RIP Val Kilmer

As you know we here at PHTV besides posting our own strange world love to comment on the world around us and we would be making a huge mistake not paying tribute to Val Kilmer.

Christmas of 1993 I remember heading to the movies. Now at this time, I like many school kids, tried to watch just about every movie that came out. I was obsessed and tried to see every movie every genre and this day a western was out and myself and a couple of buddies went and seen it. I saw that movie 5 times in the first month it was out. That movie was Tombstone and a big part of it was the Doc Holliday character played by Val Kilmer.

I like many knew Val as Iceman from Top Gun, but this was a role he could really sink his teeth into. Every scene he did I was watching to see what he did to steal the scene. Even to this day I couldn't tell you whether it was because he had the best lines or made the lines he had the best. It goes up there with Heath Ledger's Joker as what a great actor can do with a character to make film. The scripts can make a character, the director's vision can make a character, but it is the actor who breaths life into the actor and makes it a real person. People still quote Doc Holliday to this day decades after the film came out.

I would recommend the documentary Val that came out a few years ago and is on Amazon Prime at the moment for anybody who was a fan of him in Tombstone or as Jim Morrison in The Doors, or even as Batman. He put this together with his son after he lost his ability to speak after throat cancer. It is sad that someone who needs their voice to do what their calling was had that ability taken away, but for years he filmed his life and was able to show it and through his son's voice, tell his life story in this documentary.

He was able to hang on long enough to show up in the Top Gun Maverick movie and put a bow on the Iceman character, which now feels more satisfying.

Even though it seems like PHTV may put together goofy material there is a real effort to bring life to its characters and we owe this to actors like Val Kilmer.

RIP