Finding paper topics in movies is a difficult habit to break once started. I remember wondering whether I'd lose my love of movies when I began studying film. What I found and what still seems to be the case is that I just added another type of pleasure to the viewing experience. Even after a good number of years away from the classroom, I still enjoy imagining how I'd talk about movies in a paper or to a class.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang would be an absolute blast to teach in a film noir survey. I'm sure that professors and grad students all over will be adding it to their syllabi. From the genre (film noir) to the pairing of smart, talented bad boys (Val Kilmer to and Robert Downey Jr) to the chapter titles (inspired by hard-boiled detective fiction) to the title (I'm guess that it's taken from the Pauline Kael article), it begs to be put into dialogue with the genre itself, Hollywood and just a bunch of friends who have a thing for bruised detectives, sexy femme fatales and tricky plots.

One of the themes I might focus on in a discussion is how the function of the femme fatale falls to a male character. Harmony looks the part of the siren. As the product of a dysfunctional family and a wanna be actress, she is initially presented as a femme fatale. But she also seems to retain some Midwestern integrity which makes her different from those slipper dames in Out of the Past and Double Indeminity.

Even though Harmony and Robert Downey Jr.are paired, the more interesting couple is Val Kilmer (Gay Perry) and Robert Downey Jr. In fact, I might want to reflect on the homme fatale'ish features of Gay Perry. Like Willem Dafoe in To Live and Die in LA, he's aligned with visual style in a way that femme fatales typically are and in a way that Harmony is not. Kilmer seems much more adept at manipulating appearances than she is.