Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Appearances
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’
I had been trying to write a Val Kilmer story for years, and he would never say yes to it. And finally, he said yes. I don't know why I was so lucky to have him say yes at that moment, but I know what he would say. I know that he would say that it wasn't luck, that it was my faith. These people, you write about them. And you become associated with them forever.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’
In 2014, he was diagnosed with throat cancer, and he chose not to treat it medically, but through prayer and counseling on his faith. He was a Christian scientist. Eventually, his children begged him to seek medical intervention, and he finally did, And when I met him, he had had a tracheostomy. He was speaking by covering up the hole in his throat, and he was still performing.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’
What does somebody do when the thing that they are known for, which is being a superhero, which is being an action hero, which is being handsome, which is being this sort of picture of good health and vigor, What do you do next? And a lot of people, they fade away. But that's not how it went for Val.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’
All of the vocal exercises he'd learned at Juilliard had come in handy because he was able to figure out how to speak again in a way that he should not have been able to communicate. But he was. And the force of his will is the thing I remember about him.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’
The force of his will, the fact that he was sure he was going to come back to his exact former self, and in some senses felt that he was, that he was all soul and all will. And very often throughout the pandemic, when I would feel despair, despair, I would think that somewhere Val Kilmer is sitting with a hole in his throat and he does not see despair. He sees the opportunity for faith.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’
And one of my best friends called me up and said that she had throat cancer. And I was with Val Kilmer the next day and I said to him, my best friend has throat cancer. And he said, tell her she shouldn't worry. And I included this in the story. And sometimes people still ask me about it. And people will ask once again now that this story is going out into the world again.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’
And I want to tell you all that Lydia is fine now. And this morning, the first call I made was to her to tell her that he had died. And we were so sad together. All I could think about is the fact that maybe I think about him more than anyone else I've ever written about. I'm so sorry he's gone.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’
So here's my article, The Iceman in Winter, from the May 10th, 2020 issue of the New York Times Magazine. And it's read by Julia Whalen. Our audio producer today is Jack Bisodoro. Thank you for listening.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’
And you don't even know what a privilege that's going to be years and years later. I'm Taffy Brodesser-Eckner, and I'm a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine. The actor Val Kilmer... Died on Tuesday in Los Angeles at the age of 65. And for the Sunday Read this week, we are once again airing the profile I wrote of Val in 2020 during a pandemic.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’
Everyone has a favorite Val Kilmer that feels very personal and specific to them. In Top Gun, in Heat, in The Doors, in Batman Forever. He was the kind of actor who was always running from his good looks, even as he greatly benefited from them. I could not believe his jaw when I met him, same as I couldn't believe it in a movie theater when I was 12 years old.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write’
And the man I'm writing about lived in Budapest and was sent into hiding in several different places. But he was not in a concentration camp. And people were strange about that. There's this idea that in order to write about the Holocaust, you have to write its most brutal stories in order to make a point about what the Holocaust was.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write’
But actually, the whole problem with the Holocaust, other than the fact that it was the Holocaust, is that it touched every single Jew. And at some point, in thinking about this and in hearing all of the stories that I heard, I came to understand that I, too, was from a family of Holocaust survivors. In my family, we never spoke about the Holocaust.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write’
When I asked my grandmother what it was like for her as a child, well, it was the war. There was a vague war. There was a point at which I was 9 or 10 years old, and I realized that the war they were talking about was the Holocaust I was learning about in school all the time. I went to a Jewish day school.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write’
And we didn't talk about it, and we didn't describe ourselves as Holocaust survivors, and we were surrounded by people who did. So over the course of reporting this story, I called my mother, and I asked her, do you think of us as a survivor family? And she said, what are you talking about? Of course we are. Your Hebrew middle name is...
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write’
is the name of your grandfather's sister who was killed in the Loge ghetto. And my mother was named after her grandmother who suffered the same fate. She said, of course we're a survivor family. And I got off the phone and I was very emotional. And I called my kids into the living room. And I said to them, kids, do you realize that we are from a Holocaust survivor family?
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write’
And they said, of course we do. I guess part of me not understanding it was, was part of the same wish I had in running away from it, which was a refusal to define myself in those terms. But of course, like anything else you run away from, you arrive at a certain age and realize that the running away from it, that is its own way of engaging in your culture.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write’
It's not that inherited trauma gets diluted as generations pass. But it's also not as if you can deny your inheritance. The trauma just doesn't look the same as it did in the prior generation. It morphs, it changes, it becomes its own thing that you might not even recognize as inherited trauma in the first place.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write’
I came to understand over the course of this story that there are people like me who refused the Holocaust as their burden. But it's all of our burdens. Running away from it is its own burden. So I finally wrote it. I finally wrote the Holocaust story I said I would never write. And it's this week's Sunday Read. So here's my article, read by Gabra Zachman.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write’
Our audio producer is Jack D'Isidoro, and our music was written and performed by Aaron Esposito. Thanks for listening.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write’
I sort of hate telling Holocaust stories. I hate the Holocaust as a reasonable person should. And part of my coming of age was to leave the Holocaust behind, was to figure out who I was as an American, as a Jew, as a Christian. without this sort of story that tends to follow Jewish Americans around. So I resisted. I would put him off or say no. And then I found out he was dying. He had cancer.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write’
My name is Taffy Brodesser-Eckner, and I'm a writer for The New York Times Magazine. Recently, one of my oldest friends told me that her father was dying. I've known her father since I was 15 years old, and he has been asking me for years to tell his story about how he survived the Holocaust. And I always said no. I said no because I felt that I had grown up inundated with Holocaust stories.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write’
And I was so sad about it. I felt like, what have I been doing not telling this man's story? He was seven years old for the duration of the time that the Nazis occupied Budapest, which is where he was from. And he was 87 when I found out he was sick.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write’
It created a sort of panic in me that if the youngest people who survived Nazi persecution were dying, then there would be nobody to tell these stories. And so I decided that I would. So I started writing the story and people would ask me, oh, I heard you're writing a Holocaust survivor story. What camp was he in?