The Iceman has vanished into the sky

I, like many of my generations, met Val Kilmer as the cocky fighterpilot with a shit-eating grin in a movie full of cocky fighter pilots with shit-eating grins. No matter what else he played, Kilmer was always gonna be Iceman for folks roughly my age. 

Val Kilmer had the Montgomery Cllift dilemma. A self-professed serious actor blessed (or cursed) with movie star looks, he was cast in Blokbuster upon planned Blockbuster instead. Obviously he wasn't a real victim in this, because he gladly took the money and the fame. Had he really wanted to seek out indie roles in serious films, he probably could hav, especially after the Sundance/filmbrat revolution of the early to mid-90s. The one related film was Tony Scott's True Romance, a glossed up take on Tarantino in which Kilmer shows up for about three minutes tops as The Mentor, an imaginary Elvis figure giving advice to Christian Slater's lead character, and is never seen fully, only n reflections, half shadows, silhouette etc. A nice, self-effacing turn from a guy who wasn't about to efface himself, even if it was for serious roles. 

He did had a number of good roles in good to great films. He was really good playing a conflicted cop with Native American heritage in Thunderheart, Doc Holiday in Tombstone and one of De Niro's gangster crew members in Michael Mann's Heat. Those were probably the best years of Kilmer, but he had late career highlights in the modestly distributed and thus little-seen The Salton Sea and an extremely fun turn opposite Robert Downey Jr. in Shane Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. 

A throat cancer diagnosed in 2015 and its subsequent treatments damaged his voca chords irreparably and robbed him of his voice. Kilmer spent the following years asssembling memoirs, the book I'm Your Huckleberry and the autobiographic documentary Val. Fittingly, though, the last memory of him that most of us have, was in a reprisal of his first key role. Top Gun: Maverick was easily one of the best of the lecacyquels that became popular around the time, and Tom Cruise insisted that Kilmer have a short appearance in it. 

It was time to let go. Thank you, Ice, for everything.   

R.I.P. Val Kilmer, 1959 - 2025

Today's download is a little mixtape I made right after seeing Top Gun: Maverick, mixing the film's signature songs with the unreleased score from Hans Zimmer and some dialogue. Top Gun's music, 80s cheese, and all, will always be my wingman. And it can be yours, too...