This is not a book. This is not a movie.

I too wanna be kissed by Val Kilmer while trying to divert attention from the police.

NEW SHRIKEHART FIC ALERT NEW SHRIKEHART FIC ALERT!!!!

bad idea right? - olivia rodrigo

I keep thinking about and interrogating my own assertion that The Nice Guys (2016) is gayer than Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) even though KKBB is the one where one third of the main cast is openly gay and a crux of the emotional story of the movie is on his shoulders and also its one of the first movies I saw with a gay character who was a hero and all the gay jokes were at the straight people's expense. Oh and in the time-skip ending, the female love interest has exited the picture so the gay guy gets the boy.

And fucking yet.

I've spent most of the day trying to nail down where tf I'm coming from and I think I've got it.

In Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Perry is the smartest man in the room, the most competent, and crucially he is the person who is charged with dealing out "justice" at the end of the movie.

Perry acts as the load-bearing pillar of the story. And while the rest of the story is a nice meld of Perry, Harry, and Harmony. There's stronger connections between Harry and Harmony alongside Harry and Perry, but all of them have rapport and connection. But Harry's emotional arc relies as much on wanting to be a better person in Harmony's eyes as the way Perry nudges him towards being better for himself. It's good! It's really fucking good! I think it's one of KKBB's big strengths that Harry's development as a person depends on more than just his romantic interest.

And, well. He does wind up as Perry's little boytoy, getting hands put on him. Good shit.

I love KKBB and have loved it for years.

What makes me absolutely lacking in hinge about The Nice Guys is the sense of longing.

The way Black arranges Holland and Jackson and Holland Jr Holly is completely different from KKBB's trio. Holly is a kid who is forced by circumstances into taking care of her alcoholic, morally challenged father in the wake of her mother's death. She loudly states she hates the nice house they live in because she wants her father to keep his promise to her and build them a new house. She wants someone to depend on again. She wants Holland to be a better person again.

She latches on pretty aggressively to Healy, who tacitly sees and understands what she's going through and puts himself in a position to help. (His quick reassurance to her that he's going to drive, not the day-drinking Holland.) And it's very clear that Healy feels that pull on his side too.

In the dueling opening Hardboiled Noir Voiceover (which is a really great Genre Joke, but also contains the set-up for Healy and March both), he speaks about himself as someone who's jaded and had his faith in people broken in a profound way. But he can't help but pay his own money to hire March to find Amelia. And he can't bear to have Holly think he's a bad person. And despite the world-weary facade, he actually expects better from March and is genuinely motivated to protect and help people, to drag March to do the same kicking and screaming.

When Jackson reflects on the Diner Guy Thing, he seems very disconnected from the event and everything that happened with it. But it contains an ounce of what he truly wants: to be useful.

So you have a man who wants to be useful and to be used well... but who simultaneously is stuck thinking his only use is violence. Hence the melancholy and self-confidence.

Holland's portrait of self-destruction is one of the most effective I've ever seen, probably because when we meet him, his entire life is hanging by... not a thread but a safety catch. He gets into a tub of water before getting blackout drunk so he can't start a fire with his cigarettes. He does stupid, dangerous things and nearly dies in his introductory sequence, but he has Holly. He'll never be happy, but he has Holly.

To be truly blunt, Holland March is less than a year out from his name on the obituary page. He needs help. And to believe there's a point to getting up every day.

I've seen a dozen gifsets of this scene and I think there's a reason for that. We learn a lot.

Healy cares enough about Amelia that he's willing to pay March to find her.

Thanks to remaining (comparatively) sober for Holly's birthday party, Holland is... sharp and charming and engaging. He has flashes of brilliance, dimmed by his own ruthlessness.

He has phenomenal rapport with his daughter, who is extremely protective of him.

She's also very funny and echoes all of her father's best traits, enough so Healy immediately gets playful with her, immediately feels comfortable enough to have fun over March's weak protests.

Despite the fact he broke March's fucking arm, March has the audacity to fuck with Healy, blatantly trying to shake him down for more money.

Look at this shit. How can Healy resist this?

Jackson wants to feel useful? Sure, how about keeping an eye on the wettest cattest detective ever so his kid can relax and be an actual kid? How about finding one of the last survivors of a series of assassinations and carrying her to safety? How about solving a case to keep Misty, Dean, Sid, and Amelia's deaths from being in vain?

Oh, whoops.

In the end, the mystery was solved, the film recovered, but the victory is tepid. "Nothing changes."

Except now, the Marches are here. Holly's been keeping an eye on Healy and Holland is going to make sure they end this together, officially, as partners. When he peels himself off that bar, Healy isn't going to be alone. Something has changed, for all three of them.

After the shoot-out at the rental, there's this one quiet moment that happens.

Jackson looks over to the place where the March's house burned down (where previously he lied to Holly and she said she knew he couldn't be a bad person), and sees Holland standing there, and while he stands in the spot he feels his life ended, Jackson lingers. Emotionally, the stakes have shifted. The story of why these people are dying is the A Plot of the film, but the B Plot absolutely is the serendipitous accident of the trio. Healy explicitly chooses Holly when he spares John Boy. But just as clearly, he and March want each other, what each other can offer, the things they each have in abundance that the other needs to survive.

It's longing. It's the urge to protect and help each other heal. It's lovely.

I think one of the reasons i do love his films so much is there is this sense of you can have these very flawed human beings and they can still want and try to be better, and moreover, to want each other to be better. Shane's characters encourage each other to try to do the right thing even when it would be so easy to ignore the bad things. His work is anti-cynical, it looks at all the shitty things going on and says no, we can make things better if we try.

And OP your point about longing is right on the money, even in KKBB I think there's a strong sense of longing and nostalgia evoked, we just don't see as much of it between Perry and Harry because they don't have the same degree of history as Harmony and Harry do. If we'd ever gotten a sequel I would've been so intrigued to see what happened with the tension between Perry & Harry, to see that sense of desire expand more. I feel like the characters in the Nice Guys are more lonely figures even than the KKBB characters, which lends itself well to that longing.

I also think that Harry is something of a heart character, and he's also presumptive about emotional connections; he reaches out to both Harmony and Perry and decides that they are friends, that this is destiny, that they have a bond. and in so doing, there's a kind of emotional commitment that he, at least, is not afraid of, and his commitment pulls Harmony and Perry both into his orbit.

The exact same story told by Perry or Harmony would feel extremely different. It's the optimism and romanticism he can't successfully pretend he doesn't have that makes Harry-Harmony-Perry into a trio, definitely against Perry's will.

His fucking OPENING LINE is "Hard to believe it was just last Christmas when me and Harmony changed the world." And unlike in TNG which only uses Noir Detective Narration as an opening gag/character establishment, he keeps yapping the whole movie.

Harry doesn't just build connections, the people around him are like "hey you stop that" and he's like "what i'm not doing anything" and keeps laying bricks.

SHRIKESHAW EDIT!

I KNEW I COULD TRUST YOU it’s the movie of all time for making rdj a bimbo twink, val kilmer a mean gay man, and michelle monaghan a sexy santa cosplayer

​god RDJ is so fucking twinky in it, you're right. he's so fucking stupid and big hearted. and the specific way terrible things keep happening to him but he tries SO HARD to be a good guy and protective and chivalrous.... which only ends with him getting the shit kicked out of him.

michelle monaghan. god this is my favorite role of hers. she's the dream girl, she's damaged, she's sexy, she's smart, and she has to wear stupid outfits and explain her ideas. she's so funny and great.

PERRY IS JUST. the heart of the movie? like for me the movie is actually about Perry and maybe its bc I'm always been affirmed by Perry? Like the entire movie is against him, and to me it feels like every gay joke is at the expense of the homophobes. But he is vERY gay, he's flamboyant, he's mean, he has mannerisms, he leers as hot asses-- but he's also The Competent One, he takes care of Harry and Harmony

and like there are so many Cinematic Parallels between Harmony and Perry. both intimidate Harry, they correct him and guide him, they shout at him when he's particularly fucking stupid. they also both get nearly identical "I'm not who you think I am" moments ("I'm not a nice man, Harry." "You think I'm amazing.")

AND IN THE END THE LAST PERSON WE SEE HARRY WITH IS PERRY, and he's touchy and grabs Harry's mouth and the absolute comfort there

jeremydavies:

i am the proud owner of the first shrikeshaw fic on ao3. even though its short as fuck. i SWEAR i’ll make something longer in the future