crack_van | Fandom Overview: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

This is the fandom overview for the neo-noir movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, starring Robert Downey Jr, Val Kilmer, and Michelle Monaghan. Anyway, the person posting this is me, Zed, and I’ll be your ~~narrator~~ driver for the month of December. And, uh, just keep in mind, okay, that this overview does contain links to videos and things that may not necessarily be considered safe for work. It’s also like, loaded with spoilers, because there's just like, no way to explain this movie without spoiling the hell out of it.

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.

Bodies Are Where you Find Them

So, if you're one of the, like, eight people or whatever who saw Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, take a seat and stay for the jokes. For everyone else who just wandered in because they were curious or whatever, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about this movie. It's unreliably narrated by Harry Lockhart, and when I say unreliably, I mean that more than once he actually had to stop the movie to explain something that he just plain forgot to mention. Like the robot thing. Harry is your sort of average idiot loser who knocks over small-chain electronic stores in New York, and who, through a healthy mix of luck and stupidity winds up accidentally auditioning for a movie. So, he gets flown out to LA for screen tests and all that, whatever, and then accidentally winds up caught up in this Jonny Gossamer murder mystery when his detective lessons have him and the PI giving him the lessons (that's "Gay" Perry van Shrike, by the way) witness two guys in ski masks send a car into a lake. Oh, and that car also has a dead woman in the trunk.

And basically, that's the movie. Harry and Perry, with the added... erm... assistance from Harry's old high school crush Harmony Faith Lane have to try to find out who this chick is and why someone killed her. Meanwhile, there's another murder (well, the police say it's suicide, but this, like, right out of a Jonny Gossamer book, man. We all know it was murder) that Harry sets out to solve for Harmony, which only gets more and more complicated as they get deeper and deeper into the thing with the lady in the lake.

Oh, damn. So, I've mentioned Jonny Gossamer twice, and you guys probably have no idea who that even is. You see, as kids, Harry and Harmony both loved these books about this detective called -- you guessed it -- Jonny Gossamer. He's sort of what would happen if you mixed James Bond and Dick Tracy and threw him in LA back in like the 40s or something, I don't know (OK, that's actually a little unclear in the movie, but they've definitely got that sort of feel to them, the way they're described). But the important thing that you've gotta know is that Jonny Gossamer always takes two cases at once, which always wind up being the same case in the end, and he always winds up getting tortured before breaking free and shooting like, sixteen guys. Why is this relevant for you? Well, like I said, this movie is straight out of a Jonny Gossamer book.

You'll find that nearly all of the fics in this fandom have Harry working for Perry in some capacity, mostly in a Harry-does-all-the-filing-and-has-to-beg-to-go-on-a-case-with-Perry sort of way. You won't find a whole lot of pre-canon, and anything that does take place during canon is generally set some time between the shoot-up on the 405 and the epilogue. Actually, most of the fic probably takes place between the shoot-up on the 405 and the epilogue. Maybe. Either that, or the fic'll be strictly post-canon, but that's almost the same thing.

Oh, yeah. And, by the way, there are some things you should probably know about this fandom. Like, for one, it swears. A lot. A lot of the fic is also first-person point of view from Harry's perspective, and it's mainly Harry/Perry and RPF (but I'll do my best to dig up some, like, case fic and other pairings and stuff as well). You should also be prepared for like, a whole load of really bad gay jokes and a hell of a lot of insults, the latter of which are almost exclusively directed at Harry. And also deliberately bad grammar, because Harry has no idea what the hell an adverb is for. Which, I know, this all does sound really harsh, but that's exactly what you get in the movie, and for the most part, it's handled pretty well. So, yeah.

Characters and ships and all that stuff

Harold “Harry” Lockhart
Robert Downey Jr (nine-year-old Harry: Indio Downey)

Harry is the narrator and main character of this mess. A habitual thief, Harry has never finished anything in his life (including school and marriage). He grew up in small-town Embry, Indiana, where the local motto was (according to him), ‘When in doubt, cut up a pig.’ Little is known of his background, but he has at least one sibling and a niece called Chloe. As a kid, he performed magic under the name Harold the Great, and must have been fairly competent at it, since at age nine he was already sawing his assistant, Harmony Lane, in half. For reasons unknown, his life took a turn for the worse, and from a small apology speech delivered to Harmony it can be inferred that he never graduated high school.

From this same bit of dialogue, it also becomes apparent that Harry has been married at least once and also may suffer from kleptomania, although none of this can be indisputably confirmed. Well, OK. The high school drop-out thing is actually pretty solid, and backed up by his continued and torturous abuse of adverbs throughout the film.

At one point, Harry made his way from Indiana to Manhattan, where he made a rather ill-advised living stealing things, both from dwellings and businesses. He’s also been arrested five times, and while the actual crimes are never disclosed, it’s easy to believe that he has at least one felony on his record, given New York’s laws on theft and burglary.

As an adult, he still knows a fair amount of sleight of hand, quite possibly only because it comes in handy for his new chosen profession (at one point, he unloads at least a dozen stolen packs of gum from his pockets; an item which he seems to default to whenever he impulse-steals).

Harry is a wonderful contradiction in character, because while he’s a career criminal, he’s still very innocent and naïve in many areas and seems to go out of his way to avoid violence unless he’s defending someone else (and even then, his chosen method of ‘fighting’ seems to be to curl up onto the ground and get the crap kicked out of him). He has occasional and brief moments of homophobia around Perry, but which can be described more of ignorance and lack of exposure than any real malice or hatred. His one irredeemable feature, it must be said, is the occasional slut-shaming he tends to direct at Harmony and LA in general. Even this, he does manage to somewhat overshadow by attempting to prevent a sleeping Harmony from being felt up at a party, and protecting the modesty of a murder victim by making sure she’s properly covered up. And then there’s the whole thing with the tit spider, which really, you just have to see to understand.

“Gay” Perry van Shrike
Val Kilmer

Perry van Shrike. He's, well, gay. And also a private detective. And a pretty slick one at that. He's also the source for some of the funniest insults in the movie. We don't know as much about him as we do about Harry, but only because he's less inclined to ramble at you at 200 miles an hour. It can be extrapolated, from the dialogue in the above-linked video, that his relationship with his mother was (or still is, who knows?) rather close, as apparently she gave him a very expensive gun as a special gift. His dad may or may not have smacked him around when he was young, but Perry's the king of deadpan snark, and it's entirely possible that he was just making an off-colour joke.

Perry's work as a PI extends into consultancy with various Hollywood projects, and he meets Harry because the producer of a new film wants him to give Harry detective lessons for his part. One of the first things he tells Harry during their stake-out is that PI work is really boring, and not to expect anything to really happen. Which, of course, they then witness a murder, so there you go.

He's very much a by-the-book sort of guy, which comes across right at the beginning. But don't take that to mean that he's completely humourless and boring. In fact, nearly everything he says is laced in varying degrees of sarcasm, from telling Harry to throw his cigarette into the first dead, dry bush he finds to accusing Harry of being so stupid that he's surprised the man can even feed himself.

The whole thing with nickname -- you know, "Gay" Perry -- comes about from Dabney Shaw, Harry's producer. Dabney and Perry go back quite a while, and it's likely that Perry's kept on retainer for these sort of consulting gigs. Also, Dabney apparently pays Perry to insulate him from corpses. Anyway, even though Dabney likes to call him Gay Perry (suggesting that he knows a Straight Perry? Who the hell knows? I sure don't), Perry is not your typical gay character. While he's not above camping himself up to unnerve a suspect or whatever, he's fairly straight gay. He does talk about being gay, but usually only because Harry brings it up, or because it's useful (like explaining why he keeps a small revolver near his balls). Actually though, that is where most of the humour comes from, in this particular area. At times, Harry seems so confused about the mere concept of homosexuality that he apparently thinks gay guys are capable of shooting bullets out of their dicks. OK, Harry did just get subjected to a bit of ball torture before voicing this thought of his, but still. Seriously, Harry?

Perhaps unsurprisingly (or maybe it does surprise you), the main ship in this fandom is Harry/Perry. OK, they do wind up making out in an alley, but that doesn't mean that Harry enjoys it. Which, it's that sort of reaction, and his general ignorance of all things gay that does tend to make it interesting to see authors bring the ship around in a way that works with canon, which is often achieved to hilarious results. Another common thread is the one-sided relationship, with Perry kind of pining, but that interpretation sees considerably less play in the fandom.

A sub...area...whatever of the fandom, and a considerable one at that (especially on the meme) is Val Kilmer/Robert Downey Jr RPF. Which, I'll be upfront on this one, don't expect to see any recs in that area, sorry. But there's plenty on the meme, and I've linked to that below, so if RPF is your cup of tea, that's where you can find it. But, to be fair, they do sort of gay it up in the gag reel.

So, yeah. The pet ships in this fandom are practically lit up with a neon sign.

Harmony Faith Lane
Michelle Monaghan (seven-year-old Harmony: Ariel Winter)

Harmony is basically your typical girl from LA. Which means she's from some small town in Indiana and had an amazingly messed-up childhood. She and Harry have known one another since probably since they can remember, although they haven't seen one another since Harmony was 16, when she took off for LA. During all the everything that happens with the Case of the Dead People in LA, she and Harry manage to reconnect after a chance meeting at a party (well, technically a bar after the party, but that's just being needlessly pedantic).

Harmony's childhood, like I said, was pretty, well, fucked up. It's unclear exactly what went on with her mum, but it's a reasonable assumption to make that she died when Harmony was young, all things considered. Mum was who got Harmony into Jonny Gossamer, which became such a major form of escapism for her as a child that it sort of drives the plot in a very big way. Anyway, what she needed escaping from was a paedophile father, to put it bluntly. While, as far as Harry (and therefore the viewer) knows, Papa Lane was only ever inappropriate with Harmony's younger sister Jenna, it's not difficult to imagine that he was inappropriate with Harmony as well. Either way, she wound up very sexually active in high school, and (according to Harry) slept with every guy in the school except him, a point which has always left him more than a little sore (I mean like a guy who's angry in a movie in the 1950's; not physically). Well, she did make one concession for him: Harry's best friend, Chook Chutney. She agreed not to sleep with him, because he was Harry's best friend (spoiler: she slept with him anyway).

Nearly twenty years on, this is still a major sticking point for her and Harry. He's had a thing for her ever since they were kids, and even now when they're in their mid-30s, Harry still sees her as the perfect girl she was in high school. Meanwhile, she's grown up, become a bit jaded and cynical from too much time in LA and too many failed auditions, which seems to just constantly baffle and annoy Harry, because he's completely unable to reconcile this new Harmony with the person he grew up with.

This is also pretty much the closest thing this fandom has to a canon ship, unless you count Perry and that doctor guy in the hospital near the end. Maybe. It's actually not really clear what happens with them (Harry and Harmony, I mean). They sort of spend a little bit of time together, and even share a kiss, until Harry blows a gasket over Chook Chutney. It's sort of hinted in the hospital, after Harry takes a crack at being Frank Castle's wimpy little brother on the 405, that maybe they did hook up, but then we never see her again, even at Jenna's funeral. And Harry doesn't even mention her in the epilogue. So, that's probably why you don't see a whole lot of her in fic, actually: there's just not a lot to go off of. That, and they are sort of doomed from the start, what with Harry being Harry. He'll probably be pissed off about Chook Chutney for the rest of his life.

Harlan Dexter
Corbin Bernsen

Uhm, spoilers: this is the bad guy. Which, OK, it's not that much of a spoiler, really. Harry practically spells it out right after we first see the guy. Again, neon signs, arrows pointing at his head. Yeah. Anyway, it's his house where the party at the beginning of the movie is held. It also happens to be his daughter that Harry and Perry find in the trunk of the car that gets thrown into the lake.

Oh, and by the way, years and years ago, when they made a Jonny Gossamer film? Guess who played Jonny Gossamer. That's right. This guy has, like, all the books, and he thinks that he can get away with some seriously hardcore stuff by doing things out of those books. And believe it or not, but it actually works for a while.

Mr Frying Pan, Mr Fire, and Pink Hair Girl
Dash Mihok, Rockmond Dunbar, and Shannyn Sossamon

Harlan Dexter may be the bad guy, but these are the guys you really have to watch out for. They're the hired muscle, paid by Dexter to do all the dirty work.

Mr Frying Pan and Mr Fire are, in their own way, the sort of anti-Harry and Perry, to the point that their bickering actually gets in the way of trying to threaten Harry. But they're not complete idiots, especially since they somehow managed to break into Harry's hotel room unnoticed by anyone and leave a dead body in his shower. I mean, really. That takes skill, man.

Anyway, these guys (and gal) find themselves into more than they bargained for when sheer dumb luck and circumstance puts them up against Harry and Perry. They, like everyone else, have severely underestimated Harry's ability to stay alive through sheer dumb luck, and even at one point, get cocky enough to not take a loaded gun away from him. I mean, really. How dumb do you gotta be?

These characters are ultimately behind the scenes, and while they're doing a majority of the work in the whole big crime thing, we wind up seeing very little of them. Well, unless you're really paying attention, apparently. Then they should be cropping up everywhere. Maybe. I don't actually know. I still can't find two of the three of them at the party, but maybe they weren't all actually there. Who knows? They don't really need to be, when it comes down to it.

But anyway, the important thing is that on a second viewing, they do tend to be where they're supposed to be. Which is pretty cool, really.

Dabney Shaw
Larry Miller

Dabney's pretty much your average LA movie producer stereotype, in that he's willing to fuck someone over in order to get Colin Ferrell to lower his price tag. Without him, the movie doesn't happen. Like, at all. It's his audition that Harry stumbles into whilst escaping from the police, and he invites Harmony to a party just because he saw her on the news. The same party that Harry just happens to be at his first night in LA. He's also Perry's biggest client, so guess who arranged it to have Perry give Harry detective lessons in the first place. You got it. Dabney Shaw. He disappears from the movie once all the match-making and exposition happens, and is only ever brought up once more by Perry, during yet another of his angry tirades.

Despite everything, and definitely not getting the part, Harry still refers to Dabney as his producer. So, apparently Harry doesn't realise that he should probably be pissed off at this guy, or something.

Chloe
uncredited

Chloe is Harry’s young niece, with whom he does seem fairly close. While she’s never shown on camera, they share at least two phone calls over the span of the movie. Chloe can actually be considered the reason Harry wound up in LA to begin with, as it was for her that he was out ‘shopping,’ trying to find a suitable Christmas gift. He actually failed to get anything from the burglary of the toy shop, but during another conversation, he implies that he still managed to track down the (wrong) toy from the beginning of the movie, stating that now that the actor connected to the toy is paralysed (he had broken into Harmony’s house, and she startled him right off of her balcony), the value of the toy has probably gone up considerably.

Richie
Josh Richman

A friend of Harry’s from New York, Richie is killed (well… maybe) almost immediately after we meet him, during the burglary in the toy shop. Whilst fleeing from the cops, they get stopped by an angry woman with a gun, against whom Richie pulls a gun of his own. Harry tried to stop anyone from doing anything stupid, and instead only got shot in the arm for his troubles and wound up having to abandon Richie in order to escape arrest.

While Harry thinks that Richie got killed, it’s actually never addressed again.

We don’t know much about him, other than he apparently invited himself along, despite Harry’s insistence that he stay home that night, which only seems to add to Harry’s guilt about the whole situation.

Chook Chutney
possibly Duane Carnahan

We (probably) never see him, but Chook Chutney was Harry’s best friend in school. He may be gay, according to Perry, although it’s possible that Perry is just fucking with Harry when he says this. He also did sleep with Harmony, despite Harry’s wishes that they not.

There’s a chance that we do catch a brief glimpse of him at the beginning of the movie, helping Harry with his saw-Harmony-in-half routine, although the character is only credited as Chainsaw Kid. Personally, I like to think that that was Chook Chutney.

He comes up quite frequently in arguments between Harry and Harmony, on account of the whole, ‘you slept with Chook Chutney’ argument in the movie. You may see the occasional alternative spelling of his name, but he’s almost always going to be full-named.

Places to Go

The fandom is pretty slow-moving these days, but is still moving. You'll find most of the action on the kinkmeme.

kkissbbang - KKBB LJ comm

pluperfect_bang - another KKBB comm

kinkbangmeme - KKBB Kinkmeme

KKBB on AO3
KKBB on FFN

KKBB on IMDB
KKBB on TVTropes
KKBB on Wikipedia

Right. Well, that's it, folks. I feel like I should probably apologise for this fucking massive overview or something. I don't know. I guess I'll just get on with the rec-posting now. Or tomorrow. Whatever.

Fandom Overview: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

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