Reflections on Val Kilmer and personal tech journeys

I decided I'm still in the mood to record, so this is me walking literally 20 meters and deciding that I'm gonna record something again.

One of my voice note topics, I keep it in a little note-taking app called Standard Notes. It's a fantastic voice, not voice, note-taking app.

Encrypted, and you can use it across multiple devices, sync to multiple devices. I put all my topics in there to remind me of what I wanted to talk about today.

Or in this voice note, I wanna give you a little bit of a film recommendation. It's a documentary called Val from 2001, I think. No, 2021? It can't be 2001, I think it's 2021.

And it's a documentary, kind of video blogger, vlogger-style video. Lots of like personal home video from all of his life of a guy called Val Kilmer. Val Kilmer was an actor from America, California, I think, West Coast.

And I discovered Val Kilmer as a fairly young, in my 20s, I can't remember where I was in my 20s, maybe 24, somewhere around 25.

And it was a film called Real Genius, which was released in 1985, I believe. And it just was one of those films that was stupid, funny, comedy, kind of like technological.

And it kind of came at the right time for me growing up because I was obsessed with like Spectrums and Amstrads and Commodore 64s, all of the personal computers that we had on our desks, which actually was a big thing in England versus the US, I think.

I think we kind of had the personal computer before the majority of countries. We had Sinclair, Clive Sinclair with his Spectrum and that ridiculous C5 death machine he made that you could go on the road with.

So I feel very lucky, entitled, whatever the word may be, to have access to personal computers, technology when I was a kid. And I went through so many of them. I had the Spectrum.

I know I had the ZX80, the 81, the Spectrum 48, the 128 with the micro drive, the tape drive, Commodore, Commodore 64, Amstrad, Amiga 500s, I had a couple of those. You know, like I just had so much access to technology.

And that film specifically, Real Genius, which if you haven't seen that either, it probably doesn't stand up now, but I loved it. It was about this team of kind of MIT level nerds, geeks who were like really good at science and technology.

And they ended up working on this kind of laser project. And in the end of it, I don't want to spoil it too much for you if you haven't seen it, but in the end it kind of takes a bad turn.

And, you know, like they managed to turn it around and it turns into a feel-good movie. But it was one of those signature movies that really for me put Val Kilmer on the map because he was just so quirky.

And then Val obviously ended up being Iceman in Top Gun and just so many other movies that he did. The film is a documentary about his life. All these little video clips that he did, he recorded everything on video VHS tapes.

And I guess he was in the realm of very early video bloggers really. People who were into film and decided who were actors and had the money to get the latest Sony Handycam or whatever. And he documented so much.

And the documentary actually brought me to tears because it was a reminder of all the stuff that I used to record as a vlogger in my early days. I used to record everything with me and Ella when we were everywhere.

You know, Ella with a camera, I used to show her how to use a camera and she would used to be fascinated as to where the picture goes and video in general and then being able to play it back.

And I've got a really interesting story there actually. In the pandemic, I couldn't work out why my videos were doing so well. And it was actually my daughter had been watching the whole back catalog and it ended up with Ella actually getting me into the creator fund or whatever the thing was because she'd watched so much of this content because, you know, we couldn't see each other at a time and it was basically like losing your parent.

You know, you haven't seen them for years because of the pandemic.

And so this is just a massive crossover there for me. And it's definitely a film that you should check out because Val Kilmer had such an incredible life.

He did so many incredible films and absolutely incredible person and for him to record all that content and, you know, like it left a legacy to his daughter had a daughter and also a son and at one point had five, I think it's five thousand acres in Mexico, New Mexico.

But if you're looking for like a feel-good movie or to remind yourself of what a life looks like, a life well-lived looks like, definitely watch this biography of Val Kilmer just called Val and I think you can watch it on Amazon Prime or something like that.

Yeah, and obviously the, sorry to say this, but the reason why I did eventually put it to the top of the list to watch is that he died recently. He had throat cancer at one point and that was really, really bad.

I don't know what happened to him, why he died and if it was because of that throat cancer or like some other thing that happened to him. I didn't really look into that. I just saw the news that he passed away at 65 or whatever the age was that he'd passed away.

And as is the case, you know, I tend to, people tend to listen to more music or they tend to like watch more of the videos or more of the content. And so that was that.

Yeah, a really good film, a lot of emotion from it and it's definitely something that I would recommend to anybody who remembers the 80s or 80s films or is interested in technology or remembers a bunch of his films.

There's a bunch of stuff that I haven't watched of his which I've got lined up to watch at some point.

All right, I will catch up with you soon and I hope you have a great day wherever you are when you get to watch that.