The Singing Detective is a 2003 American musical crime comedy film directed by Keith Gordon and loosely based on the BBC serial of the same name, a work by British writer Dennis Potter. It stars Robert Downey Jr. and features a supporting cast that includes Katie Holmes, Adrien Brody, Robin Wright Penn, Mel Gibson, Jeremy Northam and Carla Gugino as well as a number of songs from the 1950s. Plot Detective novelist Dan Dark is hospitalized due to a skin disease named psoriasis and crippling psoriatic arthritis. Around doctors and nurses, he occasionally hallucinates them in choreographed musical numbers. They attempt to help Dark, but are dismissed by Dark's anger and bitterness towards everyone. In an attempt to solve his mental issues, the doctors send him to psychiatrist Dr. Gibbon. The doctor suspects the thoughts behind these problems are in Dark's novel The Secret Detective, which is about a nightclub singer/private eye, hired by Mark Binney, who takes on a strange case involving prostitutes and two mysterious men. He fantasizes about the book during these meetings, with people from the real world acting as the fictional characters. After reading some pages, Gibbon thinks Dark may have a problem with women. This leads to Dark flashing back to his childhood, when his mother worked as a prostitute and had sex with several men at the home, including his father's business partner. People he encountered in his childhood act as characters in fantasies of his novel; his mother is a prostitute, his father's business partner is a rich guy, and two passengers he only once encounter on a bus are thugs. Despite his skin condition improving, his attitude worsens after learning a film studio is interested in purchasing the rights for The Singing Detective. He is informed of this by his wife Nicola, who also is a prostitute in the book fantasies. He is paranoid that Nicola is trying to steal the work so she can make money, and that Gibbon was met by a "whore" trying to get into the situation. Additionally, the two thugs from the fantasies have entered the real world, planning to rebel against the author for making them "stand around" constantly instead of playing more important roles, like being officers of the federal government. Eventually, however, Dark is mentally cured through a civil discussion with Gibbon about his childhood. He states his father didn't care about him