2 posts tagged “val kilmer”

Show us a fictional character that you have been a fan of since your childhood.
Submitted by Jack Yan.

That’s two Vox Hunts from yours truly this week. Since I wrote it, I should answer it.

Ian Ogilvy as Simon Templar, with Jaguar XJ-S

   This chap would have to qualify, being the Saint I grew up with, rather than Roger Moore. I’m pretty sure that Leslie Charteris, the Singaporean-born Leslie Bowyer-Yin, intended Simon Templar to be a Chinese bloke, but just as I didn’t blink when the cinematic Felix Leiter went from a white Texan to an African–American in the James Bond films, so what if a Caucasian is the Saint?
   Since then I have seen all the colour Roger Moore episodes and read many of Charteris’s stories. I even saw the pilot where Australian actor, Andrew Clarke, played a Templar-with-a-mo, as well as the Val Kilmer movie which tried to get back to the literary character, with Simon Templar’s numerous aliases.

Life on Mars isn’t the only show that has had a producer change and rejig Stateside. Knight Rider, shown as a telemovie earlier in 2008, has gone through many changes, though Justin Bruening and Val Kilmer remain. The rest of the telemovie, I have read, has been chucked out.