Shane Black interview

You should know, but in case you don't, Shane Black is an L.A.-based screenwriter and director. He wrote Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, amongst others.

His influences as a screenwriter were Walter Hill, William Goldman and Raymond Chandler.

Here are a few Shane Black quotes: 

• Dialogue can be fun but most people don't study it.

• The feeling of finishing the script, the first draft, was the high. Everything that followed—though of interest, and sometimes slightly exhilarating— could never match the idea of having just taken your story and racked your brain, finally having it on paper in a version you're willing to tolerate and ready to try to sell. I remember Joe Eszterhas calling me and saying, "Woo hoo! I just sold another one!" You know, there were fun times, but I didn't get into that whole money thing with Joe or the competition. It just seemed a little phony to me. Because ultimately, I like making money, but it's not exclusively what I'm trying to do. It won't make my life fulfilled. Directing comes closer than anything I've found yet to providing me with a good reason to get up in the morning that goes beyond just getting some money. Because all the money does is buy the bed. Getting out of it is the problem.

• Books were my hiding place. The library was more comforting many times than going home after school. I would just go to the library instead. It's amazing to me that to this day, how many screenwriters or aspiring screenwriters you talk to and you say, "What do you like to read?" and they say, "Well I don't really read that much." I say, "You don't read, but you want to be a writer!?" They say, "I like movies, I just want to write movies." They don't read books. I think that's virtually an impossibility. Mostly it was being trapped in a library for any number of years finding tremendous comfort in books.

• Unforgiven (1992) is seminal in so many ways. Whenever I write something, I'm always saying, "Oh, that's from Unforgiven. Or The Exorcist (1973). The other one that I find myself referencing—hopefully not copying, but certainly referencing—is All That Jazz (1979), which isn't even an action movie but it has such a power to it, such a melancholy. It's such a wild combination, a musical comedy about death.

• I loved detective stories, and I devoured them. I've literally read hundreds of them. I wasn't allowed to read them when I was a kid because they were racy, so I would sneak them. I'd save my lunch money—I wouldn't eat for three days so I could buy the new Mike Shayne book, or the new Shell Scott, or Chester Drum. The racy scenes were great but I loved the mystery. There was a real kind of masculine, rough-hewn rhythm to those caper novels, and I acquired an even deeper sense of them that was emotional and powerful. If I hadn't read those stories, I wouldn't be writing movies.

• The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) sold for just a sinful amount of money. People were angry that I took the money. People offer you $4 million for a script - what are you going to say? "No, I'd rather sell it for $100,000? But it engendered so much anger, I lost friends over it. And no one talked about the creative content of anything I did any more. They all just assumed I was this guy with a formula, a hack formula. So the spotlight was on me. I pretended it wasn't, but it was, and for every wrong reason. It was all about money, it was all about my supposed competition with Joe Eszterhas over who'd be the highest paid screenwriter. I didn't care. I just wanted to to write stories, try to become a better writer, improve my style, change genres, even try new things. I didn't like action so much any more. But I wanted out of the spotlight, so I subtracted myself for a few years. I tried to do a couple producing projects. Of course, the problem is, in getting out of the spotlight to feel safe and invisible again, I overcompensated and went too far into the darkness. And now I come back and go, "Wait, I didn't mean to go that invisible. Hey, come on, I'm here, I want my voice to be heard.

In the video which follows, Shane Black talks about the relationship between private-eye movies and westerns, catharsis, torturing yourself, making choices, and some of his personal philosophy.




First posted: 21 October 2012

Making use of story fragments

If you're like me, you have a bunch of partial scripts lying around, things that started out as a good idea, but eventually went nowhere. I started thinking about some of mine after I read the following quote from the 2011 BAFTA Screenwriters' Lecture by Charlie Kaufman.

I wrote Being John Malkovich while I was waiting for [the next sitcom] hiring season. My idea was that I would write a script and use it to get work. I had this idea that someone finds a portal into someone's head, and I had another idea that somebody has a story about someone having an affair with a co-worker. And neither one was going anywhere, so I just decided to combine them.           — Charlie Kaufman

And that reminded me of a quote by Shane Black from Tales from the Script, a collection of interviews with fifty Hollywood screenwriters, about how he approaches writing a screenplay.

I play Tetris obsessively with scripts, and realise that I still have nothing resembling a finished draft, because I’m still stuffing ideas in and hoping that these three things will come together to form one hybrid. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang started as a romantic comedy. Then it was a straight comedy. Then I added the detective character, and it became this dark thriller. Then I went back in time to the forties and tried to get some of these old-time detective pulp novels involved, and say everything I had to say about that. By the end it’s sort of this mishmash. It’s a pulp-style, homage, fairy-tale, retro, film-noir, comedy, “kids in the big city,” Capra-esque murder tragedy. You know, it’s everything stuffed together. For some reason, that one worked—but you can play that game forever and never get anything done.  — Shane Black

If your script isn't going well, maybe think about mashing it up with another idea.  

First posted:  15 October 2011

Tales from the Script

Book

Tales from the Script: 50 Hollywood Screenwriters Share Their Stories, by Peter Hanson and Paul Herman.

DVD

Here's a collection of interviews – in book form and on DVD – with a bunch of real screenwriters, including William Goldman, Shane Black, Frank Darabont, Paul Schrader, Nora Ephron, John August, John Carpenter, Paul Mazursky, Ron Shelton, Robert Mark Kamen, Antwone Fisher, David S. Ward, Steven E. de Souza, and others. (If you don't recognise all those names, you haven't been doing your homework as a screenwriter.) 

The book is great, the DVD is better. Partly for the joy of seeing the writers and hearing them speak, but also because of all the Extras on the disc. Worth it for the Advice for New Screenwriters section alone.

Here is a video clip which provides a taste of what's on the DVD.

First posted:10 October 2011

Shane Black on 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'

I play Tetris obsessively with scripts, and realize that I still have nothing resembling a finished draft, because I'm still
stuffing ideas in and hoping that these three things will come together to form one hybrid.
   Kiss Kiss Bang Bang started as a romantic comedy. Then it was a straight comedy. Then I added the detective character, and it became this dark thriller. Then I went back in time to the forties and tried to get some of these old-time detective pulp novels involved, and say everything I had to say about that.
   By the end, it's sort of this mishmash. It's a pulp-style homage, fairy-tale, retro, film-noir, comedy, "kids in the big city," Capra-esque murder tragedy. You know, it's everything stuffed together. For some reason, that one worked—but you can play that game forever and never get anything done.

Shane Black, as quoted in Tales from the Script: 50 Hollywood Screenwriters Share Their Stories

Shane Black interview

You should know, but in case you don't, Shane Black is an L.A.-based screenwriter and director. He wrote Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, amongst others.

His influences as a screenwriter were Walter Hill, William Goldman and Raymond Chandler.

Here are a few Shane Black quotes: 

• Dialogue can be fun but most people don't study it.

• The feeling of finishing the script, the first draft, was the high. Everything that followed—though of interest, and sometimes slightly exhilarating— could never match the idea of having just taken your story and racked your brain, finally having it on paper in a version you're willing to tolerate and ready to try to sell. I remember Joe Eszterhas calling me and saying, "Woo hoo! I just sold another one!" You know, there were fun times, but I didn't get into that whole money thing with Joe or the competition. It just seemed a little phony to me. Because ultimately, I like making money, but it's not exclusively what I'm trying to do. It won't make my life fulfilled. Directing comes closer than anything I've found yet to providing me with a good reason to get up in the morning that goes beyond just getting some money. Because all the money does is buy the bed. Getting out of it is the problem.

• Books were my hiding place. The library was more comforting many times than going home after school. I would just go to the library instead. It's amazing to me that to this day, how many screenwriters or aspiring screenwriters you talk to and you say, "What do you like to read?" and they say, "Well I don't really read that much." I say, "You don't read, but you want to be a writer!?" They say, "I like movies, I just want to write movies." They don't read books. I think that's virtually an impossibility. Mostly it was being trapped in a library for any number of years finding tremendous comfort in books.

• Unforgiven (1992) is seminal in so many ways. Whenever I write something, I'm always saying, "Oh, that's from Unforgiven. Or The Exorcist (1973). The other one that I find myself referencing—hopefully not copying, but certainly referencing—is All That Jazz (1979), which isn't even an action movie but it has such a power to it, such a melancholy. It's such a wild combination, a musical comedy about death.

• I loved detective stories, and I devoured them. I've literally read hundreds of them. I wasn't allowed to read them when I was a kid because they were racy, so I would sneak them. I'd save my lunch money—I wouldn't eat for three days so I could buy the new Mike Shayne book, or the new Shell Scott, or Chester Drum. The racy scenes were great but I loved the mystery. There was a real kind of masculine, rough-hewn rhythm to those caper novels, and I acquired an even deeper sense of them that was emotional and powerful. If I hadn't read those stories, I wouldn't be writing movies.

• The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) sold for just a sinful amount of money. People were angry that I took the money. People offer you $4 million for a script - what are you going to say? "No, I'd rather sell it for $100,000? But it engendered so much anger, I lost friends over it. And no one talked about the creative content of anything I did any more. They all just assumed I was this guy with a formula, a hack formula. So the spotlight was on me. I pretended it wasn't, but it was, and for every wrong reason. It was all about money, it was all about my supposed competition with Joe Eszterhas over who'd be the highest paid screenwriter. I didn't care. I just wanted to to write stories, try to become a better writer, improve my style, change genres, even try new things. I didn't like action so much any more. But I wanted out of the spotlight, so I subtracted myself for a few years. I tried to do a couple producing projects. Of course, the problem is, in getting out of the spotlight to feel safe and invisible again, I overcompensated and went too far into the darkness. And now I come back and go, "Wait, I didn't mean to go that invisible. Hey, come on, I'm here, I want my voice to be heard.

In the video which follows, Shane Black talks about the relationship between private-eye movies and westerns, catharsis, torturing yourself, making choices, and some of his personal philosophy.

Making use of story fragments

If you're like me, you have a bunch of partial scripts lying around, things that started out as a good idea, but eventually went nowhere. I started thinking about some of mine after I read the following quote from the 2011 BAFTA Screenwriters' Lecture by Charlie Kaufman.

I wrote Being John Malkovich while I was waiting for [the next sitcom] hiring season. My idea was that I would write a script and use it to get work. I had this idea that someone finds a portal into someone's head, and I had another idea that somebody has a story about someone having an affair with a co-worker. And neither one was going anywhere, so I just decided to combine them.           — Charlie Kaufman

And that reminded me of a quote by Shane Black from Tales from the Script, a collection of interviews with fifty Hollywood screenwriters, about how he approaches writing a screenplay.

I play Tetris obsessively with scripts, and realise that I still have nothing resembling a finished draft, because I’m still stuffing ideas in and hoping that these three things will come together to form one hybrid. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang started as a romantic comedy. Then it was a straight comedy. Then I added the detective character, and it became this dark thriller. Then I went back in time to the forties and tried to get some of these old-time detective pulp novels involved, and say everything I had to say about that. By the end it’s sort of this mishmash. It’s a pulp-style, homage, fairy-tale, retro, film-noir, comedy, “kids in the big city,” Capra-esque murder tragedy. You know, it’s everything stuffed together. For some reason, that one worked—but you can play that game forever and never get anything done.  — Shane Black

If your script isn't going well, maybe think about mashing it up with another idea.  

Tales from the Script

Book

Tales from the Script: 50 Hollywood Screenwriters Share Their Stories, by Peter Hanson and Paul Herman.

DVD

Here's a collection of interviews – in book form and on DVD – with a bunch of real screenwriters, including William Goldman, Shane Black, Frank Darabont, Paul Schrader, Nora Ephron, John August, John Carpenter, Paul Mazursky, Ron Shelton, Robert Mark Kamen, Antwone Fisher, David S. Ward, Steven E. de Souza, and others. (If you don't recognise all those names, you haven't been doing your homework as a screenwriter.) 

The book is great, the DVD is better. Partly for the joy of seeing the writers and hearing them speak, but also because of all the Extras on the disc. Worth it for the Advice for New Screenwriters section alone.

Here is a video clip which provides a taste of what's on the DVD.