Tommy Lee Jones' Speech Text

Aug. 16 -- Actor Tommy Lee Jones, Al Gore’s college roommate, gave a speech nominating Gore for the presidency at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Read a transcript of his prepared remarks here.

Tommy Lee Jones:

Al Gore has been one of my closest friends since the day we met, on the first day of college, 35 years ago.

There are plenty of people at this convention who can and will speak to the big policy questions.

I have one very real issue to talk about — one I can probably address as well as anyone outside the Gore family — And that’s the quality of this man’s character.

He is a good, caring, loving man.

I know 35 different people who have known Al Gore for 35 years.

And I know all of them will tell you the same thing.

I lived with him for four years.

What did we do?

We shot pool and watched Star Trek, when maybe we should have been studying for exams. He’d challenge me to shooting contests.

We’d see who could hit a tin can from the farthest away.

And it was usually Al.

My parents lived overseas when I was in college … and the Gore home in Carthage was always open to me.

When I visited Al in Middle Tennessee, we did the complicated things you’d expect college students to do — catching a loose cow, going canoeing and hunting, and chasing through the woods with coon dogs in the middle of the night.

One time in college, neither of us could make it home for Thanksgiving.

So we made a fire in the venerable old fireplace in our room, wrapped a big turkey in a couple of rolls of tin foil, and roasted it right there in our dorm.

I know from Tipper that it’s some of the most ambitious cooking Al has done since then.

There were serious times, too.

We were all affected by the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and our country’s tragic involvement in Southeast Asia.