Celebrity

Kurt Russell Bought Val Kilmer a Burial Plot in Iconic Cemetery

MOMENTO MORI

The poignant, and at the time joking, gift was linked to their roles in “Tombstone.”

SANTA MONICA, CA - SEPTEMBER 25:  Actor Val Kilmer arrives at the 23rd Annual Simply Shakespeare Benefit reading of "The Two Gentleman of Verona" at The Broad Stage on September 25, 2013 in Santa Monica, California.
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Val Kilmer's family will have the option of burying him in an unlikely—but highly appropriate—place: Boot Hill Cemetery. Kilmer was gifted a plot in the most famous graveyard of the Wild West by Kurt Russell after the two finished their classic Western, Tombstone, Russell told GQ last year. In the 1993 movie Russell played retired lawman Wyatt Earp and Kilmer played his dentist-turned-dying sidekick Doc Holliday. The two became close friends on set in Tombstone, Arizona. According to Russell, he wanted to get his co-star something that would show his appreciation. “When you’re working with people, you’d get them, sometimes at the end of the show, you get them trade gifts,” Russell told GQ. “What Val had gotten me was an acre of land overlooking Boot Hill,” the actor said. So he got Kilmer an actual burial plot in Boot Hill. The real-life Doc Holliday is not buried there but the members of the Cowboys gang they defeated at the shootout at O.K. Corral are. Kilmer died Tuesday in Los Angeles, aged 65. Poignantly, Russell said, “Doc Holliday was all about death, but Wyatt’s all about life. I guess that pretty much says it all.”

Read it at GQ