Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Writer/director Shane Black's and Warner Bros.' cynical, tongue-in-cheek and jokey movie was a hybrid romantic black comedy and homage crime-noir. The title of Black's directorial-debut film - a buddy-comedy thriller (set at Christmas time), succinctly summed up how the film was half-romantic comedy and half-thriller.

The basis of the plot-twisting film came from a 1940s hard-boiled pulpy, paperback Michael Shayne mystery titled "Bodies Are Where You Find Them" by Brett Halliday. The original title of the film, "You'll Never Die In This Town Again," was changed to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - the name of a James Bond song in the 1960s, a nickname for Bond himself, and the title of Pauline Kael's anthology of her film reviews from 1965-1967.

Earlier in his career before Shane Black faded from view for a number of years, he had famously written or helped with the scripts for the highly significant franchise Lethal Weapon, and also starred in Predator (1987) (and later co-scripted and directed The Predator (1987)). Other film scripts written by him included The Last Boy Scout (1991), Last Action Hero (1993) and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996). Happily, Black's first-directed film also resurrected the careers of two Hollywood bad-boys: Val Kilmer, and Robert Downey, Jr.

The clever who-dun-it film contained humorous, colorful and bantering smart-ass dialogue, self-conscious and tongue-in-cheek narration, a few violent shoot-outs, the deaths of two females (a suicide, and a murdered girl in a car submerged in a lake), a body double (imposter), and two love-hate relationships between the three main protagonists. There were also many shrewd references to 1940s pulpy crime-novels starring a detective known as Jonny Gossamer. In an early segment of the film, the plot's twist ending was cleverly telegraphed: "Gossamer would always take on two cases that were seemingly unrelated. One's normal and the other's some wild s--t. Then you'd find out that they're connected. That it's all one case."

Black named the film's chapters after noir author Raymond Chandler's books:

• Prologue
• Day One: Trouble is My Business
• Day Two: The Lady in the Lake
• Day Three: The Little Sister
• Day Four: The Simple Art of Murder
• Epilogue: Farewell, My Lovely

The main plot was about a NY crook (after a failed robbery attempt that ended his partner's life) who was thought to be an emotive actor when he crashed a screen test and performed a heart-felt audition-reading. He was flown to Los Angeles, where he willingly masqueraded as a wanna-be actor, and tailed after a gay private eye who provided him with on-the-job acting training to be a detective. He also teamed up with a struggling, aspiring actress (his childhood friend) as they became involved in two inter-twined cases - a complex mistaken-identity plot about a suicidal sister and her abusive "father". The film's tagline was: "SeX. MurdEr. MyStery. Welcome to the Party."

Budgeted at $15 million, the film grossed only $4.2 million (domestic), but did much better worldwide with $15.78 million in revenue.

• in the film's prologue set in Embrey, Indiana in the year 1980 at a family church fair (seen with a deep yellow tinge, signifying it was a flashback), a "Jaws of Death" carnival magic trick (chain-sawing a person in half inside a box) was being performed by two young people - 9 year-old top-hatted magician Harry Lockhart (aka "Harold the Great") (Indio Falconer Downey) and his 7 year-old girlfriend Harmony Faith Lane (Ariel Winter); after the dramatic trick, the girl stated to her abusive father: "I'm going to be an actress" before he reacted by slapping her; the flashback was followed by a highly-inventive title credits sequence
• Day One: Trouble is My Business: at a fashionable LA pool party, the film's narrator provided a voice-over - introducing himself as Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey, Jr.); his opening words were: "Hard to believe it was last Christmas that me and Harmony changed the world. And we didn't mean to. And it didn't last long, you know. A thing like that can't"; he spoke about two others at the party: casting agent/producer Dabney Shaw (Larry Miller), and private investigator Perry Van Shrike - aka "Gay Perry" (Val Kilmer) - also a private consultant for Film and TV

Petty Thief and Imposter-Actor Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey, Jr.)

Casting Agent/Producer Dabney Shaw (Larry Miller)

Private Detective "Gay Perry" (Val Kilmer)

• in another flashback, Harry went on to explain "How HARRY Got to the Party"; during a botched, evening robbery of Margot's Toy Shop on Canal Street in New York's East Village, after the security alarm sounded, two robbers (one of whom was Harry) fled into an alleyway from the store; Harry's friend Richie (Josh Richman) was shot dead during a citizen's arrest by a woman (Martha Hackett) with a pistol on a fire-escape; to evade a police car, Harry ducked into a building where acting readings and auditions were taking place for a hard-boiled crime thriller; already feeling intensely emotional and guilty about what he had just experienced, his 'method acting' in a similar role convinced the panel (including casting agent Dabney Shaw) that he should be chosen to fly to LA for a further screen test
• Harry then described "How HARMONY Got to the Party" - his childhood friend Harmony had grown up in Middle America (Indiana); she often read books such as cheap pulpy Jonny Gossamer crime-novel paperbacks - and became entranced by her detective savior-hero; in the flashback, it was revealed that her sexually-abusive father (Steve Somers) was molesting Harmony's young sister Jenna; Harmony split from home at age 16 and traveled by bus to Los Angeles, to get "rich and famous" and then to help her little sister
• while narrating the story, Harry realized that he had left out the "Giant Robot" story; after arriving in LA, aspiring actress Harmony (Michelle Monaghan) was in her Venice Beach house defensively wielding a baseball bat against a 'giant robot' intruder in her home named Protocop (Chris Gilman); he backed up and fell to his death from her home's balcony; shortly later, the disguised deceased figure was identified by a newscaster as despondent, unemployed actor Neal, who had portrayed the robot on a discontinued TV show; intrigued casting agent Dabney saw Harmony being interviewed about the accidental death of Protocop on a TV newscast, and he also chose her to attend the industry-related pool party; it was destiny for both Harry and Harmony to meet
• during the party, a distracted Harmony found a row of Jonny Gossamer detective paperbacks on a bookshelf; as she was reading, she passed out on a table and while unconscious (in front of a TV playing the Mexican Christmas movie Santa Claus (1959) (aka Santa Claus vs. The Devil)), one of the guests named "Sleaze" began to inappropriately lift her skirt; Harry's effort to defend Harmony resulted in his brutal beating outside on a lawn; soon after, Harmony left with her assailant
• Harry was approached by PI Perry who introduced himself as Harry's gay "consultant" - he was known as "Gay Perry" (a play on words), who would be providing him with "detective lessons" the next day; Harry was also introduced to the host of the party - retired actor Harlan Dexter (Corbin Bernsen) who recognized Harry as "Dabney's 'golden boy' from back East"; Harlan claimed that his daughter Veronica - who lived in Paris for 10 years (during a feud regarding his wife's inheritance) - was at the party celebrating her 25th birthday; before PI Perry drove off, he suggested that Harry look up the female (who he had just defended) at her usual hangout - the "Domino Room" - a club in downtown LA
• at the exclusive club, Harry reacquainted himself with Harmony, who finally admitted that they were childhood playmates and high-school friends (but never had sex together) - she reminisced that they had grown up in the same town of Embrey, Indiana - and she fondly remembered him as a child-magician: ("Goddamn it. Harry Lockhart, are you gonna recognize me or what?...Harold the Great! You cut me in half, remember?"); Harmony recalled: "Leaving my sister back home, leaving her there all alone. Hardest thing I ever did"; she also told how one day, a Hollywood movie crew came to their small town to shoot a "mystery flick" about her detective hero Jonny Gossamer; she also admitted how she had failed in Hollywood, except for one commercial for Genaros Beer
• they returned to his hotel with Harmony's hostile girlfriend Marleah (Ali Hillis) for a drink, and the next morning, Harry awoke in bed at 6 am, shocked to see the girlfriend sleeping next to him instead of Harmony; he rushed over to Harmony's place and knocked on her door; although he apologized, he didn't remember what had occurred, and she was insulted: "I can't believe you'd come here to tell me you like me after you f--ked my friend!"; she slammed the door on him; he chastised himself as a "moron"
• Day Two: The Lady in the Lake: Harry was a passenger in Perry's car, as he described the essential plot of the Jonny Gossamer novels: "Gossamer would always take on two cases that were seemingly unrelated. One's normal and the other's some wild s--t. Then you'd find out that they're connected. That it's all one case"; during their nighttime stakeout, Harry was told that Perry had a loaded derringer gun in his glove compartment: ("I call it my faggot gun"); Perry explained that his current client was Allison Ames (A-M-E-S), who had phoned and hired him for video surveillance and had paid via a credit card; Perry mentioned how he thought his job was "boring"
• after walking to a small cottage in the woods near Big Bear Lake and hiding behind a woodpile, Perry videotaped a gay guy named Chook Chutney wearing a ski mask, who exited and drove off in a beat-up white 1980 BMW 320i; after following briefly, they watched as the same car went airborne over a nearby ridge and landed in a pond; both Perry and Harry raced into the water as the car sank; Perry emerged from under the water with a dead female (wearing a sundress) in his arms, and obliviously admitted that he had unintentionally killed the victim: ("She was in the trunk. I had to shoot the lock to get it open"); her neck was also broken, probably from the crash; Harry noticed a significant clue - she wasn't wearing underwear, and he modestly pulled down her dress; the two killers wearing ski-masks momentarily appeared above them on the ridge before taking off in a second vehicle
• Harry realized that they couldn't report the incident to the cops, because there was a large gunshot wound above her left eye (inflicted by Perry); Perry realized that he had really messed up; before leaving, Harry threw Perry's gun into the water to get rid of the weapon; an upset Perry hit Harry in the head with his metal briefcase: ("My $2,000 ceramic Vektor my mother got me as a special gift you threw in the lake next to the car. What happens when they drag the lake? You think they'll find my pistol? Jesus. Look up 'idiot' in the dictionary")
• as they drove back to LA, Perry realized he had been set up to witness a murder; he drove Harry back to his hotel, and as Harry was being dropped off, he received a phone call from police Sgt. Kale who informed him that his acquaintance Harmony had suicidally shot herself - [Note: This was not actually true - it was a case of mistaken identity.]
• Harmony's TV commercial for Genaros Beer portrayed her as a German milkmaid at a castle, where a large brown bear (CGI) popped out of a cake and distributed bottles of beer; the bear laughed as he spoke to Harmony: "I prefer Genaros. But what do I know? I'm a bear. I suck the heads off fish" - and then chomped down on a fish-head
• after sipping on champagne to drown his sorrows inside his hotel room and talking on the phone to his young niece Chloe (about the NY robbery), he responded to a knock on his door, and opened it to find Harmony standing there; he was both shocked and relieved: "Son of a bitch!"; in voice-over, Harry reminded himself: "See, I forgot, old Jonny, he always had two cases. Remember?"; as he hugged her, Harmony kept repeating to him: "Hey. She's gone, Harry"
• in the next sequence, there had been a major mix-up in identities; Harmony was being questioned by a police officer at the apartment of her sister Jenna, who had come to LA from Indiana and had stolen Harmony's credit card and ID; Harmony was called upon to identify the body of her suicidal sister in the apartment (a rifle was on the bed, and her corpse was stretched out on the floor)
• back in Harry's hotel room, Harmony explained the backstory about her dead sister Jenna who had come to LA: "We haven't spoken in years. She's never forgiven me for leaving her all alone"; the day before, possibly because she was broke, she had entered Harmony's place, stolen $200 dollars and her ID and credit card, and maybe other things; Harmony asked for Harry's help, who continued to play along with her that he was a 'detective'; in voice-over, Harry admitted that he was very confused by the two almost simultaneous deaths:
  • "Harmony's sister, dead. What the hell? What was she even doing here? The lady in the lake, now the little sister. Ok? This was, like, two corpses in three hours. I mean, am I crazy? That's unusual, right?"
• just before Jenna's death, according to Harmony, Jenna had racked up charges of $2,000 dollars on Harmony's credit card, charged to a company known as Sentron; she also suspected that Jenna had been murdered: ("Sentron something. Some bulls--t company! Oh, plus- red flag, Harry. She took her birth control pill for the day. Why would she even bother with the pill, huh? She was murdered, Harry")
• after Harmony passed out, Harry carried her to a bed and tried to flick a spider away from her exposed right breast and nipple; when she revived, she dismissively accused him to trying to touch her: ("You grabbed my tit. It's life, all right? It's no biggie"), but then after she found a spider leg on her chest - she was reassured: "See there...I trust you," although he remained perturbed for doubting him and reacting harshly to him; he also questioned her integrity: ("What kind of guys are you hanging out with?")

The Corpse of the Victim From the Lake Discovered Planted in Harry's Hotel Bathroom

• shortly later, after Harmony left, and as Harry was standing up and peeing into his hotel bathroom's toilet, he turned to his left and spotted the corpse of the dead female from the car's trunk on the floor - he accidentally directed his stream of pee onto her; he fell to the tile floor and began to vomit; in a panic, he called Perry who suggested wrapping the body up and removing it; secondly, he advised for Harry to find a "planted" gun, which Harry quickly located under the bed

Harry and Perry Comically Getting Rid of the Body (the "Lady in the Lake")

• at the lobby's front desk as Harmony was leaving, she heard police responding to a 911 call they had received to visit Harry's room (#714), and she misdirected them to a different room (#514); Perry arrived to help Harry carry the wrapped body out of the room to the rooftop, where they dumped it over the edge, but missed aiming it into a dumpster; Harry mentioned to Perry: "Harmony's alive. She thinks her sister was murdered"; down on the street level, as they loaded the body into the trunk of Perry's 2004 Mercedes-Benz CLK 500, they were forced to pretend to be gay lovers to throw off two cops in a police patrol car: ("Check out Doris and Lucinda over here!"); Harry was disgusted, spit on the ground, and reprimanded Perry: "These lessons suck. I quit. This is not being a detective. Corpses floating in lakes, people kissing people. This is wrong. This is every shade of wrong"
• Harmony appeared behind them, and Harry continued the charade that he was a 'detective'; in voice-over, Harry described the aftermath: "I sent her home believing, A, we'd meet tomorrow to go over her case, and, B, I wasn't actually gay. Do not ask me how I did B"; the two ditched the body on the side of the road
• Day Three: The Little Sister: The next morning in a restaurant in the hotel, Harmony described to Harry how she had put her sister Jenna into foster care before leaving town, to avoid further abusive treatment by their father; she also confessed that she told Jenna that her real father had been an actor in town during the filming of a Jonny Gossamer movie: ("I told Jenna one day she'd go to Hollywood and she'd meet her famous, real father"); acc. to Harmony, Jenna believed her tall tale and came to LA to find her 'real father'; a flashback to Jenna's crime scene revealed a blood-stained clipping from the Embrey Star newspaper about an LA film crew invading the town in early March of 1980
• a KTLA-Channel 5 TV newscast described the discovery of another body - the one that Harry and Perry had discarded by the side of the road after the incident at the lake; it was Harlan's 25 year-old daughter Veronica Dexter who had recently arrived from Paris after she "withdrew her multimillion-dollar lawsuit against her father actor-turned-entrepreneur Harlan Dexter...His wife died last spring, prompting Veronica's return to the U.S. and a father-daughter reconciliation following years of estrangement"; Veronica was reported missing in a kidnapping-abduction case after she failed to meet her old boyfriend at the airport arriving from Europe
• Perry advised Harry to leave LA immediately, since Veronica's killers had probably "recognized" him at Harlan's pool party; Perry felt there was a conspiracy brewing in the background: "Dabney, he unearths a discovery. New kid, works for cheap. Flies him out here, high profile, parties, screen tests, detective lessons, all of it. You were just being used"; Perry admitted that he had been employed by Dabney "to insulate him from corpses," and warned that the "bad guys" might end up hurting Harry: "I'm not a nice man, Harry. Go home before something bad happens to you"
• while waiting at the airport for his Delta plane to return to the East Coast, Harry happened to run into Harmony's stewardess-friend Flicka (Angela Lindvall), who revealed that Harmony's cell-phone number was under her stage-name: Allison Ames ! [Note: Harry recalled that Perry had said he had been hired (via credit card) by Allison Ames to do video surveillance at the cottage before the 'lady in the lake' incident; therefore, with Harmony's stolen credit card, Jenna's suicide case was now tied to Veronica Dexter's murder case.]
• Harry abandoned his plans to leave town, and in a cab, he frantically phoned Perry at his place of work - Sentron, Inc. (the company where "little sister" Jenna had paid charges of $2,000 dollars on her sister Harmony's 'stolen' credit card); he left a message:
  • "Your client, Ames, it was the little sister. Repeat, the little sister. That's where Harmony's two grand went. It's in your bank, you over-priced bastard. Her kid sister hired you. Do you get this? Your case and my case are the same f--king case!"
• at Harmony's place, she slammed the door on Harry and accidentally severed half of his left-ring finger; they went to the hospital together to have it sewn back on, but Harmony had to leave to go to work at a Christmas party on Sunset Plaza; the two talked on the phone about Harry's recent revelation:
  • "What's my sister's connection to Veronica Dexter? She predicted that murder, Harry. She sent you and Perry to that exact spot!"
• high as a kite on pain-killers, Harry joined Harmony at the weird and excessive Christmas party, where she claimed the killers (who had been at Dexter's pool party) were in attendance; in voice-over, Harry theorized: "What if little sis had been murdered by the same assholes who offed Veronica Dexter? Remember? With the ski masks, those dudes"; at the party, Harmony handed him a paper bag with a video of a Jonny Gossamer movie - but with a fake label to avoid suspicion - "The Lord of the Cock Rings"; Harmony thought: "If Jenna was hunting her mystery dad, this is where she would start, right?"; Harry was distracted by the unusual people at the party and delivered a long monologue about his jaded view of how so many emotionally-abused and "damaged" females had ended up in LA:
  • "These are damaged goods, every one of them, from way back... it's abandonment, it's abuse, it's 'My uncle put his ping-ping in my Papa!'... and then they all come out here! I mean, it's literally like someone took America by the East Coast and shook it, and all the normal girls managed to hang on"
• Perry arrived, and the threesome retreated to the kitchen to watch the videotape; after tossing her credit card at Perry, Harmony noted that it was her 'stolen' card (with her stage-name) used by her sister Jenna to hire Perry to surveil 'the lady in the lake'; as the group watched the old detective film on video, they realized that actor Michael Beck starred as 'Jonny Gossamer', and that a 20 years-younger Harlan Dexter also appeared in the movie [Note: The movie excerpt was from the action-crime film Dead Aim (1987) with Corbin Bernsen as one of the actors.]; Harmony had a startling recollection that she had seen Harlan with the film crew back in 1980 in Embrey, IN: ("I saw him like this. Young!"); they realized that Jenna had come to LA to hunt for her "fairy-tale" father - Harlan Dexter!
• afterwards while still at the party, Harry was strong-armed by two of Dexter's "goons" - nicknamed Mr. Fire (Rockmond Dunbar) and Mr. Frying Pan (Dash Mihok) - the mask-wearing killers from the lake; Harry was beaten up and threatened to end his search: ("L.A. don't want you no more, tough guy"); with his stitched finger needing more attention after being pulled off, as Harmony was driving him back to the hospital, the two realized that they were right behind the two "goons" on their way to MacArthur Park to confront Perry, who told them that he was there on a surveillance mission until midnight (Harmony: "Perry's stakeout. It's a setup. They're going to MacArthur Park after Perry!"); ignoring Harry's medical needs, Harmony detoured and parked to go warn Perry, and left the keys in the car; as Harry passed out unconscious in the back seat, Harmony dashed off (with a gun)
• Perry had been hired to follow a Pink-Haired Girl (Shannyn Sossamon) (affiliated with Dexter's two "goons") as part of the set-up; Harmony ran into the park where she fought against and knocked out Mr. Fire with a head-butt; then, she was able to warn and save Perry when she fell and her gun discharged, and the car (driven by Mr. Frying Pan) that was supposed to plow into Perry swerved and crashed into a hot-dog vendor's stand; enraged by the damage, the vendor shot and killed Mr. Frying Pan; meanwhile, the Pink-Haired Girl stole Harmony's abandoned parked car (not knowing that Harry was unconscious in the back seat) and drove away to her house - located near Silver Lake (south of Glendale)
• in the garage after reviving, Harry wandered into the house, and as he hid under a bed, he watched as the Girl met up with Mr. Fire, who suddenly mortally wounded her with two shots from a silencer-gun; during the sequence, the melancholy song "Blue Christmas" (performed by Sheryl Crow) played softly in the background on the soundtrack; as she sadly died in front of him, Harry watched helplessly and silenced her lips to avoid revealing his location; Harry vengefully reached for the silencer-gun and repeatedly shot Mr. Fire five times in the chest - the thug fell backwards and shattered a glass table; Harry set the crime scene to look like a gun-battle between the two; then, after placing his severed finger into a bucket of ice, the Girl's dog (Stevie) jumped up and ate it - Harry thought to himself that at least he wouldn't be leaving a fingerprint
• in the next scene early the next morning in the lobby of Harry's hotel, the threesome (Perry, Harry, and Harmony) listened to another LA newscast; a reporter stated that items in the Silver Lake/Glendale home - where two bodies were found - was linked to the kidnap-murder of socialite Veronica Dexter; Harry was hoping that the killing was over now that the kidnappers were all dead; Harmony disagreed: "I still think this Veronica Dexter father-daughter business is wanky"; Perry also thought it was suspicious that Veronica had just returned from Europe, reconciled with her father Harlan and moved in, and had dropped their long-standing lawsuit; Perry was worried about any further deeper investigations into why Harmony's sister Jenna had hired him to do video surveillance
• as Harmony was about to leave the hotel, Harry admitted to her that he was truly romantically interested in her: ("I don't want younger and better, I want you"); and then he confessed that he had lied to her about his profession as a 'detective': "That's what I do for a living. I steal audio-visual components. I steal, I rob"; he also explained how he was commitment-phobic - the very reason he had earlier slept with her "homely" friend Marleah: ("I've never finished anything that I've started my entire life. Not school, not marriage, nothing. And I have this thing where, like halfway in the middle, I just, and I cut and run")
• after drinking heavily in the hotel bar, Harry and Harmony retreated to his hotel room (now cleaned-up), where she took off her Santa Claus costume and climbed into bed; he recalled to her the haunting memory of how he had seen the dead Veronica up-close: ("Oh, God. I just had a weird thought. Veronica Dexter. I saw the body up close") - he claimed that although she was "born-again," he thought it was odd that she wasn't wearing underwear; Harry and Harmony came close to making love together, and she even offered a "courtesy freebie... default backup thing" (hand-job); he affectionately told her as they kissed: "You are the dream girl. You always have been. This is destiny," but they ended up quarreling with each other with old recriminations about who she had slept with in the past; she left (he was careful not to slam her fingers in the door), but then she phoned back asking, after a moment's thought, if Veronica had been raped; he told her that the ME's report had confirmed that she hadn't been raped
• Day Four: The Simple Art of Murder: Harmony phoned saying she was going to pursue a hunch about the "Veronica Dexter business"; meanwhile, Harry and Perry drove to Harlan Dexter's Mental Health Institute - a private health clinic; the fact that the deceased Veronica at the lake had not been wearing underwear indicated that she might have been a patient at the clinic - who was kept there against her will since she hated her father, and then shortly later had changed her mind and dropped the lawsuit: (Perry: "First, she hates her dad, then she loves him. Has a lawsuit, then withdraws it")
• Harry realized that it was more sinister than that; Harlan's real daughter Veronica had been drugged and incarcerated, and replaced with an imposter (body double), who would briefly appear in public with her 'father' to drop the court case: (Harry: "Oh, my God. So it's two different girls, right? It's gotta be. He stashed his daughter in here, and then put the ringer on the street"); Perry concurred: "It's right out of a Jonny Gossamer book"; it also was fitting that Harlan had copies of all the Gossamer books in his house: ("He's read them all. They're in his house") and had appeared in a 20 year-old Gossamer movie
• they concluded that Harmony's sister Jenna, "fresh off the bus, blonde, fatigued, looking for her daddy," was Harlan's likely imposter (or "replacement daughter") [Note: Although this was a possible explanation, it was WRONG. See later.]
• as the two left the Dexter facility, a large, tall bald black clinic guard (Evan Parke) held them at gunpoint; they reversed the situation and captured him, and while holding him captive, Perry and Harry described their understanding of the case -- Dexter had been forced to kill his real daughter; he had realized that Veronica's boyfriend arriving from Europe would spoil his plan: ("He would've spotted the fake and said: 'That's not Veronica.' Am I right?...So Dexter had Veronica killed, threw a dress on her, dumped the body and walked away clean, except for one little thing....One tiny little pair of undies"); the lack of underwear proved Dexter had held her at his mental facility
• the two forced the guard to play a game of "Am I Bluffing?" with a gun (holding only one bullet) - a variation of Russian Roulette; after miscounting, Harry spun the chamber, pointed it at the guard's head and pulled the trigger - and accidentally shot the guard to death; after burying the guard's body in some thick bushes, Harry and Perry found themselves again held at gunpoint by Dexter and one of his thugs Aurelio (Vincent Laresca); Harry was able to briefly warn Harmony who was calling back (and pretending to be a carpet-cleaning service) that they were in trouble ("Dexter's got us") - she proceeded to come to their rescue
• Harry and Perry were taken back into the hospital, where Harry's pants were pulled down, and electrodes were attached to his crotch to torture him; the two discussed outloud how they knew that Dexter was momentarily going to cremate Veronica's corpse so that it wouldn't be revealed that her DNA didn't match with the 'ringer'; as Harry screamed from the genital torture, Harmony was outside, observing the arrival of a van to pick up Veronica's coffin and take it to the mortuary for cremation; Perry taunted Aurelio as a closet fag, enough to distract him, and enable him to shoot and kill him with a concealed mini-gun in his crotch (Perry: "Homophobes never check there")
• after four of Dexter's goons had loaded Veronica's coffin into the back of a van, Harmony snuck into the van's driver's seat and drove off; during the distracting vehicle chase, Harry and Perry escaped; the pursuit ended when Harmony crashed the van on an overpass and it turned over - sending the coffin out of the back of the van; the dislodged coffin dangled from the end of the overpass and partially opened, revealing one of the corpse's arms hanging out
• during a shootout with one of the thugs on the overpass, Perry was shot in the chest and incapacitated (the bullet went through him and also hit Harry standing behind him); after the van crash, Harmony staggered around after suffering a minor concussion; Harmony revived, called on a phone and begged Harry to use his magical powers: ("Harold, use your awesome might. Save me from this hopeless plight. Harold..."); while hanging from one arm and grabbing a gun in mid-air, Harry was able to miraculously kill Dexter above him on the overpass: (Harlan's last words were "Captain F--king Magic!") and then, after Harry dropped down onto the goons' car on the freeway below, he also eliminated all of them too; it was shown to Harmony and Harry that a bullet had struck a Jonny Gossamer paperback in Harry's breast pocket, saving his life, although he was injured

During Shootout on Overpass, Both Perry and Harry Were Struck with the Same Bullet

• Harry awoke after being treated in a hospital, where it appeared that everyone had survived, because as Harry (in voice-over) explained, the studio didn't want a "downer ending":
  • "Yeah, boo, hiss, I know. Look, I hate it too. In movies where the studio gets all paranoid about a downer ending, so like the guy shows up, he's magically alive on crutches, I hate that. I mean, s--t, why not bring them all back."
• [Note: Some of the fatalities in the film, including the Pink-Haired Girl and a thug, and ABRAHAM LINCOLN (Tom Willett) - appeared alive, until a female producer began removing them from the room.] Harry continued his voice-over: "But the point is, in this case, this time, it really happened. Perry, like, lived. And yeah, it's a dumb movie thing but what do you want me to do, lie about it?"
• although Harmony had believed that Harlan Dexter had used her sister Jenna to impersonate or be Veronica's 'ringer,' Perry corrected the record for her: "Dexter didn't murder your sister...The ringer was a girl named Mia Frye, 23-year-old from Glendale. When she wasn't impersonating Veronica Dexter, she wore a pink wig"; Perry continued to describe how Jenna - after arriving in LA - had begun to follow Dexter around, believing (wrongly) that he was her "natural father"

Perry Setting the Record Straight For Harmony, Jenna's Older Sister
Jenna's Witnessing of What Appeared to Be 'Incest' Between Her 'Natural Father' Dexter and Another 'Daughter' Had Provoked Jenna to Commit Suicide

• Jenna happened to accidentally spot Dexter through a window having sex with the "imposter" - a topless and blindfolded Pink-Haired Girl (the pink-hair was a wig), and Jenna assumed that her 'father' was with another 'daughter'; for Jenna, realizing that both of her 'fathers' were abusive, and then after witnessing the act of incest, it was completely unbearable for her and she committed suicide:
  • "It was too much for her. First the old father, now the shiny new one. She couldn't handle it, and she took her own life. What she hired me to film wasn't murder, but incest. I'm sorry"
• Jenna had stolen Harmony's credit card (with Harmony's stage name), and then had charged $2,000 on the card to pay PI Perry to capture a video of the act of incest
• Epilogue: Farewell, My Lovely: the three traveled back to Embrey, IN for Jenna's funeral; in the Lane home, Perry (with a cane) confronted Harmony's dying, oxygen-breathing, bed-ridden father (Harrison Young) in the upstairs of his house; he called him an "animal," and accused him of slowly and over 20 years, methodically killing Harmony's younger sister: ("Harmony was right. Her sister was murdered. You pulled the trigger. It just took this long for the bullet to hit"); Perry back-handed him twice across the face; when Harmony's dad accused Perry of beating up a defenseless old man: ("Big tough guy"), Perry echoed his words: "Yeah, that's right. Big tough guy" - before leaving
• in the final segment of the film, a well-dressed Harry spoke directly to the camera/audience to "wrap" things up:
  • "That's the true story of what happened last Christmas. That was some pretty harsh s--t with the old guy back there, right? But whatever, he's creepy. F--k him. Don't worry about him. Anyhow, so...uhm, Thanks for coming. Thanks for taking the trip to LA with me. Uh, I mean, if f I had to sum it up, and I do. Because, you know, it's, like, the end. I would say that this movie is about - it's about friendship. Friendship is sacred"
• Perry entered the screen and told Harry to remove his feet off his desk and to "stop narrating." Harry ended by mentioning how he was now working for Perry