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NICE GUYS (2016) ● Shane Black direct ● 50 million dollar budget ● Warner Bros. Picture ● Rated R for violence, sexuality, nudity, language and brief drug use ● 116 minutes QUICK THOUGHTS ● Phil Svitek ● Demetri Panos ● Sara Stretton DEVELOPMENT ● The project was initially proposed as a TV series but was re­tooled as a film after the pilot seemed to be going nowhere ​ ○ “We gave [The Nice Guys] to CBS at that time, and they loved it and they wanted ​ ​ to do a series. Thank God it didn’t happen. Thank God it didn’t happen, but we were in a situation trying to do a series, and then for whatever reason we couldn’t cast it right and we couldn’t get it right. I remember there was this scene where [Ryan Gosling’s character, Holland March], his daughter is in the trunk and he ​ ​ says, ‘Why’d you come?’ and he closes the trunk, leaving her in the trunk. And of course, he goes back and opens it ­ and CBS said you can’t put her in the trunk. ‘But in a second you’ll open it!’ ‘It doesn’t matter, you can’t put her in the trunk, she’s a little girl.’ ‘But he takes her out in a second!’ ‘No.’ So, there were those kinds of taste issues, and it was a contemporary story.” ○ The concept of doing a script about these two characters—that goes back to 2001, when we just decided to do it, apropos of nothing. We like detective stories. They don't make too many of them anymore. We wrote one as a feature. No one wanted it. And so, bright­eyed and bushy tailed, we tried to make it a TV show at CBS, and that wasn't going to fly. The Standards and Practices were just going to kill us. They were so egregiously offended by even the most minor edginess. Now, that makes it also sound like it's our choice to not do it—no. CBS didn't want to see it. So, off we went. HBO, we tried to do it. Same two characters, present day storyline—they didn't want us. So finally in this last gasp effort around 2010, [producer] Joel Silver, who’s my most consistent supporter, said, “Try it again.” And we did it in the '70s this time, and that seemed to be the one that people had more response to. ● In June 2014, it was announced that Shane Black would direct a film titled The Nice ​ ​ ​ Guys, with Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling starring and Joel Silver producing ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ● Warner Bros. handles the North American rights to the film ​ ● Most of the interjected humor for the plot are based on the true events of Jay Joseph, a Marine Corps veteran who also worked as a private investigator and mole while ​ stationed in Beaufort, South Carolina in the mid­to­late 1990s ​ ​ ● Producer Joel Silver had briefly met Joseph while he was performing contract work at ​ ​ Silver's Auldbrass Plantation estate in 1999 ​ ​ ○ Joseph's adventures as a young, new investigator, paralleled with his tenacity as a Marine, seemed to always lead to him being placed in comical ­ albeit dangerous ­ situations ○ Silver always thought that some of these events would be great fodder for a detective plot ○ Some of these stories, simply through word of mouth, were also used in the 2005 film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang ​ WRITING ● Black finished the Kiss Kiss Bang Bang script but couldn't get anyone to read it. Black ​ ​ decided to pass some time by noodling around with a script idea with his friend and sometime writing partner Anthony Bagarozzi. Neither had a clear idea of what they were writing — detectives in L.A. was about all they had to go on — but they started churning out scenes to see what would happen. "Shane would write a scene and send it to me, then I'd write a scene and send it to him," says Bagarozzi. "That's how Shane works. He just writes a bunch of scenes and sees what fits." Over time, they found themselves working on an homage to the gumshoe novels they both worshipped: The Nice Guys ​ was born. ● Black: I love the notion of the feckless sort of knight in tarnished armor who would love to ​ fill the shoes of the legendary hero but just can't. And then find a moment when they do. And I love the idea that there's a myth waiting for each of us to occupy. STORY/CAST ● On September 16, Margaret Qualley and Angourie Rice joined the cast ​ ​ ​ ​ ● On September 29, Matt Bomer was added to the cast ​ ​ ● On October 20, Keith David and Beau Knapp were added to the cast to play hitman ​ ​ ​ ​ partners ● On October 21, Kim Basinger joined the film to play a chief justice with dubious interests ​ ​ ● On November 7, Ty Simpkins was added to the cast to play Bobby, a young boy whose ​ ​ shocking discovery sparks the mystery that the duo must solve ● On November 13, Jack Kilmer joined the film to play Chet, a young film projectionist who ​ ​ is a friend and confidante of Amelia, and proves vital to the investigation ● First reunion of Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger since L.A. Confidential (1997) and also second time Russell Crowe and Ty Simpkins are together in a movie, the first was in The next three days (2010) ● Russell Crowe as enforcer Jackson Healy ​ ○ It’s kind of an embarrassing story. I read it and I really liked it, and I thought, “Wow, that’s cool.” Please don’t ask me who was on this list because that would be extremely unkind for me to say. I said to my agent, “I liked it. I was really surprised. The narrative is really dense. There’s a lot going on.” He said, “The studio is sending you a list of people that they want to be in the movie with you.” And I read the list and called my agent and was like, “Listen, obviously this is not the project I thought it was. It’s something else. I must have really wanted it to be something because I read too much into it. Just don’t bother expressing interest.” And he said, “Shane Black got on the plane five hours ago.” I was like, “Seriously?! Okay.” I had a plan, where I would invite him over to my house, offer him a drink and cook him a steak, and then half­way through, I’d say, “You know, I really thought it was something else. I’m sorry I wasted your time.” So, he arrived and I said, “Hey, man, would you like a drink?” He said, “I don’t drink.” That was most of my plan. He had to be drinking, in order to hear what I had to say. I was like, “What do you mean, you don’t drink?” He said, “I’m allergic to alcohol.” I said, “What do you mean, you’re allergic to alcohol?” He said, “Yeah, one drink and I break out in handcuffs.” I was like, “That’s funny.” So, I said, “Look, we’ve got a bit of a problem. I’ve gotta tell you something.” He said, “Well, I’ve gotta tell you something. Can I go first?” I said, “All right, you go first.” And he said, “Ryan Gosling.” I was like, “What?!” He said, “Ryan Gosling. I had a meeting with him before I went to the airport. He knows it’s going to be you. He wants to play the other character. What do you think of that?” I was like, “How do you want your steak?” And then, the evening got back on track. ○ You always have a stunt guy around. I’ve spent most of my career doing as many 100% shots for the director as I can. The older I get, the less that’s physically possible. When I was young, I remember doing all of my stunts, and the occasional older actor would go, “Why are you doing it? Why don’t you let the stunt guy do that?” And now that I’m an older guy, I’m like, “Oh, man, that was a piece of kindness and wisdom that missed me, at the time.” ○ What I decided to do was just to live a completely sedentary life. What am I going to do, compete with Ryan? What’s the fuckin’ point of that?! So, I just decided to go the other way. In terms of great comedy duos, like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope or Abbott and Costello, there seems to be a physical difference, a lot of the time. And in the script, there was a physical difference required, so I just decided to emphasis that a little bit more. ● Ryan Gosling as private detective Holland March ​ ​ ​ ○ Gosling is famously tough to cast. Did you have to go sell him? ■ No. He was sold by the script, I think. I don't even know if Gosling would have read the script normally, but he happened to be this huge fan of a thing I did with Fred Dekker in the '80s called The Monster Squad. And so ​ ​ he saw my name and went, "Oh yeah, that Monster Squad guy." Not even ​ ​ "that Lethal Weapon guy," you know? And so he came back within a day ​ ​ and said, "I think this is what I want to do." So the next day I flew to Australia—dropped the phone like a cartoon and went to Russell Crowe.

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