Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

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Tyler is a seventh year English major and retired children’s shoe salesman.

Zach is a painter and has a Certificate of Completion from a two-year acting conservatory.

Tyler and Zach became close friends while writing for their high school newspaper. There’s an oft-cited incident where the Editor-in-Boring’s decision to pull Zach’s book review of American Psycho spurred Tyler to action. After seducing and sleeping with the Editor-in-Panties-in-a-Twist proved ineffective (but nice), Tyler threatened the paper with legal action if they refused to print it, invoking several amendments while Zach waved his arms around passionately. Did they print it? You bet your ass they did. Were there consequences? Sure, a few broken hearts, and a royally pissed off newspaper advisor. But their legend grew and this story is still told today, by them

August 24, 2010

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Shane Black just wanted to write bad-ass action movies. When he was offered $4 million for his script, The Long Kiss Goodnight, who was he to turn it down? Too bad that movie really sucked and Geena Davis has a weird face. Not really weird, it’s more like an anachronism. She’d be sexy as hell in the 1940’s (see: A League of Their Own), but in the 21^st century, she’s all cheekbones.

T. Right?

Z. Whatever man, what is it with you and Geena Davis’s cheekbones and Julia Roberts’s mouth?

T. It is a pretty huge mouth.

Z. My Best Friend’s Huge Mouth.

T. Eat, Pray, Mouth.

Z. In The Mouth of Madness.

T. … Julia Roberts wasn’t in In the Mouth of Madness, and that’s actually the name of a movie.

Z. There’s a movie called In The Mouth of Madness?

T. Yeah, Sam Neil, Julia Carmen, Jurgen Prochnow. An insurance investigator goes to some small town to find a horror writer, for motives that escape me, probably something having to do with insurance. Anyway he ends up living out the plot to the horror writer’s book, and it turns out that the insurance investigator and the people of the town are phase one in the horror writer’s plot, you know, “plot,” like the plot of his book, but also referring to his plan, to make everyone on the planet, or at least America, fucking crazy.

Z. …The Great Mouth Detective.

Anyway, $4 million was a shit load of money to pay for a script, especially one that turned out to be such an awful movie. So how did Shane Black command such a high price? When he was twenty-three he wrote a movie called Lethal Weapon, widely considered to be one of the best buddy-cop movies of all time.

T. Because it is the best buddy-cop movie of all time.

Z. Until Lethal Weapon 2.

But if the first two Lethal Weapons were so good, how did The Long Kiss Goodnight turn out to be so terrible? Did Shane Black lose his touch? Was he leveraging his notoriety as a writer of Hollywood hits to sell a subpar script? The story with the script, according to Wikipedia, is that it went through heavy re-writes, so Shane Black’s original vision was not represented on the screen. As for losing his touch, after a near-decade long reclusion from the business of movie-making, he wrote and directed Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a darkly comic, noir reinterpretation of the buddy-cop genre. And it’s one of the best movies of the past ten years.

T. Ten years? That’s kind of arbitrary.

Z. Yeah. I don’t know, 15 years?

And it’s one of the best movies of the past 15 years.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang stars Robert Downey Jr. as Harry Lockheart, a small-time thief and coincidental actor, and Val Kilmer as “Gay” Perry von Shrike, private detective and Hollywood consultant, who’s hired to teach Lockheart how to play the part of a real detective. After witnessing the killing of a young woman while on a routine surveillance job, Harry and Gay Perry find themselves wrapped up in a real-life murder mystery. It’s a battle of wills and wits as they try to discover the identity of the killers before becoming the next victims.

Z. By the way, they call him Gay Perry because he’s gay.

T. Sam Gayde.

Z. Sherlock Holmesoexual.

T. Hercule Poirot.

Aiding in, and possibly connected to, the murder mystery is Harmony Faith Lane (Michelle Monaghan), a 30-something failed actress (she did a commercial with a bear) with a tragic past; beautiful and jaded, she’s the classic archetype of the small-town girl hoping to make it big under the bright lights of Hollywood. Facing the inevitable metamorphosis from aspiring actress to career waitress with grace and humor, Harmony is as much trying to solve the case as save her soul. The chemistry between Downey and Monaghan is effortless, hilarious, and actually touching as it turns formulaic love story conventions on their heads.

T. Go ahead Zach.

Z. And you totally get to see Michelle Monaghan’s boobs!

Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan are all perfectly cast and give exceptional performances. But the real star of the movie is Shane Black’s wry, witty screenplay:

Harry: Well maybe you should try to get in touch with him, I’ve got five bucks says you could still… get him.

Gay Perry: Really? That’s funny, I got a ten says “pass the pepper,” I got two quarters who sing harmony on “Moonlight in Vermont”.

Harry: What?

Gay Perry: Talking money.

Harry: A talking monkey?

Gay Perry: A talking monkey, yeah. Yeah, came here from the future, ugly sucker, only says “ficus.”

****

Harry: Was she a looker?

Gay Perry: She opens the door, and she got nothing on but the radio. Yeah, invites me to sit down, sits on my lap, fires up a splif.

Harry: Geez. Really?

Gay Perry: No. Idiot.

So see it for the great performances, see it for the dialogue, see it for Michelle Monaghan’s breasts. Whatever the reason, see Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: 4 Bravehearts.

11:30am | URL: https://tmblr.co/ZXXJGyxs_7G

(Notes: 39)