why The Nice Guys is Shane Black's gayest movie
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.
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?
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.
And it's gay as hell. And that's why, weirdly, TNG is more homogay to me than my beloved KKBB. Because nothing's gayer than longing.
izzy806
baratheonpilled
gracieabrams
amandla
