Val Kilmer Co-Stars recall pranks, parties and “artistic talent”

Val Kilmer jokes in his trailer on the set of Top Gun, pretending to make requirements in a pack of more cigarettes as if it were a phone and that he speaks to the boss of the studio.

“He wants more! More sex! No more drugs! More wine! More tobacco! More headache! More ulcers! More herpes! More women! And fewer Tom Cruise!”

The co-stars Rick Rossovich and Barry Tubb, also on a break to play elite hunting pilots in the film, are also in the trailer, laughing.

Rossovich, Aka Cruise’s on the Slider screen, is apparently the person who wants “more”. Wearing nuances but no shirt, he continues to pretend to throw a chair on the head of Kilmer, before jumping from the trailer in the sun and dancing.

Kilmer took his video camera everywhere to film behind the scenes and chose these snapshots of the carefree tomfoolerrie on the Top Gun set in 1985 as the opening plans of a documentary in 2021 on his life.

“He had the first video camera I have ever seen,” recalls Tubb, who played Wolfman. “They were so tired of telling him to turn him off on the set of Top Gun that they finally dropped.

“We had fun with that because we tried to catch everyone on the toilet with the video camera. It was our cotton. So there is a video somewhere from everyone with the door open on the toilet. We were traffic jams.”

He adds: “Cruise never dragged with us. It was all of us, with the exception of Cruise. He was active method like the lonely, and we were all in this beach hotel, leading motorcycles in corridors and things.”

And Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, “unlike some producers, organized parties every two evenings,” he said. “And so it was definitely in the air.”

Tubb is one of the many old co-stars who were affectionately remembered and its antics, following His death at the age of 65.

“He was the coolest cat I have ever met,” Tubb told BBC News. “Not only had large actor chops, but he was funny like hell.”

Top Gun was a breakthrough for Kilmer, who played Iceman, the Rival of Cruise’s Hotshot Maverick at the US Navy’s Academy for Elite Fighter Pilots.

On the screen, saving the United States from Soviet Mig Jets was a serious matter. Outside screen, turning in California and Nevada, things were less serious.

“As Sean Penn said one day, working in Hollywood is like being in high school with money,” said Tubb.

“I was 22 and I was the youngest in the group.

“We had an agreement that if one of us wanted to go to Mexico, we all had to go. And Val had his high school van, so we all got stuck in the Val van and went to Mexico for dinner.

“We were young and the ball test.”

Tubb whispered one of the famous lines in the film when the class watched a video of air dog fights: “It gives me a hard.”

This happened after playing a practical joke by changing the real band of the Academy’s VHS reader for a pornographic video.

“(The director) Tony Scott heard me say that and he said,” Continue that. We did things like that. We cut and had fun all the time. “”

Kilmer did not want to appear in the film, saying he was silly and he did not like his warmth.

At hearing, he “wore oversized Australian short films in nausea green” in order to withdraw producers, he wrote in his autobiography.

“I read the lines indifferently. And yet, surprisingly, I was told that I had the play.”

The script contained “very little” substance to the character of Iceman, he said in his documentary.

“So I tried to make it real. I demonstrated a background for him, where he had a father who ignored him and, therefore, was motivated by the need to be perfect in all points of view. This obsession with perfection is what made him so arrogant.”

He added that he “would deliberately play the rivalry between the character of Tom and mine out screen” as well as on.

“What ended up happening are the actors, like the real method, divided into two distinct camps.

“You had Maverick and Goose on the one hand, and Slider, Hollywood, Wolfman and I, Iceman, on the other.

“It was fun to play the conflict between our characters, but in reality, I have always thought of Tom as a friend, and we always supported each other.”

As a suite was finally shot in 2018 and 2019, Kilmer had suffered from throat cancer. He had a tracheotomy operation, affecting his voice and making the word difficult.

But Cruise was the one who insisted that Iceman should come back. The couple shared a very emotional scene as a character of Kilmer, now an admiral, typed part of the conversation on a screen, before sharing a hug.

“Cruise could not have been cooler,” said Kilmer. “Tom and I went where we stopped. The meeting felt good.”

Many actors had remained friends after the original film, says Tubb, and Rossovich’s house in the Hollywood Hills has become the “Top Gun Club House”.

“I remember going to Rick’s and they painted Rick’s cuisine, and Val got up on the refrigerator and was 20 minutes from a hamlet. Never missed a word.”

Kilmer was “an actor of the actors”, who lifted the bar for the rest of the distribution, says Tubb.

“He had a level of art that transcended the Hollywood standard.

“Val was a cool cat. In addition, he could save him. I remember seeing the film Doors and I just saw Jim Morrison.

“His ability to disappear in the characters was incredible. Same thing with Iceman.”

He adds: “Val, among his peers, was well loved. He became completely loaded.”

Kilmer’s love shone in the tributes of his colleagues actors.

Kelly McGillis, who played the romantic interest of Cruise Charlie and played with Kilmer in 1999 at first glance, told the BBC in a press release: “I need time to treat what Val meant in my walk here on Earth.

“It was an enigmatic presence sprinkled here and there throughout my trip. A force with depth and weight which will take some time to settle.

“There are so many feelings right now.

“Gratitude is the first.”

The English actor and dancer Will Kemp, who appeared alongside Kilmer in the film Slasher of 2004 Mindhunters, said that the news of his death was a “real shock”.

He remembers the way the star had made him comfortable and made him laugh with his “mean sense of humor” when he was a young nervous actor during his first production.

“I entered a kind of apprehension really because I had heard all kinds of rumors on the bad behavior possible on the set, and also it is this interim legend with which I grew up.

“But Val was really soft, fun, generous, but really, really unpredictable!”

His memories of his very first big scene will be forever linked to Kilmer.

“I have a very clear memory of the first scene that I shot which was in a helicopter, and we fly with (director) Renny Harlin shouting:” Why don’t we shoot? “”

“We are halfway through Take One, and Val – Totally not scripted – sort of a cheeseburger and nibbled with casualness.

“He turns to me and said:” Hey, everyone has fun? “”

“It made me breathe.”

Kemp, also known for his representation of the swan in the Swan Lake of Matthew Bourne, admitted that the methods of actor of kilmer on the set sometimes seemed “crazy” while at other times, there were “moments of absolute genius”.

He added: “He created so many emblematic characters and was a real enigmatic film star.”