Finally, someone let him direct his own script, and the result was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a riotous riff on the hard - boiled works of Raymond Chandler (chapter titles are all from Philip Marlowe novels: Lady in the Lake, The Simple Art of Murder, The Little Sister, etc), that nimbly satirizes the movie business, detective - movie plotting (there are always two cases that implausibly tie up together), the action hero as idiot and the conventions of the film noir voiceover («Oh shit, back up, back up, I forgot to mention — Jesus, this is
terrible narration, it's like my
dad telling a
joke and saying, oh, I should have told you the cowboy's horse is blue...»).