Val Kilmer Was Always Sick
On the passing of an actor, and a cable movie staple
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Val Kilmer died on Tuesday at the age of 65, from pneumonia. He had been sick and ailing for years after developing throat cancer in 2015. To me, he had always been sick.
My seven-person family moved into a new house when I was something like ten years old. It was an upgrade in size, and with my oldest sister old enough to move out on her own, it shortly became massive. My other sister, now the oldest teen in the house, would get her own room, and the three sons, myself included, would trade in and out of the other two rooms: two sharing, one solitary.
As a burgeoning tech whiz, I discovered a port in my new bedroom that would allow us to have cable television in our room. In my mind, I was a mastermind of resourcefulness and inventiveness. In reality, my parents just indulged in their kid’s wants, and certainly had to pay more for equipment and service for that to happen. But in MY mind, I was a mastermind.
That bedroom, with south-facing windows and tons of sunlight, was where I started to become a cinephile. The Halloween Marathon on AMC, which would show a seasonally appropriate horror movie every single day in October, was where I discovered my first love of filmmakers, specifically John Carpenter. Seeing Halloween for the first time, even in bright daylight hours, was a terror, and a marvel. They played Halloween II the very next day. I was hooked on horror, and started to become hooked on the people who made movies with their bare hands.
Cable television was a feature film goldmine in the 2000’s. Access was exploding, and providers knew this was a surefire way to get viewers for their advertising partners, so they were buying in. The entire premise of one of the biggest movie podcasts on the earth, The Ringer’s The Rewatchables, is based on recounting how awesome all of the movies were that played on cable tv all day long, ones that you would always turn on when you scrolled past their names in your channel guide. The Disney channel would even premiere made-for-tv movies on Fridays, making ads that would play for weeks beforehand, leading to movie release parties in parents’ homes, family rooms packed with teenagers cramming pizza into their mouths and oozing hormones from their skin. It was personal power, movie magic, lifelong memories, all snaking through a wire coming out of the wall.
Tombstone was the first staple of cable tv rewatchables that I remember latching onto. I’ve seen the shootout scene 100 times, and that number is from tv offerings alone, not inflated by YouTube revisits. I don’t need to seek it out on YouTube for a dopamine hit, because it will be on TNT, or AMC, or Paramount’s tv channel whenever I need it. Providers seemed to quickly identify that Americans, almost certainly of the male identifying, loved throwing on a genre of films that is now referred to as Dudes Rock cinema. Dudes, typically with careers in upholding the law, fight against some ne'er-do-well who is threatening their community, their life, or their masculinity. Nothing gets Americans (read: men) more juiced up than putting down someone who’s wrong, and lifting up what we all know is “right”, and maybe reaping some relational benefits along the way.
But, to this day, I have never seen Tombstone from start to finish. I couldn’t tell you what the opening scene entails. I couldn't tell you what the plot of the movie is. Sentences after calling myself a cinephile, I can’t sit at this keyboard and tell you who wrote or directed the movie (it was directed by George P. Cosmatos, and written by Kevin Jarre. After looking this up, I can tell you nothing more about these men, because I have never heard of them before).
What I can tell you is that Kurt Russell’s neck looks way too skinny in that suit he wears; Sam Elliot’s mustache is way too big to be real (it’s real); it’s hard being a Real Man who Does Good; when hell comes, Kurt’s coming with it. And I can also tell you that nothing, and nobody, is going to keep Doc Holiday down.
I did not know Val Kilmer’s name, his background, his reputation, nor his oeuvre when I first saw his Doc Holiday. Nor did I know any of that when I saw his Doc Holiday again, and again, and again, and again. To me, it was a movie about gunslingers horsing around for their pride, while Doc hovers around the edges, and lords above them. While every other character thinks they’re the lead, telling guys to “skin that smoke wagon” and other such poppycockisms, Doc needs just to appear, and a hush falls over their room.
You know something is wrong with him the moment you see him. When you’re a kid, you think that people simply get “sick”, and die. I only learned that Doc has tuberculosis five seconds ago when I was looking at the movie’s Wikipedia, a disease that seems oversimplified and exaggerated as a kid, because it didn’t seem that complicated and yet so many people died from it. Turns out that it is still, somehow, impossibly, a problem.
I applaud and praise the makeup crew working on this film, because the color, texture, and saturation of Doc’s skin is sickening, and perfect. It is subtle at first, lingering around and in the eyes, and it steadily grows into a gaunt, pale, soaked ghost of a man. Beneath the color and the sweat are a pair of eyes that feel irrevocably damaged, soundly sad. Kilmer snipes and jabs and barbs his prey, impeccable verbal bravado slithering out from a frail, jagged shell of a body. He’s a shit, for sure. He drinks too much, he sleeps around, he insists upon himself. If you make the wrong move, or bring a hand against his friends, he’ll bring you to your knees before you can blink.
It’s a part written to impart grandeur, to replicate timeless cool-ness, to let an actor be a total badass. Kilmer knows this, and for a guy his age on the trajectory he’s on, he’d have been a fool to pass up the opportunity. What a lesser actor would have done is lean into the cool, the suave, the showmanship. Kilmer leans into the sickness, the shakiness, the pathetic stature of a dying man acting like he ain’t. He’s the only actor bringing real severity to the picture, save for Sam Elliot’s siren-call towards becoming a law-man again, and he sticks out like a welcomed thumb (why do thumbs always have to be sore?).
Kilmer’s was my first ever favorite performance. His detailed and considered work drew me in, revealing something different about a craft I otherwise hadn’t thought about at all. When cable is showing you Dudes Rock’ing every day and every night, you don’t find too much variance in portrayal or performance. But when Doc flashes his personal shot-glass like a pistol, or when he sheds his heavy coat, the one that is barely keeping him warm enough to stay conscious, to firmly brandish his rifle as he strides into action, you can feel, even at a young age, that there’s more than meets the eyes: with acting, with movie-making, and with this man playing Doc Holiday.
Kilmer would pop up here and there in my cineast life after Tombstone, though he would never grow into a star in my world, nor most people’s. His pairing with Shane Black’s acidic script in Kiss Kiss Band Bang was a heavenly match, Kilmer’s Gay Perry employing a wit and vinegar similar to Doc Holiday’s. His Batman, while perhaps the least successful of any bunch – George Clooney is paying me in mescal to not be mentioned in this sentence – was a good match for the other high-wire acting that surrounded him. Of course his Iceman in Top Gun was massive, sweaty, and iconic, and his final performance, in its long-awaited sequel Top Gun: Maverick, elevated the film to a humanity otherwise unmatched in modern blockbuster film-making. I am deeply grateful that his character, as well as his self, got a fitting cinematic send-off before his far-too-soon passing. But nothing would ever bump Doc Holiday from my head whenever Kilmer again graced the screen.
I threw on Tombstone not two months ago, lazing on my couch, wishing for something to latch onto. The shoot-out scene was coming soon, which meant I was staying on the ride. I was amazed at how, despite my years of loving and exploring how movies and art change for me over time, that this movie hasn’t budged. It delivers the same juice that it did twenty five years ago. And Kilmer still stands so tall, defying death in stubborn, beautiful fashion. It’s there, for me, that he will live on, long past my own life. He will grow more gaunt and pale, become less nimble, less energetic. It seems a bit cruel to have him live on only in sickness. But Val Kilmer was always sick, for me. That didn’t darken his spirits, or quiet his light, or keep him from living. Nothing, and nobody, is going to keep Doc Holiday down.
You can watch Tombstone on Hulu, or rent it wherever you get movies.
You can watch Kilmer’s 2021 documentary Val on Amazon Prime, or rent it wherever you get movies.