So Many Questions, So Few Answers

Screenwriter Shane Black, the guy behind a bunch of unremarkable mid-90s action movies (such as “Lethal Weapon”) most recently directs and writes “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” a smart-assed labor of love, both a hokey pulp murder-mystery and satire of same, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer. The film’s most dubious aspect, though, is a bizarre half-baked subplot involving child sexual abuse. In an interview with The Harvard Crimson, Kilmer and Black—either from jet-lag or sheer fatigue of the press junket circuit—dismissively respond to questions about their equally insipid film.

The Harvard Crimson: “Kiss Kiss” takes an incredibly cynical view of Los Angeles and Hollywood. Do you think it was an accurate depiction of show business?

Black: It’s entirely accurate. It’s like…every day a bus arrives in L.A., and the bus driver says, “Okay, how many people here were [sexually] abused by a friend or close family member?” and the people raise their hands, and the driver says, “Okay, get off the bus.”

[Or] you’ll be with a girl for like, five weeks, and she’s the sweetest thing and suddenly you’ll hit a button and the devil arrives.

Kilmer: I married a girl from England, so I wouldn’t know about that.

THC: So, Shane, are you a big Pauline Kael fan?

Black: No, no. I had no idea that [renowned, now-deceased New Yorker film critic] Pauline Kael, God bless her, had ever written a book called “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”…Actually it was based on James Bond, who was referred to by the Japanese at one point as Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and that subsequently became the title of a piece of music [in] “Thunderball.”

THC: Earlier, you said that writing was an unpleasant task that you had to do to get to direct. If that’s the case, why didn’t you just direct in the first place?

Black: Because I could write, it was what I did well…

Kilmer: You go to work, and you could do whatever you want, but you do what you have to do to make a living.