"Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" is a film of firsts. For Shane Black, it's his first time directing. And for Val Kilmer, it's his first time playing a gay guy.
To be more precise, it's a gay private eye Kilmer portrays in the October release, "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," the action-comedy-romance-mystery movie loosely based on a series of trashy police novels. The film follows Robert Downey Jr.'s hapless character, Harry, from his days as a small-time criminal in New York to his week-long stint as a would-be actor in the seedy Hollywood underworld.
Kilmer plays "Gay" Perry, a tough veteran private detective who guides Harry through his new environment and helps him win the heart of his bumpkin-turned-actress childhood sweetheart, Harmony. "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" is a tricky, stylized gem of a film that delights and entertains audiences as much as it leaves them feeling awed and just a little confused.
The Daily sat down with Kilmer and Black to get their perspective on the movie and maybe help clear up some of that confusion.
Question: I found that an interesting dynamic in this film was that the gay character was the actual "manly man."
Val Kilmer: I wrote that. I said to Shane [Black, the film's writer-director], "Let's make him gay and have him kiss Robert [Downey Jr., Kilmer's co-star] and have them make out forever." [Laughter]
Q: Isn't it tough to find a balance between making cheap shots, funny-because-he's gay-humor, and more clever humor? You didn't play Perry as a flaming gay guy.
VK: When creating a character in theater or in film, it's crucial to get into the director's head: their taste, their sensibilities, their rhythms... because that's what the film is. It's a director's medium. You can affect the spirit of a character, but you can't affect the vibe of a movie. No matter who you are, it's the director's story. And Shane is a really fine writer who likes junk, pulp detective stories. He grew up loving them...
It's a strange responsibility that the director has. One of the main jobs of the director is how to encourage people not to be doing their best work. If you let the cinematographer do their best work, then the day is destroyed, because they'll light the hell out of this room and nothing will get filmed. Sometimes an actor takes over a movie, and it becomes character fluff, and it ruins the movie. So a director's job is to make people content with not owning 100% of their time. And Shane has a great sense of grace about how to spend our day. It's odd, because I don't respect him, [Laughter] but there was a natural respect from the crew immediately. He never raised his voice.
Q: I've heard you say recently that when you read the screenplay, actors filled those roles, but the characters didn't change despite the different personalities the actors brought to them. Can you talk about that?
VK: When something's well written, you pick up on it right away. You get a feeling anyway, good or bad, right away. But with this, I was just living in hope until I met Shane that it was going to feel the same way it did when I read it. And it was exactly like that. It's a very weird talent -- sometimes genius -- that screenwriters have. They're shortchanged in literature. It's a very hard job; you're writing an impression, which you have to write in shorthand. Like newspaper journalists, but with a screenplay it's... a series of shorthands. Like poetry. And like poetry, it's often bad.
Shane Black: The actors become so stamped on your brain, it's impossible to look back and imagine someone else playing them. Maybe Matt Damon... [Laughter]
VK: Matt's a God.
SB: It's true. It's one of those fortunate pairings [Downey Jr. and Kilmer]. The star of the movie is the fact that these two guys are together. How could you not love that? You don't know what you're buying, but you know something great is going to happen. They've never been in a movie [together] before, and I thought: "Who knows what's going to happen when you take Robert Downey Jr., with all his volatility, and Val, with his... well... volatility, and when you throw them together, something's going to happen." So to me, the star of the film is this incredible coming together... this... this...
Q: Marriage?
SB: Yes! The marriage of two towns... It's like Sinatra and Bono.
VK: Am I Bono or Sinatra? [Laughter]
Q: "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" projects a very violent, very outrageous image of the Hollywood scene. In your experience, is Tinsel Town actually the way you portrayed it to be in the film?
VK: It's quite a town. But there is a hope. It's statistically true, there's a lot of sexual abuse. And these boys and girls run away from home to find a place where everything's pretty. And they go to L.A. to find that, and it's actually a hot spot for the same stuff they're running away from. But at the same time a guy like [Downey Jr.'s character] Harry can go there with hope that's never gonna die, and because it's L.A., it's gonna come true. You're going to run into the girl of your dreams, and believe that anything's possible, and lie to win her hand, and become the thing you're lying about.
