Val Kilmer has neighbors riled

[mix]

Tapia counts himself among a sizable number of local residents offended by comments Kilmer allegedly made in a 2003 Rolling Stone interview.

That story quoted Kilmer as saying he lives "in the homicide capital of the Southwest" and keeps a gun in his vehicle. According to the magazine, Kilmer added, "Eighty percent of the people in my county are drunk."

The actor says he was misquoted.

More controversy followed in 2005, when Kilmer said in an Esquire interview that as an actor he had a better emotional grasp of violence than soldiers who had fought in Vietnam.

"A guy who's lived through the horror of Vietnam has not spent his life preparing his mind for it," he told the magazine. "He's some punk. Most guys were borderline criminal or poor, and that's why they got sent to Vietnam."

Said Tapia: "The incitement that he's creating is going to get him into trouble."

Civil rights activist Larry Hill, himself a Vietnam veteran, said that last year local people unsuccessfully sought a meeting.

"He called us a bunch of borrachos ," Hill said, referring to the Rolling Stone article.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-val-kilmer-20100606,0,7613880,print.story

Rowe, NM is in the Pecos Valley, just south of the Pecos village where I live. Jane Fonda, another valley resident, is not very popular either due to her opposition to the Vietnam War. There are many veterans of that conflict here.

[Taverner]

1. Hell, I'd be pissed if I were a Vietnam Vet

[mix]

4. I try to understand both sides as best as I can.

But I have always been against the war.

[Taverner]

5. Either way, it was Val saying he had a harsher experience than them

[mix]

6. I was talking about Jane Fonda and the vets in the Pecos valley.

But you are right about Kilmer's remarks about vets being way across the line, fucking rude in fact.

[pinboy3niner]

11. Not just vets--he also disparaged his community, his neighbors and poor people

He claims he was misquoted about his community and his neighbors, but appears not to be concerned about the rest.

He sounds like a wannabe Rambo who thinks he knows MORE about war than combat veterans who've EXPERIENCED it because he play-acted a method acting exercise in his head. And with a supreme sense of his own superiority, he dismisses VN vets, whom he finds inferior because, in his all-knowing assessment, they were guilty of being poor, or "borderline criminal" (whatever THAT means--NOT criminal, but guilty ANYWAY?). He doesn't have a CLUE.

I pity this guy. And I wonder: Would anybody pay any attention at all to the nonsense he spews if he were not a "celebrity"?

[Ken Burch]

2. This probably tells us why Val didn't run for governor of New Mexico this year.

Normally, if you want to get elected in some locality, you need to at least SOUND as if you like the place.

[Shadow Creature]

3. wow

People are going nuts all over the place

[hlthe2b]

7. well, while holding out the possibility he was misquoted...

(badly) and seriously taken out of context, it does seem like VK is a major ass.

[MichiganVote]

9. Actually he really is a major ass..and not just for these remarks.

He has stayed at a hotel that my son once worked for. Guys a pig. Friendly, but just another self absorbed Hollywood pig.

[Yeahyeah]

8. Overcompensating for the "Val" thing?

[bluestateguy]

10. Very elitist comments

I reject and denounce them.