Board 8 > Today, I Learned the Truth About "I Cannot Sanction Your Buffoonery"

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As many of you know, I manage a comic and game shop. From time to time, I get some interesting characters in the shop, whether it be a low-level writer or artist, an MtG card artist, etc. Today, however, a man in his mid-50s wandered into my shop, just sort of looking around. I got to talking to him, and I learned he was one of the stuntmen in Batman Forever. He was specifically a thug under the employ of Two-Face, and he appeared in five different action sequences in the movies (for moments apiece).

He had developed a working relationship with Joel Schumacher as well as Tommy Lee Jones stretching back two years beforehand; he had also appeared in a small role in The Client. Schumacher invited him to work on Batman Forever, and he was chatting to me about his work in the movie since I pressed him on it, being the comic and movie nerd that I am. He was on set for about five weeks for Batman Forever, and he was telling me about the individual actors and his few encounters with them (aside from Tommy Lee Jones, where he actually knew him and chatted him up frequently).

All of this is preface to say this: at one point I said, "You know, there's a really famous story that Jones didn't get along with Carrey." This guy laughed and said, "Yeah, Tommy was not a happy camper when it came to Carrey." I didn't press him about the line, but here's roughly what he told me:

"When Carrey came in, everyone was told not to talk to him, not to look at him. Just keep our distance. We were all being told that Carrey was becoming the biggest star in Hollywood thanks to this, that he was the first star to get paid $20 million for a single movie. Tommy didn't say anything in particular to me, but he grunted at the mention of Carrey being paid such a big amount. Carrey came in and it was actually the opposite of what the producers told us. Carrey was very genial-like, he talked to everyone, he was always trying to make you laugh off-screen. I had a great conversation with him because I was from Memphis and I got this job because Schumacher had seen me do my Elvis act, so Carrey said, 'I heard you're the Memphis guy!' We had a great conversation. He loved Elvis.

But Tommy thought Jim was unprofessional, that he slowed down filming, that he distracted everybody. And I remember once on The Client, I tried to say good morning to Tommy right before he was gonna film one of his big scenes. He was pacing up and down, reciting his lines out loud. When I stepped into his view and spoke, he held up a finger and he just shot me a glance, it was deadly. 'Don't even think it.' So I knew Tommy took things very seriously on set. I know that I was in commissary, and I got called out for a wardrobe change. Everyone else had these sleeveless leather jackets, but I was being 'upgraded' to a sleeved jacket because my arms were skinnier than everyone else's. On my way there, I saw Tommy and we chatted while I waited for my fitting. And I'll never forget it, I mentioned that I had finally run into Jim, and he actually stopped me and said, "I hate that man." He actually said that to me.

But actually, the biggest diva on the set was Val Kilmer."

Anyways, I thought I would share with you my brush with buffoonery today!
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Freaking Val Kilmer.
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The truth comes out: Tommy Lee Jones was just projecting his own buffoonery onto Jim Carrey all along.
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I really thought this was just gonna be copypasta but I am glad I read it
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Tom Bombadil posted...

I really thought this was just gonna be copypasta but I am glad I read it

I don't know why I find the saga of Carrey and Jones so entertaining, but because I did, today was like one of my all-time favorite days at work. Glad you enjoyed it!
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Wow nice read. Thanks for sharing.
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Damn that's a great story! I love how the behind-the-scenes of Batman Forever is so much more interesting than the movie itself.
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Snake5555555555 posted...

Damn that's a great story! I love how the behind-the-scenes of Batman Forever is so much more interesting than the movie itself.

Yeah, it sounded like it. His Val Kilmer story was actually more interesting than the Tommy-Jim one, but I thought I owed it to the board to learn more unfiltered truth about The Buffoonering.
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I'm glad to be alive today
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I want to hear the Val Kilmer story now too!
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Underleveled posted...

Wow nice read. Thanks for sharing.

I think you were the one who posted about this first on Board 8!
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trdl23 posted...

I want to hear the Val Kilmer story now too!

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trdl23 posted...

I want to hear the Val Kilmer story now too!

I'll try to transcribe it as best as I can:

One of the first action scenes we filmed was the gang versus Batman, and we prepped it for five days. The stunt coordinator said, "Val will be here, Val is coming." And for five days we worked with his stand-in. But Val was supposed to be in the scene. I don't know if he was working on it somewhere else, but we were in the actual scene, and he never showed up. Until the day of filming.

Now there's this moment in the scene, you can watch, where he delivers this big booted kick to a thug's chest. And the thug goes off-screen and that's their entire spot in the fight. That was me; when Val came in to work, we weren't going to have many opportunities to shoot and reshoot for this scene. Val, to his credit, he goes for the kick just like the rest of us and practiced, but he takes those huge boots and he just crushes my chest and I go flying off-screen for real. And I'm gasping and wheezing for air during the rest of the take. I got a massive bruise on my chest that was probably there for a month or six weeks. The scene finishes shooting, Kilmer walks off. Everyone is just sort of surprised because he clearly knocked the wind out of me and he didn't even give a courtesy apology. I was supposed to land on the bag, but he had kicked me so hard that I went over it, and I hit the floor. I wasn't seriously injured, but it's one of those situations where you are expected to actually say something afterwards. Like a week later, I'm standing on set and Val is talking to the stunt coordinator next to me. The coordinator is explaining the scene and he's like stressing that Val needs to be sure he does the practice runs of this stunt because he's already beaten up two of the stuntmen. And Val acts surprised, like he's done nothing wrong. And the stunt guy sort of pull the top of my shirt down a little and shows the top of this massive bruise. Val just sort of shoots the coordinator a glare and walks away.

And this kind of circulates for the week. He'd been in a really bad mood because word I think had gotten to him about Jim. Jim's salary, man, everyone was mad about it. Val thought he was the star. He was Batman, he was the guy in the title, so why was all the buzz about Carrey and Tommy? He didn't leave his trailer that much. I think he expected the movie to be one thing and it ended up being another for him.

He did apologize to me eventually. He came up to me in the Bat-suit, actually. And he has these raccoon eyes from the make-up under the mask, but the mask had to be taken off all the time because it was just so uncomfortable. Anyways, we were headed to a lunch break during a scene and eventually did apologize about knocking me on my ass."
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JonThePenguin posted...

trdl23 posted...

I want to hear the Val Kilmer story now too!

Yes that is quite a tease.

Awesome stories, holy crap! It's so amazing what you can hear if you just happen to bump in to the right person. Thanks for sharing!
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Wow, great topic!
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Xiahou Shake posted...

Awesome stories, holy crap! It's so amazing what you can hear if you just happen to bump in to the right person. Thanks for sharing!

Ngamer64 posted...

Wow, great topic!

Thanks!
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Those were both great stories. Thanks for sharing.

Best topic in quite a while.
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Came it with low expectations. Topic crushed them. Cool stories, bro.
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I'm glad people actually are interested in this.
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You made me jealous of your job. Thanks for the legit stories.
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glad you're using your down time at the comic book store working on your writing skills
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GranzonEx posted...

glad you're using your down time at the comic book store working on your writing skills

I mean, I was just paraphrasing as closely as possible. He was a good storyteller. Really interesting guy. His background with a small band in Memphis was pretty unique.
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Also, Granzon, you're welcome to fact check the name Joe Kent. I found confirmation that he appeared after three results, so I don't think he was bullshitting me.
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