Talk about arrogance!

Courtesy of Labrat, of the Atomic Nerds, we learn of Val Kilmer's possible ambition to run for the post of Governor of New Mexico.

That's fine and dandy, of course: he's as much right to run for public office as anyone else. What made me sit up and take notice was an interview with him which she excerpted. I've given a bit more of it below.

The conversation evolves into a meditation on the emotional toll that acting takes on the artist. I ask him about the "toll" that he felt while making the 1993 western Tombstone. He starts talking about things that happened to Doc Holliday. I say, "No, no, you must have misunderstood me. I want to know about the toll it took on you." He says, "I know, I'm talking about those feelings." And this is the conversation that follows:

[Interviewer] You mean you think you literally had the same experience as Doc Holliday?

[Kilmer] Oh, sure. It's not like I believed that I shot somebody, but I absolutely know what it feels like to pull the trigger and take someone's life.

[Interviewer] You understand how it feels to shoot someone as much as a person who has actually committed a murder?

[Kilmer] I understand it more. It's an actor's job. A guy who's lived through the horror of Vietnam has not spent his life preparing his mind for it. He's some punk. Most guys were borderline criminal or poor, and that's why they got sent to Vietnam. It was all the poor, wretched kids who got beat up by their dads, guys who didn't get on the football team, couldn't finagle a scholarship. They didn't have the emotional equipment to handle that experience. But this is what an actor trains to do. I can more effectively represent that kid in Vietnam than a guy who was there.

[Interviewer] I don't question that you can more effectively represent it, but that's not the same thing. If you were talking to someone who's in prison for murder and the guy said, "Man, it really fucks you up to kill another person," do you think you could reasonably say, "I completely know what you're talking about"?

[Kilmer] Oh yeah. I'd know what he's talking about.

[Interviewer] Let's say someone made a movie about you--Val Kilmer--and they cast Jude Law in the lead role. By your logic, wouldn't this mean that Jude Law--if he succeeded in the role--would therefore understand what it means to be Val Kilmer more than you do?

[Kilmer] No, because I'm an actor. The people in those other circumstances don't have the self-knowledge.

Excuse me while I get up and walk around a bit, till the blood stops pounding in my head . . .

The sheer, unmitigated arrogance of the man! The blind, unthinking stupidity! Just who the hell does Mr. Kilmer think he is? God???

In the first place, he's way off-base about those who served in Vietnam. Sure, there were plenty of the type he describes: but there were also plenty of others, ordinary Americans who answered their country's call to serve. It's a liberal myth that those who went to Vietnam were only the poor and underprivileged class who couldn't get out of it. (That, of course, is a pretty good explanation of why so few liberals went there . . . ) Read the many excellent (and sometimes extraordinary) accounts of Vietnam from those who served there. They give the lie to this long-standing left-wing calumny.

In the second place, Mr. Kilmer, I'm here to tell you: no amount of actor's analysis or self-awareness will prepare you for the reality of taking someone else's life in close combat. Ask any combat veteran who's been there and done that. It's nothing for which you can prepare yourself. The reality is more stark and violent and gut-wrenching than anything you can imagine. It gets easier over time, as you kill more and more: but the reality of it never leaves you - unless you become a homicidal psychopath, of course. Very few do, and they tend not to survive.

The only remotely comparable analogy in civilian life to which I can compare it, is sex. One can read all about sex, and become an expert in the 'plumbing', so to speak: one can even watch a movie and get some idea of what it's about . . . but the reality is so different from words that one can't possibly understand sex until one's experienced it. Afterwards, one sees the subject in a whole new light. Killing is like that, too.

My war wasn't in South-East Asia, but was just as long-drawn-out and bloody. It's an experience I wish I could have foregone, thank you very much. However, it happened, and it's changed me forever.

The last idiot narcissist person I want as the Governor of any State is an actor who thinks that his capacity to analyze, and use his 'self-knowledge', gives him the ability to understand what others feel in the gravest extreme of life's most difficult circumstances. Such a person is deluding and defrauding himself, and would end up doing the same - if not worse - to those he serves.

Although, come to think of it, that pretty much describes all too many of our politicians, doesn't it?

*Sigh*

Peter