Real Genius, Val Kilmer, Hansen and Tinted Windows

So, Real Genius is a great movie.

If you haven't seen it, you should. Val Kilmer is in it, but he's not the main character. The main character is this dweeby guy named Mitch Taylor (played by Gabriel Jarret) and Val plays his sort of deranged mentor, Chris Knight. You wouldn't think it to look at him in the movie, but Gabriel Jarret actually grew up to be kind of good looking. Check it out on IMDB if you don't believe me. You know who else is in the movie? William Atherton. You may remember him as the jerky Walter Peck from Ghost Busters. You know, the guy that orders the ghost storage device shut down. The guy about whom Peter Venkman (Bill Murray's character) says to the mayor, "Yes it's true...This man has no dick."

Anyway, that's not the point.

The point is that Real Genius is a great movie. And Val Kilmer is really good in it. Actually, he's so good in it that it makes me feel like he's never really lived up to the potential he displayed in this 1985 classic directed by Martha Coolidge. I know Val Kilmer follows this blog, so, sorry man. I loved you in True Romance. And Top Secret (although that was actually before Real Genius.) Anyway, I would have liked to have seen more movies with the Real Genius Val Kilmer and less movies with The Doors Val Kilmer. Again, sorry Val.

You know what else? Deborah Foreman is in Real Genius. It's just a cameo, but she's in there. She has one really great line, "Can you hammer a six-inch spike through a board with your penis?" You remember Deborah Foreman. She starred in Valley Girl. And she was also in the movie My Chauffer. If you haven't seen that one, check it out. I should probably offer a disclaimer at this point and note that I haven't seen My Chauffer in about twenty years, so it may not be as good as I remember. That happens sometimes. Like with the movie The Blue Rose, aka The Thief of Baghdad. But that's another story. Deborah Foreman should have been a bigger star.

Oh, and one final thing. That song MMMBop, by Hansen? That's a pretty good song. I don't care how saccharine those guys come off. I like it. Everyone just made fun of me when I played it in the office when explaining who was in the band Tinted Windows, but so what.