Movies - TV
Shane Black Saw Kiss Kiss Bang Bang As His 'Anti-Action Movie'
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
After a long series of large-scale action comedies, screenwriter Shane Black tried a new tack with his neo-noir comedy "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang." In a 2005 interview with the website Chud, Black was explicit about how "Kiss Kiss" was meant to be an antidote to his usual action fare.
When asked about the usual action clichés one might see in movies, Black said he was determined to undermine a lot of them. "It was kind of the anti-action action movie in the sense that I tried to make everything ... all the tough guy stuff ... and put it on its ear a little bit," said the screenwriter.
"The violence in it and the action is very awkward," Black continued. "People are stumbling, the wrong person is shooting. [...] I liked that the actual guy who is tough and knows how to kick down the door and rescue everybody happens to be gay."
Queerness, Black acknowledges, is rarely included in action movies, with ultra-hetero machismo often expressed instead. Overall, "Kiss Kiss" returns to the character-driven origins of the genre, while also being a winking deconstruction of overused masculine tropes that play a key part in action cinema.