perpetuated genocide. Even today, this gun-obsessed nation that we love remains enmired in a dilemma centered on pistols and rifles with romantic ties to our murderous past. We love westerns. We learn everything from westerns and yet learn nothing from them.”

Kilmer repeatedly gave Kurt Russell, the straight-shooting Wyatt Earp of Tombstone, full credit for keeping that film afloat during its tumultuous production.

“Kurt is solely responsible for Tombstone’s success, no question,” he wrote on his website in 2017, later adding in autobiography: “I cherish the experience of working with Kurt, whom I love like a brother. When the Academy widens their awards to include something like the lifetime achievement award for Best, Most Unique, Lovely Person for Decades in a Row, if Kurt isn’t the first recipient, I’ll eat my Doc Holliday hat. The film has a cult following, as does my beloved Doc.”

And what about Doc Holliday?

“In trying to understand the character of Doc Holliday,” Kilmer wrote in I’m Your Huckleberry, “it’s important to remember he’s a fallen aristocrat, frustrated by his inability to express his authentic self. His greatest retribution for this loss was his caustic wit. His tongue is more lethal than his pistol.

“Throughout the drama, he’s dying of both drink and tuberculosis. In playing him, I thought of what my dear friend the great screenplay writer Robert Towne had taught me: all insightful dialogue comes out of situations, not predeveloped thought. In that regard, I saw Doc’s situation as dire. I also saw his action as defiance in the face of death. I loved him.”

Kilmer’s resume also included everything from broad comedy (Top Secret!) to enchanting fantasy (Willow), action thrillers (The Saint) to neo-noir crime stories (The Salton Sea), caper comedies (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) to genre spoofs (MacGruber). And more westerns, ranging from Ron Howard’s The Missing (2003) to Michael Feifer’s A Soldier’s Revenge (2020).

Many of Kilmer’s past collaborators spoke admiringly and affectionately about Kilmer after hearing of the actor’s passing.

Michael Mann, who directed Kilmer in the enduringly popular 1995 crime drama Heat, told The Hollywood Reporter: “While working with Val on Heat I always marveled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Val’s possessing and expressing character. After so many years of Val battling disease and maintaining his spirit, this is tremendously sad news.”

Frances Ford Coppola, who cast Kilmer as a struggling novelist who uncovers a small town’s dark secrets in Twixt (2011), posted on Instagram: “Val Kilmer was the most talented actor when in his High School, and that talent only grew greater throughout his life. He was a wonderful person to work with and a joy to know — I will always remember him.”

Film critic Richard Roeper spoke for millions of fans as he posted a respectful tribute to the man and his movies:  “Val Kilmer should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Tombstone and for Heat. He was a brilliant presence in some of the most enduring films of his generation. Rest well. Thank you for the incredible work.”