RIP Val Kilmer - My Best Friend
/Val Kilmer – My Best Friend
When I woke up this morning, I was rudely greeted with a text from one of my oldest friends, Fat Tony, alerting me to the fact that Val Kilmer – my best friend, had died of pneumonia at the age of 65.
The story of how Val Kilmer became my best friend is one of my favorite tales to tell, but also one that I mostly keep to myself because it means so much to me. But now that Val is gone, it seems fitting to share the story in his honor.
The truth is that Val Kilmer was not really my best friend…but I did meet him and work with him once many, many moons ago.
The year was 1996, the place is New York City, and Val was doing promotional work for The Ghost and the Darkness, which he starred in with my uncle Michael Douglas. Ok…Michael Douglas isn’t my uncle either but you’ll understand the reference a bit later.
So Val Kilmer, who by this time had already given truly monumental performances in The Doors – as Jim Morrison, and Tombstone – as Doc Holliday, as well as superb supporting turns in Top Gun and Heat, and had starred as Batman, was doing the rounds trying to promote The Ghost and the Darkness, a movie about two lions in Africa that were hungry for human blood. (The Ghost and the Darkness is also where I learned that the most deadly animal in Africa is the hippo, and that hippos fart out of their mouth.)
On this promotional tour Val went to MTV to do an interview. Fat Tony, who has been my friend since we met in high school and once upon a time was my roommate in the big city, was working at MTV at the time and he came up with a little comedy bit to get me on the air with some celebrities. So Fat Tony called me up one day and said, “hey, you wanna do a scene with Val Kilmer?”
Needless to say, I said yes.
The next day I went to MTV and was sitting in my buddy’s dressing room and he was explaining the idea for the bit and also letting me know that everyone was really nervous about Val coming. You see, at this time Val Kilmer had the worst reputation of any actor of which I’ve ever heard. He was known in the industry as being very, very difficult…so much so that he was actually on the cover of Entertainment Weekly with the title “The Man Hollywood Loves to Hate”. Yikes.
Val’s reputation as a belligerent asshole was legend at this point, and the MTV staff were scared shitless of having to deal with him and prepared for an hour or so of eggshell ballet in order to just get the interview in the can and Val out the door.
Fat Tony and I didn’t know what to expect, and the producers at MTV were, out of fear, dead set against me doing my comedy bit with Val, but Fat Tony convinced them to leave it to him to ask Val if he was cool with it. I considered this a victory even though it seemed obvious that the petulant Val wouldn’t go for it.
Then there’s a big commotion and headsets buzzing and everyone at MTV is scrambling…the eagle has landed…Val is in the building. Val played both Jim Morrison and Elvis in different films and he set the MTV staffers into such a frenzy you’d think the real Jim Morrison AND Elvis had entered the building.
The tension was palpable in the building, but since I was with Fat Tony, a guy with whom I’d seen and survived a lot of dark and precarious situations – up to and including raging streetfights, I wasn’t nervous, just curious.
Then something remarkable happened…Val walked into the dressing room, looked Fat Tony and I in the eyes, introduced himself, shook our hands, sat down, and then just hung out bullshitting with us…for a few hours.
Much to our shock and delight, Val was just another dude who liked hanging out talking about movies, music, art, and all sorts of crazy shit.
At one point I chatted with him about the movie The Island of Dr. Moreau, which also came out in 1996. The movie was awful, and Val was the one who offered that assessment, but he talked about the joy and insanity of working with Marlon Brando on the film. His story of Brando just showing up one day covered in white pancake make-up and wearing a giant muumuu was hysterical and included a spot-on Brando impersonation.
Fat Tony and I then talked with him about The Ghost and the Darkness and how we used to tell girls that Val’s co-star on that film, Michael Douglas, was my uncle – which some people fell for because I had the most remote resemblance to him. Val laughed his ass off at that and then admitted he could see the resemblance…and then talked about similar pranks he pulled off as a younger man while at Julliard (none I’ll recount here).
The conversation with Val was wide-ranging and entirely engaging. He was just a good guy and he seemed to cherish the opportunity to talk to two regular dudes about regular dude stuff. Throughout the conversation he was gracious, charming, easy with a smile and a laugh, and persistently engaging and interested.
Towards the end of this rather magical few hours, Fat Tony very subtly brought up the idea of Val doing a comedy bit with me during the interview…and Val didn’t just go for it, he was excited by the idea, and we spent the next half hour or so talking about it and riffing about stuff we could do.
The conversation ran so long that producers got stressed because we were already way over time and so we cut the conversation short and had to shoot the interview. Val made it clear he didn’t care how late we ran…he was good to go.
So Fat Tony interviewed Val in the studio, and I set up out on the street for my “man on the street” question gag.
Then the time came for the bit and just as we had discussed previously, Val and I improvised a comedic question and answer thing, and he was awesome. He totally bought into the bit and he did his part with aplomb which made my part infinitely easier and we had a great time and then it was over.
The MTV people thought it was funny…Fat Tony thought it was funny…and Val thought it was funny. Success.
The interview then continued for a bit and I returned to the studio. When the interview ended Val could’ve just whisked off to the next thing but he didn’t. He made a beeline for me and he shook my hand and said “that was great”. I said “thanks for doing that, I really appreciate it”, and he replied, “any time brother”.
I then joked with him by saying “I don’t care what anybody says, I’ll work with you again”. He laughed, gave me a slight punch to the chest, and said amusingly, “and I appreciate that”.
After some more jocular conversation Val shook hands with Fat Tony and I and then went on his way with a smile. It is not hyperbolic for me to say that my interaction with Val Kilmer on this ultimately forgettable little comedy bit is, at least in my mind, the absolute apex of my rather abysmal acting career, and it’s all because Val Kilmer wasn’t just a great actor but a really good guy. Val didn’t just make my day by being so cool and kind and generous, he made my career. He was, without question, a bright light in this very dark world, and I am eternally grateful for his small act of acting kindness which remained illuminated through many a dark and dismal year.
HOLLYWOOD SIGNS
The “Val Kilmer is my best friend” joke between Fat Tony and I began on that day and whenever Val’s name came up in conversation it would always be preceded by “my best friend”.
Three or four years after my Val Kilmer scene, I was in Hollywood shooting a small movie. It was my first time in Los Angeles and I was actually staying on Fat Tony’s couch – he had moved there a few years earlier.
During my stay I went to a dinner with Fat Tony and a bunch of Hollywood producers…and I was in well over my head…and at one point the name Val Kilmer came up and I chimed in jokingly that “Val Kilmer is my best friend”…repeating the recurring joke between me and Fat Tony. Well…the funny thing was that this is Hollywood and I didn’t realize this but to everyone else in the room it was very possible that I actually WAS Val Kilmer’s best friend…so they didn’t get the joke…and Fat Tony – amusingly enough…left me out to dry and scramble through the conversation on my own.
Immediately after saying Val was my best friend, a pall came over the table and one of the producers spoke up and said to me in all seriousness that I “should talk to Val about his behavior…he’s got a bad reputation”. My response to this was to stifle a laugh and just look mockingly concerned and condescendingly say “is that right?”
The producer didn’t know I was joking – and didn’t get my sense of humor, so needless to say, after that dinner my reputation in Hollywood was just as bad as Val Kilmer’s, but at least the “Val Kilmer is my best friend” gag was still wholly intact and would remain so to this day.
DARK SYNCHRONICITY
Another oddity, or irony, or dark synchronicity, regarding my best friend Val Kilmer is that Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2015 or so, and went through years of brutal treatment which included surgery and chemotherapy which left him ultimately unable to speak clearly. My faux uncle Michael Douglas was diagnosed with the same cancer in 2010 and went through similar treatment, but came out of it more whole than Kilmer did. And here’s the topper…in 2011 my friend Fat Tony got the same exact cancer as Kilmer and Douglas and has gone through brutal treatment, including surgery and chemotherapy, for over a decade – he is thankfully cancer free today.
That Val Kilmer, Michael Douglas and Fat Tony, three people integral to that magical moment in my life those nearly thirty years ago, would all be stricken by such a particular, and particularly cruel, form of cancer, is something that has baffled and unnerved me for years.
THE BRILLIANCE AND THE BATTLEFIELD
I just happened to have watched both The Doors and Heat in the past week, and as always was captivated by Val’s brilliance. He was one of the more enigmatic actors of his age, and when he was locked in to a role with a great director, there was nothing he couldn’t do.
In many ways, Val Kilmer’s career is a conundrum…he was never as big or as famous or as accomplished as he should have been. Many will chalk that up to his “difficult” attitude…but I don’t, I chalk it up to Hollywood’s limited imagination and artistic ambivalence…and I chalk up his “difficult” reputation to small-minded, gossip-fueled company men who kissed up and kicked down and never gave a flying shit about artistry or what acting really is and what it means.
I think Val Kilmer never reached his full potential as a movie star was because he was an actor stuck in a movie star’s body. He was impossibly handsome and so Hollywood thought he should be a leading man, but Val’s soul was that of an actor, an artist, always searching for that ethereal and fleeting moment of artistic transcendence that drives all great artists.
There were times when he hit the sweet spot in a film where he was both movie star and actor…The Doors comes to mind. Kilmer’s performance as Jim Morrison is absolutely stunning. It is a work of great humanity, charisma and pathos. That Kilmer wasn’t at least nominated for Best Actor in 1991 for that film is a crime…and I believe he should have won the award. I think it is unquestionably true that Val Kilmer’s work as Jim Morrison is the best performance in film history to have not been nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award.
Another, less seen, film that I recommend is 1992’s Thunderheart, the story of an FBI agent sent to investigate murders on a Sioux reservation. In that film Kilmer gives one of the more layered, subtle and compelling leading man performances of the era.
Of course, the other films worth watching are Top Gun, where he brings the heat to his work as Ice Man, as well as his comedic early films Top Secret! And Real Genius, which show his silly side.
The 2021 documentary Val is another must-watch as it gives us a glimpse into Val’s lifebefore and after throat cancer, and it is very well-made and heart-breaking. The film, which I highly recommend, shows Kilmer to be much like he was with me in our brief time together back at MTV…engaging, interesting and interested.
And finally…no Val Kilmer film festival is complete without showing the true gems Heat, Tombstone, and Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang.
TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW
I never saw or spoke to Val Kilmer again after our little scene together at MTV oh so many years ago…but I never forgot what a cool guy he was, how kind he was, how adventurous he was, and how professional he was. He didn’t have to be any of those things to a nobody like me, but he was, and that says a great deal about him, his character, his artistry and his humanity.
I’d like to think that when I shuffle off this mortal coil, and head to the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns, that I will be greeted by, among others, a smiling Val Kilmer, who will give me a punch to the chest and say, “hey brother, you wanna do this scene with me?”
Yes Val, I do…in fact, it would be an absolute honor.
©2025