For when you really, really want to murder someone but don’t want the spontaneity to be eclipsed by hassle!
“We found this book in your possession.”
“So?”
“You must agree it’s rather suspicious.”
“Didn’t you say that the victim was drug behind a horse and buggy through a cornfield and then flensed like a whale?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t sound convenient, does it?”
“Sold. You’re free to go.”
…but what does Jessica Fletcher think?
Whoa. The plot thickens.
Art by Jesse E. Larson.
It’s hard to believe it was just last Christmas that Harmony and I changed the world. And we didn’t mean to and it didn’t last long. You know a thing like that can’t.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Shane Black, 2005).
A murder mystery brings together a private eye, a struggling actress, and a thief masquerading as an actor.
(the imdb)
Look up “idiot” in the dictionary. You know what you’ll find?
A picture of me?
No. The definition of the word idiot, which you fucking are!
She opens the door, and she’s got nothing on but the radio. Yeah. She invites me to sit down, sits on my lap, fires up a spliff —
Geez. Really?
No! Idiot.
Merry Christmas, sorry I fucked you over.
No problem. Don’t quit your gay job.
She’s been fucked more times than she’s had a hot meal.
Yeah, I heard about that. It was neck-and-neck — but then she skipped lunch.
I peed on the corpse. Can they do, like, an ID from that?
I’m sorry, you peed on…?
On the corpse. My question is —
No, my question. I get to go first. Why in pluperfect hell would you pee on a corpse?
Hey, hey, hey! It’s Christmas. Where’s my present, Slick?
Your fucking present is you’re not in jail, fag-hag.
You don’t get it, do you? This isn’t “good cop, bad cop.” This is fag and New Yorker. You’re in a lot of trouble.
I think this is a killer movie and I don’t want to give away the plot, which is why these blurbs between the pictures are all quotes from the incredibly witty, breakneck script. Writer-director Shane Black’s screenplay is loosely adapted from the Brett Halliday novel Bodies Are Where You Find Them (real name Davis Dresser).
The title underwent many changes over the course of production, before, allegedly at Val Kilmer’s suggestion, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was finally settled on. It comes from the 1968 book by film critic Pauline Kael.
Kael heard that in Italy James Bond was known as “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” and thought that was the most succinct summation of the appeal of cinema she had ever heard. She fell in love with the phrase. Though she heard it from an Italian movie poster, “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” was in wide use, from Southern Europe all the way to Asia, as the vernacular for the Bond flicks.
The film is a blend of mystery, neo-noir, camp, dark comedy, and romantic comedy genres. The fourth wall is continually broken,not only by Harry, the narrator-thief-would-be-actor, but also by Gay Perry, the former cop turned private eye who the studio instructs Harry to follow for his upcoming role. The self-awareness works really within the genre, kind of scooping it away from the cheese into which it could descend, but the film still sticks with the noir genre at the same time, with duplicitous blondes, sleepless runs through L.A., and body counts galore.
Thanks for coming. Please stay for the end credits. If you’re wondering who the Best Boy is, it’s somebody’s nephew. Um … don’t forget to validate your parking. And — to all you good people in the Midwest? Sorry we said “fuck” so much.
You will never forget Val Kilmer’s turn as Gay Perry in this movie. That is a promise. Watch it today! Or tomorrow! Or at your convenience!
In Batman’s nightmares, he is not well-liked and he doesn’t understand why.
I had troubling, thickly plotted nightmares last night but too much was going on immediately after I woke that I didn’t have time to make a note of them. The last dreams like that I can remember happened while I was subbing for the Scamps, and I told them about it the next day:
I dreamt that my daughter was being held in this large industrial building and I was using the stairs to get to a certain floor before the elevator, and a dude started pursuing me and I turned around and first wrestled him, then kicked him down a short flight of stairs, then ran briefly down after him for, you know, “suresies” and threw him over the edge and heard him come down all wet and broken on a landing several flights below. I totally did not even lean over the rails to check on him after that because I was only focused on getting the kidlet and getting out.
Scamps in bio class action, but I chose a blurry picture for privacy.
The kids were shocked and exhilarated by this vivid story of unmerciful ass-kicking and I said it was all on their heads because they’d asked me anxiously the day before during Social Studies what would happen if the President’s daughters were ever to be kidnapped. I’d reassured them and theorized that not only would the Secret Service prevent such a godforsaken thing from ever happening, but that my guess was Michelle and Barack Obama, besides being loving parents, are pretty hardcore and good at taking things in their own hands, and that I definitely would not want to be in the shoes of an attempted kidnapper of their girls were he to be caught.
In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have told a classroom of ten-year-olds that I dreamt I straight up dropped a motherfucker, but, on the other hand, it could be part of why I had practically zero discipline problems in that class.
Excellent photographs are titled “Batwoman” and come from maanuuu on the deviantart. Words, by pulp king and detective fiction master Dashiell Hammett, come from Red Harvest, the only published, novel-length account of one of the Continental Op’s cases.
Hammett, Dashiell. Red Harvest. New York: Knopf, 1929. Print. (30).
The widely-imitated plot of the book — in which an initially disinterested outsider is called in to help settle accounts in a small town beset with the strife of several disparate groups in a power-struggle for control of the town’s assets, then manipulatively turns the groups upon one another while attempting to remain detached himself — has inspired, among other works, the films Blood Simple, Yojimbo, Last Man Standing, and A Fistful of Dollars.
via Mark Sutcliffe books.
My life will only be complete when the Coen brothers just plain make this movie, with a screenplay adapted directly from the book by, say, James Ellroy. Please. You guys, I will gladly help you with whatever — ad copywriting, finances, and even craft table shit. Make my dreams come true, Coen brothers.
I think every geek has a secret list of ultimate-collaborative-fantasy movies that have never been but ought be made. This one is mine.
The Thought Experiment 