The following is an (almost) unedited transcript of Andrew Wright’s conversation with Shane Black, director of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Black’s previous films include The Last Boy Scout (1991), The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), and Lethal Weapon (1987).
Where have you been? I’ve mentioned this new movie to Last Boy Scout junkies, and their eyes start twitching.
I’ve been out of commission for a while… not to say that I wasn’t working, but I just didn’t like anything I was writing. I felt pretty much done writing action films after Long Kiss Goodnight, and didn’t want to do another one, at least not right away. Secondly, that movie proceeded to bomb, which confirmed, okay, let’s get out of here. But also, it was a very nasty time, when people would respond negatively to me on a personal level because of the money I’d made. I lost some friends over these so-called record-breaking deals. I got a lot of attention, but for all the wrong reasons. I remember one guy telling me that he liked what I did. I said, “Oh, so you liked the movie?” And he said, “No, no, but man, 4 million bucks! You and Joe Eszterhas duking it out in a price war!” And I was like, yeah, but what about the movie? (Laughs.) Obviously, everyone wasn’t like that, but all this attention over money began to take on a life of its own, to the point where there was no reference to the creative work I was trying to do. So the good thing to do in that case, I found, is to get off the radar and do the work, but don’t rely on anyone praising or backing you. I mean, my god, if I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say, “Well, I could make 4 million, too, if I wrote the shit that you write.” So I stepped away for a while.
What brought you back?
Well, I didn’t ever want to stop writing, just stop being in the spotlight. So, here I am banging my head against the wall trying to get away from action movies, and try making a romantic comedy. James L. Brooks was kind enough to give me an office, with no proprietary claims on the material. I tried to look for an ulterior motive, but couldn’t find one. (Laughs.) So I showed him some pages and he was enthusiastic. Then I showed him some more pages, and he frowned. He said, “This strikes me as really… dark. It seems like half of you is doing your own thing, and the other half is trying to do the kind of film that I would do.” So we talked, and I realized that a genre piece doesn’t have to just be an action movie. You know, Chinatown is very suspenseful, lots of twists and turns, but ultimately kind of an adult genre film. And after our conversation I got really excited and started turning my romantic comedy into a murder mystery. And I found my footing, and I realized that I could start banging my style up against the romantic comedy and use the juxtaposition to create some weird effects. So I finished the script [for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang], and was really excited, and had something that I could take to the bank, and produce and direct it. Or so I thought, anyway.
You’d always planned on directing it?
Yes. That’s why I kept the budget low. I figured on it costing $15 million, and that was actually pretty accurate. So I took it around, and at that point, no one wanted it. You know, this was my triumphant return, with a script that I’d worked on for years, and everyone I showed it to said, “Great script! Now take it elsewhere, please, get it out of here.” It was very humbling, really, because I was used to having my scripts read and bought that day, and now it was taking up to two weeks for people to pass. I wasn’t viable anymore; things had changed, and the executives were all about ten years old. So I starting thinking about how to keep things from sliding into entropy, and thought: Joel Silver. The Rock of Gibraltar. He’s like the one unchanging thing in Hollywood, who I’ve known since Lethal Weapon. So I showed it to Joel, and he liked it, and took a chance on me.
Your older films really seem to have rebounded on video. Not many mega-budgeted movies attain cult status.
People have told me that my new movie has great cult potential, and I say, stop, I don’t really need another cult film. (Laughs.) You know, I would actually like one that people would pay money to see when it opens.
One thing that makes your movies interesting is how you create this huge, gonzo set-pieces, while also somehow commenting on their basic absurdity. Was this a conscious development?
I’ve always been sort of skeptical about the action genre. It’s a pejorative term. North by Northwest has planes and explosions and people falling off Mount Rushmore, but you don’t hear people describing it as “that Hitchcock action film.” Dirty Harry, which is basically the template for everything I’ve written, has action, but it’s also a thriller, and a drama, and a suspense movie. Anyway, I didn’t really like what action movies had turned into in the ’80s. I may be guilty of causing some of the problems, because I sometimes get talked into things that I later regret. Every once in a while I’ll try to put something in solely to spit in the face of what I feel the current trend in action movies to be; usually a trend that I find particularly distasteful, and don’t want to add to. In Kiss Kiss I tried to go way far away from the polished action genre. The action in here is very awkward. Corpses are hard to get rid of. Everyone’s off balance in a shootout.
The use of Robert Downey Jr. as the unreliable, and sometimes just plain oblivious, narrator was an inspired choice. How did the character develop?
The point of the movie, and Downey’s character, is about reality slapping you down when you try to be heroic. Every time someone acts like a fictional character, someone else says, “No, no you idiot,” and slams them back. You know, the classic private eye always has this constant flow of slick, fast-paced, wise-cracking narration that’s faultlessly delivered. Our protagonist can’t even handle that. It’s the same scenario as the classic Raymond Chandler stories, but our guy keeps stumbling and gets his ass kicked. He’s not so much unreliable as inept.
Val Kilmer’s character seems to live up to the Chandler legend a bit more, with one notable alteration.
That was another fun thing. In a movie that’s all about maleness and trying to live up the macho ideals and failing, it only seemed appropriate to have the one guy who actually is tough, who kicks the door down and saves the day, also be gay. It’s just another case of trying to stand the conventions of the genre on their head. The teenagers who see this on a Saturday night may not get all this, but I like that it’s there if you want it.