Anatomy of a Scene: How Characters Can Dispose of a Dead Body

Shane Black is a master of the action genre. His mix of humor, noir, and frantic violence created some true classics that set the bar for many movies to come. But what sets Black above many other writers and directors is how he plays with audience expectations. Many movies are plenty comfortable playing into the tropes of a genre. After all, how many times have we seen a gruff cop captured by the same mustache twirling villain somehow escape during interrogation?

Black uses reversals of fortune and pay-offs to drive his plots and action in ways that turn genre conventions we've seen hundreds of times before on their heads. While all of his movies — including Lethal Weapon and Iron Man 3 — feature some pretty big reversals, 2005's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is fundamentally based on reversing many noir tropes. The gruff private eye is instead a sassy gay private eye, the femme fatale is the one who solves the case, and the protagonist is kind of a bitch.

No sequence in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang better showcases Black's ability to screw with the audience than the body disposal scene.

We're going to break down the scene and see how Black uses our expectations as a way to escalate drama and humor.

What's the set up? Harry and Perry just saw two assassins throw a car into a lake with a corpse inside. When trying to get her out of the car, Perry accidentally shoots the corpse in the head. When they leave the body at the lake to avoid a misunderstanding with the cops, Harry comes back to his hotel to find his friend Harmony asking him to investigate her sister's murder. After Harry screws that up by accidentally slapping her nipple — there was a spider, we swear — Harmony leaves and Harry goes to the bathroom to find...

... the corpse in his shower. Which, let's face it, pretty much no one was expecting. That's reversal #1.

What does Harry do? He pees on the corpse.

Why does he pee on the corpse? It was an accident. To be fair, he was surprised.

Okay, what does he do then? He calls Perry, who realizes Harry's being set up as the murderer. He tells Harry to wrap the body up and find the planted murder weapon before the cops show up.

What's the next reversal? So, the cops show up downstairs. Harmony realizes they're there for Harry and sends them to the wrong room, giving Harry and Perry more time to move the body.

Do they move the body? Harry and Perry throw the body from the roof into a dumpster — only they miss the dumpster. There's your reversal #2.

So... do they get the body back? They drive to the dumpster, but the cops drive by while they have the body in their hands. Reversal #3.

How do they get out of that one? Perry drops the body and makes out with Harry, which is a classic detective movie trope that always happens between a man and a woman. The cops drive off. After that, Harry and Perry successfully put the body in the trunk and dispose of it. End sequence.

So, what can we take away from this?

In most movies, if some people need to dispose of a body it's pretty simple. Shane Black, however, knows that and isn't going to stand for giving people what they've seen before. Instead of using the corpse merely as a plot point, having it return draws our characters into a conspiracy by hitting them where they live.

Second, every time they think they're rid of the corpse... it kinda comes back. It takes three attempts to dispose of it, each more hilarious and desperate than the last.

So, if you're having trouble making the logistics of an otherwise routine body disposal scene — or any scene of suspense and action for that matter — viscerally interesting, have the characters fail where we see them succeed in other movies. What do they do then? How do they deal with a crazy reversal of fortune the audience isn't expecting?

Don't be afraid to play with the clichés. If you know something should work, so will the audience. So, fail spectacularly instead and revel in the freedom it gives you.

This article was written by Ashley Scott Meyers who is a screenwriter and podcaster over at SellingYourScreenplay.com. He has sold and optioned dozens of scripts over the last two decades. Through SYS he runs a screenplay analysis service, provides paid job leads to screenwriters, and helps screenwriters connect with producers who are looking for material.