Val Kilmer (1959 - 2025)

I watched Tombstone at work last week over the course of four lunch breaks. Night shift in the break room. A guy wanted to watch it, and another guy played it off of his phone to the television. It’s a great movie, the ultimate Dad flick. I hadn’t seen Tombstone since childhood, and had forgotten most of its story. It’s a romantic and violent Western in which every single person acting in every scene makes complete sense and fits into their expected roles. Except Val Kilmer.

Anytime Kilmer appeared as the ailing Doc Holiday, the entire movie shifted tone. His performance drew you in. Some people on their phones would put their phones down when Kilmer came into frame. As I ate my lunch, as we all sat silent in the breakroom watching the kind of movie that they truly “don’t make anymore,” I thought to myself, “Val Kilmer is different.”

And he is. Was. Was. I’ve just read the Val Kilmer passed away due to pneumonia at the age of 65. Sad. Too young. You think sixty five is old until you don’t. If you’re lucky.

Kilmer’s performance as Doc Holiday was so strange. The swagger, the meta commentary, the charisma- it’s almost like he’s taken from an odder, artier film and placed into a leading (second)man role. The lancer.

This was always the tension of Val Kilmer the actor and Val Kilmer the movie star. A beautiful man, he was cursed with good looks that veiled an inherent eccentricity that only became more clear the more we learned about him. He was a weirdo method actor with the face of a leading man and was punished by the industry for it. He shared traits with his generational predecessor and one-time costar Marlon Brando: Onset feuds, a tense relationship with fame while devoted to the art form, and legendary weight gain, that psychic attack on ones own allure by means on savage eating. His devout belief in the religion of Christian Science were real, away from celebrity trends. He spent a great deal of his later life painting. He was pretty good.

He was one of the last movie stars, when Hollywood still made such a thing, and there’s an entire generations of people that will be processing this news. I was shocked reading the headline.

Why?

There is a part of any reasonable adult that dismisses such adulation as mindless celebrity worship, false idolatry, a kind of meaningless distraction from the real world at hand. Kilmer was just some actor who stopped acting. He was just like anybody. He was some guy.

But that’s the rational part of the mind, the part that sees through everything but can’t see anything at all. On a certain level, yes, of course, Val Kilmer was some guy, but back when movie stars roamed the Earth, before their stupid social media accounts and attempts at normalcy, before the collusion of brand and human reached the ultimate peak with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Ryan Reynolds, and long ago when visual entertainment was confined primarily to movies and television shows, Val Kilmer was the man. He was cooler than a 30th century man. He was Val Kilmer. We watched him in movie theaters and on VHS and we knew nothing about this guy beyond the fact that this guy was made to be a star and legend, because he was a generational talent who could do his job better than anyone. He was the real deal.

So to the cynics, the same people who know one thing about John Lennon, I say, Bah. Val Kilmer was Batman. He was The Saint. He was Iceman. He was Doc Holiday. He was Jim Morrison. He was Chris in Heat, looking more stylish than anyone has ever looked. There will never be another one like him. We’re lucky we ever got to see him at all.

Thanks, Val, for everything.