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Val Kilmer Gives Longest Reddit AMA Answers Ever

Val Kilmer is still alive. I feel like he was supposed to succumb to throat cancer months ago, but it takes a lot more than cancer to kill ‘Iceman.’

While Val may not be much of a talker nowadays, he can type just fine. As such, he participated in Reddit AMA. Here are the highlights:

On Top Gun 2:

hope so. Check out my OFFICIAL KILMER PROPAGANDA tee shirt at valkilmer.com just in case you wondered whether I was still loyal to the cause. And my wonderful niece just graduated Navel American Prep school with honors and is on her way to Annapolis so I have to represent! If they will have me. Perhaps if you dropped Paramount and Jerry Bruckheimer a note saying you would like to see me in my cool as ICE hairdo again.

Why does Kilmer have to fight so hard to potentially be in this movie? If they’re doing Top Gun 2, Kilmer is in it. It should be that simple.

On fighting cancer:

I am very grateful for all the prayers and good thoughts from around the world. People that know I am a Christian Scientist make the assumption that I have somehow endangered myself. But many many people have been healed by prayer throughout recorded history. And many many people have died by whatever was modern medicine. I had the honor of knowing Dr. Bernard Lown for example, a man who’s invention of the refribulator,(SP) never spell it right. The machine with the paddles that zaps people back into the world of the living… Probably responsible for bringing more people back from death than anyone in the 20th century, and I asked him what was the most important thing for a doctor to do when a patient fears for their life. He started to weep without his voice wavering and he leaned into me and said, “Fluff their pillow. That what I tell all the interns. LOVE. Love heals. More than any other skills, I urge them to LOVE the life they are entrusted to save.” Well thats what is at the heart of Mrs. Eddy’s understanding of the teachings of Jesus. He taught his students how to heal physical and mental challenges by understanding the immense power of love. I have seen people turn down love. I have turned it down myself when I was younger. I still had hearings thru relying solely on prayer, and came in went from a very challenging faith. And sometimes had hearings when I didn’t believe. It didn’t matter in Jesus’ day whether the patient believed. It doesn’t matter today. Love doesn’t care about our tiny human thoughts. Thats how I understand it anyway. I’ve probably tried to convince people when I was younger. I try to mind my own business now that I’m older. I also hope I never turn down Love again. It was an unspeakable sense of universal support while I was briefly in the hospital. Even 2 of my doctors mentioned praying with me, for me. Sometimes people are surprisingly mean about this sort of talk. Maybe they mix it up in their minds with extremists. People screaming with signs in front of Planned Parenthood or something. Thats not my sense of Christianity. Or most peoples regardless of their religion. Any more than a Muslim identified themselves with the madness of a suicide bomber spreading fear in the name of Allah…

As the husband of a chronically ill wife, I can say that love and prayer only get you so far. It’s a nice sentiment, though.

On playing Jim Morrison:

I had opera at Julliard, and a decade of SERIOUS vocal training to do Shakespeare, so I would go work with Michael Jacksons vocal coach in the morning proper vocal training to widen my range, then play him tapes of jim screaming and singing live. Drove my man insane. He would try to change it and I would always have to explain to him, “No this is the way we want it.” And every day for months I worked with Paul Rothchild the Doors only producer, and their engineer, recording whole albums of the DOORS. Our aim was to make it so good I might be able to have some songs done live in the film. one day I freaked Paul out so much he went outside and refused to work. he was red hot and wouldn’t look at me. eventually when he calmed down enough he said, “I don’t know who told you that story because I was the only one there…” It turned out the song Paul had put up I hated and didn’t want to record it, or at least not that day, and apparently what i said was so exactly what Jim had said to Paul when they were supposed to record it that he freaked out. It was too much for him. spooky. I tried to explain i wasnt acting its just how I felt about the song. so i went for a walk giving Paul a chance to regroup. when I came back i though of something to keep Paul animated and working and I rushed into the booth and said, “PUT UP THE END…” He quietly told me no, because I couldn’t sing the end. we got in a a mild fight and eventually he said he didn’t want me to get down about recording or my singing but he finally offered his trump card, “”Val, you can’t record it. No one can. Jim couldn’t even do it. He only recorded it once and thats whats on the record…” “Put up THE END… It’s all right.” So he did. And I nailed it. And Paul was weeping almost immediately so i had to look away but he added that extra emotion to my performance. I messed up in 2 places… When Paul could finally talk he whispered, “Val, I sweat to God, Jim blew 2 parts and we had to drop in to fix them. They are the same places in the song…” People have often spoken in a different kind of language about this particular performance, which i’ve always thought was because of Jim’s mythic interests and Oliver’s feeding that angle in the press. But any actor will tell you this kind of thing is what we do. That when you do your job, and really commit, and you are Lady Ophelia, you can really smell those flowers, and you really have memories of floating around that stage, right out of your mind… But its just the blessing of acting. It’s not possession, its just a reminder of what we all can do with our minds, if we are open, and willing. We can do anything. I can’t sing like Jim Morrison. He’s a baritone tenor. So is Elvis. Thats about it for rock and roll singers. But I sing every song live in that film. Except for some second of a scream Paul was particually attached to that Jim did, I think it was on WHEN THE MUSIC’S OVER. When the music’s over, yeah…

I’ll say this about Kilmer, you get your money’s worth with his answers.

How he made the armed forces his bitch while filming Heat:

Another Heat story… Well I have always been around guns. My father had to hunt for food before he was 10, and his mom, while his father was prospecting for gold in the wilderness of New Mexico. So I kept up shooting as an actor cause eventually you are gonna play a cop or a robber or Doc Holliday, so you better practice. Cause if you are gonna do something in a film, try to do something whtats never been done, even if you fail, the effort gets recorded. I got assigned the ar-15 carbine for the bank sequence of HEAT. lucky me. I’ve been shooting that weapon since the early 80’s cause thats the standard the m-16 same guts, as was used in Vietnenam and I was BLEEDING to be the lead for Stanley Kubrick in FULL METAL JACKET. one day I will post my audition tape I made for the great one, where I break down, clean and rebuild the weapon without every looking at it. I wanted Kubrick to remember me. He did, enough to delay casting for 3 months I have been told, but not enough to get the role… Well I was able to change mags in the shoot our scene faster than the armed forces require their boys to in training. I have been told this several times by guys that say there were there and yelled at because a little pansy actor just kicked their butt. So that was fun.
I also literally ran to my dressing room and ran to my car, to get my hair dyed the day I wrapped BATMAN FOREVER at Warners in the valley to somewhere over the hill, so I could film THE NEXT DAY in HEAT. That was amazing. But Bob had been flying in from Vegas every weekend to rehearse while he was filming CASINO

On gaining weight and Jennifer Lawrence:

I KNOW. My moms hair still goes down to her eyebrows! check out her pic on my Facebook which I think is @valkilmer…
It’s harder as you get older but so is everything! hahaha. I gained a lot of weight to play King Philip for Oliver Stone in ALEXANDER. That took forever to lose after and people made fun of me for a long time. (Jennifer Lawrence I’ll get you back just you wait…)

This is in reference to Jennifer Lawrence saying, “In Hollywood, I’m obese. I’m considered a fat actress, I’m Val Kilmer in that one picture on the beach.”

And suddenly, Jennifer Lawrence vs. Val Kilmer is the Hollywood feud that I have always wanted.

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