Things That Last

A story about Val Kilmer

Val and Amanda. ©Ryan Corrigan (2013)

I guess my story about Val is really a story about Dave Grohl, but it’s the combination that makes it special. More than a decade ago, when Jack Black and I were business partners, we produced a delightful little show called Ghost Ghirls for a proto-streamer that no longer exists. Over the course of a couple of weeks, we shot twelve episodes of a series about ghost hunting friends, played by comedy geniuses* Amanda Lund and Maria Blasucci, who also co-created the show. We pulled together an astonishing array of guest stars for the scrappy shoot— including Jason Schwartzman, Jason Ritter, Molly Shannon, Colin Hanks, Bob Odenkirk, Paul F. Tompkins, Natasha Leggero, and the two-part finale starred Jack himself (of course), Val, and Grohl, who played a Lynyrd Skynyrd-inspired band named Sweetriver and the Huckleberry Dogs. They were haunting a recording studio.

I don’t often speak about Jack publicly, because my affection for him quickly becomes embarrassing for both of us. But I remember how much I enjoyed watching them together—all three had already built tremendous careers on their singular talents. And the true gift of working so closely with Jack was to see what he often brings out in other people: a playfulness, and joy for whatever it was that drew them to performing in the first place. As a former talent agent, I had seen up close how that joy could be dimmed by the metastasizing burden of growing fame—this is probably a whole other book I’ll write someday. But watching the three of them interact that week in hilarious wigs, game to shoot whatever we wanted to shoot, on a few days’ notice, suffused the set with a tenderness and enthusiasm that reminded me of kids at theater camp.

The shoot was such fun, in fact, that Hollywood superstition dictated that the release couldn’t possibly go well, and it absolutely did not. The streamer managed to bungle the launch completely—none of us could ever find the show on its home page, even when we were actively looking for it—and the platform folded shortly thereafter. The same year, Netflix produced its first original series, House of Cards, and then the internet proceeded to swallow entertainment whole.

***

You don’t want attention, I used to tell my clients. Attention is fleeting. You want to build a body of work that lasts. But it has become more and more difficult to sort out what might last in a world that seems 99% internet, where entire shows and movies that thousands of people have poured their love and labor into disappear for tax purposes. And it’s not just the mechanics of distribution that make the internet a trough. It’s that the internet has become so central to everyone’s lives that the cart now leads the horse—it determines how we feed, clothe, entertain ourselves. How we raise our children. How we choose what to read, and which route to walk around the corner. The objects we covet, the way we dress, the way we want to look, is all seeded by and reproduced for internet. Everything has become optics, everything has become perception, everything (and nothing) is entertainment, entertainment is, somehow, everything.

I find, for the most part, that in 2025, most of my interactions with the internet make me profoundly, profoundly unhappy. And I am slowly extricating myself from them, in favor of the physical world, with all of its annoyances. I hate the browser, I hate email, I am starting to hate texting. I have stopped short of switching entirely to a flip phone because I love taking photos of the children. But they did something adorable yesterday—cuddled on a park bench—and when I felt the urge to reach for my phone, my 11 year old stopped me. “Challenge: Don’t take a photo,” he said, the twinkle in his eye growing, somehow, as he kissed his sister on the top of her head. It was excruciatingly cute. I closed my eyes like the shutter of a camera, and felt the happiness course through my body. “Done. Memory stored.” I said.

***

I am lucky enough to remember a world before the internet ate us, but it takes an immense amount of daily effort to crawl out of its belly and stay in the light. I saw someone online waxing lyrically about a world in which the internet turns off at five, and we are forced out of our homes and/or phones to socialize and interact with each other, and thousands of people agreeing with them. I don’t know if it’s my place to tell those thousands that this is a lifestyle choice that is currently available. I have also seen many many pieces on how to keep ourselves afloat emotionally right now. So many of these are online shopping lists. I’m not sure how we’ve been led to believe that the momentary joy of downloading the correct app, or ordering the correct stuff to arrive at seamlessly at our homes is going to last. If it worked, it would work.

I have also, this week, seen many people post glowing responses to an exceptionally long speech. I worry that, because everything is optics (and optics is everything) that we have Hollywood-brained ourselves into thinking that speeches are useful. This isn’t Dead Poets Society. It’s not Gladiator. Those movies have some great speeches in them, and those speeches are also entertainment. They are a specific combination of words designed to manipulate your emotions, and they do a great job. But Hollywood moments do not occupy themselves with the nuts and bolts, the humility and anonymity of effecting actual, lasting change. We knew we were getting a fundraising text the second that speech was done, and oh boy did we ever.

Ghost Ghirls technically did not last, physically, other than on my Vimeo page, which also contains a couple of videos from my wedding and a 12-year-old ultrasound we were excited to share with our extended family. But, like the memory I stored of my kids on that park bench, I close my eyes, it still warms me from the inside. As an artist, I don’t know how long my physical words will last. This website could go down, all copies of my book could disappear in favor of holograms who download things directly into your brains. Who knows what horrors the future of internet holds for us. But to show up every day with the playfulness, curiosity, and warmth that everyone brought to that set, that’s the goal.

Which brings us back to the actual stored memory I wanted to share. On the last day of shooting, I was rushing to get everyone home, as I had to pack to leave for India the next day with my husband. We had been married a short while, and wanted to take a big trip before we started the process of building a family. Miraculously we wrapped on time, and I piled into the transpo van with Jack and Val. Dave was running a little late and jumped in, apologizing for keeping us waiting. He was holding a prop from set under his arm. What is that, Val asked, sitting up, curiosity piqued. It’s our fake album cover, said Dave. The crew had given it to him on the way out. Why don’t I have one, said Val, pretending to be jealous. Yeah, why do you get it? joked Jack. Dave sighed. “I was in Nirvana, man.” Everyone backed off.

xo

* This is not a word I throw around. Their powerpoint-fueled contribution to my last variety show made audience members laugh so hard one “nearly bit off [his] tongue.”