There’s something distinctly unhinged about Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the splendidly wise-cracking new adventure from ‘80s screenwriting wunderkind Shane Black.
For one thing, it shares the strange paranoid come-down comedy of Scorsese’s After Hours, and like that film, there’s a devil-may-care quality to the frequently Kafka-esque proceedings.
That’s not massively surprising in the circumstances. Mr. Black, who defined ‘80s action cinema with dashing scripts for Lethal Weapon and the like, has presumably spent some eight years banging his head off a typewriter.
At one time he was Mr. Hollywood, an architect of the high concept action movie, breaking records on a weekly basis. He was paid millions for ultimately underperforming movies such as The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight. But then it was all over bar the writer’s block.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is not only his first screenplay since his enforced career hiatus, it’s also Black’s directorial debut, so one shouldn’t be surprised to see all those blockbusting Shane Black characteristics – smart-arse dialogue, cartoonish violence, high octane pacing – but presented here in a much more off-the-wall fashion. Perhaps it’s just the maniacal glee of a guy stringing words together after the best part of a decade but the film pauses, fast-forwards and rewinds as it jolly well pleases, firing off in-jokes as it goes. “My name is Harry,” announces Robert Downey Jr. during the opening scene. “I’ll be your narrator.”
Mr. Downey Jr., of course, is exhibit B in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang's plea for insanity. It’s hard to imagine anyone else who could carry Black’s crazed imaginings, but then, where Downey Jr is concerned, acting has never been the problem. His off-screen career, spent largely in courtrooms, low security jails and rehab, is quite another matter.
Today, rocking slightly in a chair not designed for such, in his Claridges suite, all nerve endings and fidgeting, entire tray of Starbucks lattes to hand (impressive caffeine consumption considering I spotted him getting into a lift with an earlier tray not one hour before) and cigarette constantly on the burn, one might, without the benefit of any prior knowledge whatsoever, hazard a guess at addictive personality traits.
“It’s not like breakfast in the old days,” he declares. “A gram of coke, two bottles of vodka and a call sheet. Then, I was good.”
Have such long term breakfasting habits taken their toll, does he think?
“Fuck, yeah,” he starts. “You know that movie Restoration? They had to hire someone to keep waking me up for my scenes. Even now I can’t do shit. It took me two fucking hours to respond to an email from Jodie Foster yesterday. And it was not a long piece of correspondence.”
While he’s inclined to laugh off the neurological damage incurred, others have been rather more concerned. Given his reputation, there have been massive problems insuring the actor for recent film productions. Mel Gibson signed off far too big a chunk of the budget for The Singing Detective in order to cover Downey Jr.’s involvement. Similarly, he proved an expensive piece of casting for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’s producer, Hollywood hard-head Joel Silver.
“Mel’s a good guy,” explains Robert. “He’s always stuck with me. And Joel took me under his wing in the ‘80s. He showed me where to stay, told me ‘Don’t do that. Do this’. Of course I show up twenty years later and go ‘What did you say again?’”
Though he’s charming, incredibly funny and phenomenally talented, one does wonder how Robert’s cheerleaders have kept the faith all these years. He is, by his own estimation “a complete fuck-up.” He first experimented with marijuana aged eight at the behest of his producer father, Robert Downey Sr. By his early teens he had graduated to alcohol, narcotics and acid and had already signed-on for three stints in rehab before the law caught up with him in 1996, speeding down the freeway with bags of heroin and cocaine, and a Magnum revolver.
It was a long time coming but Downey Jr. himself regards his role as a drug-addled wastrel in Less Than Zero as the moment when it all went awry.
“It’s not like I was some pristine guy going into that movie,” he grins. “It was a drug set, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t been on those before. Maybe I took the character home with me once too often, but that’s when I upgraded from heavy recreational use. That’s when it went twenty-four hours. Less Than Zero became kind of a prophetic thing for me.”
Since then, he’s done the twelve step programmes any number of times. Like fellow casualties Charlie Sheen and Rob Lowe, he found temporary salvation in television. His role in Ally Mc Beal boosted the ratings and earned him a Golden Globe nomination until, inevitably, he was fired following another drugs bust.
He cleaned up again for the release of his album. Both ventures would prove equally unsuccessful.
“Even when I’m in the record store and I’m thinking – Destiny’s Child CD or that guy from Ally Mc Beal – there’s only going to be one winner. In retrospect that whole Ally Mc Beal period was my lowest ebb. I really didn‘t care what I did.”
As the provider of perhaps the ultimate Hollywood cautionary tale, it’s appropriate that he’s wound up in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a grand bitch-slap aimed at the town Robert calls home. This comedy noir sees the actor play a petty thief who is mistakenly auditioned and cast in a detective series. There, he teams up with real-life gay detective, erm, Gay Perry (Val Kilmer) and childhood sweetheart Harmony (Michelle Monaghan) and becomes embroiled in a bizarre pulpish murder mystery, played out against a sleazy show business backdrop and lots of modern art collectables.
“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is really fucking smart and funny and it’s kind of a twisted love letter to Hollywood,” says the 40 year old. “I was really glad to get the chance to do it. And I’m a guy who knows all about chances.”
At this moment, with a weirdness worthy of Mr. Black’s film, and not for the first time, Val Kilmer bursts through the door and he and Downey Jr. start dancing together and shouting in buddy speak. I did say unhinged right at the get go, didn’t I?
“See this guy here… See this guy here… I love you man. I love your work,” and so on, as they waltz – very convincingly – around the room.
They are, it must be said, perfectly natural bedfellows. Kilmer too has impeccable wild man credentials, growing up with impossible wealth before decamping to Hollywood and pissing off just about everyone he worked with. Joel Schumacher, who directed Kilmer in Batman Forever, famously described him as the ’most psychologically disturbed individual I have ever met’.
Closer to home, the tales of Bacchanalian excesses which emerged from the set of Alexander – a project uniting a whole gaggle of bad boys in Kilmer, Oliver Stone and Colin Farrell – are worthy feats indeed.
On hearing my accent, Kilmer, never inclined to answer a question when humorous banter will suffice, decides to offer a couple of Colin stories, including one about Colin strolling naked into somebody’s family dinner and another that’s not fit to print.
Like Robert Downey Jr, there is a tragic sense that Kilmer blew his potential for greatness. Though he’s continued to work – sometimes in decent films (True Romance, Pollock, Wonderland), sometimes not (Alexander, The Island Of Dr Moreau, At First Sight) – it’s not quite what one might have expected from an actor once touted as a possible successor to Marlon Brando.
“I have to say that I don’t regret any of my personal choices or my career choices,” says Kilmer. “I suppose I haven’t been career orientated or at least not success orientated. I just want to challenge myself as an actor. I just did theatre here in London and a documentary on Brando for the BBC because those were things I wanted to do. And when I made that documentary I was looking at Brando’s career and thinking he did seventeen flops in a row and then he did Godfather. If you follow your instincts, I think it’ll always come good.”
If he is the bastard everyone says, it doesn’t show today. As a reformed character – that’s his story and he’s sticking to it – Kilmer is particularly lovely about, and protective towards, Downey Jr.
“I never went as far as him,” he laughs. “I didn’t try to kill myself. I remember one of his court appearances and everyone who knew him had their heads in their hands. It was like ‘Your Honour, I like them. I like the booze. I like the drugs. And if I’m being honest with you, I’m going to do them again’. And then his attorney whispers something in his ear and Robert’s like ’What? I do like them.’ I‘m just so happy he didn‘t die. I want to tell him that every time I see him, because it was a close thing.”
Happily, for the moment, circumstances are looking promising for Robert Downey Jr. He recently married producer Susan Levine, who he met while working on Gothika in 2003. She has been instrumental in his current dry spell, and he swears that this time, he has cleaned up for good.
“It’s like this”, he says, dragging on cigarette number five and tilting back his chair to a most alarming angle. “Susan keeps me on a very short lease. And the woman is a saint for doing it. It’s what I need. She’s like, ‘You marry me and I’ll look after you’. And she does. Because she’s really smart and I’m fucking helpless. I can’t keep plants alive, let alone myself. This woman is great. But she also has me on the one strike and you’re out programme. I can’t fuck up or she’ll leave and the plants will all die.”
In addition to the benefits of a short lease, Downey Jr. finally seems to have a proper career again.
“I’m finally getting to do something I’ve wanted to do for the longest time,” he says. “I’m working with David Fincher on Chronicles, the zodiac killer film. I’ll be playing Edgar Allen Poe for Sylvester Stallone. I’ve got my best work ahead of me. Or so people say. Then I say ‘Have you fucking seen Chaplin?’”