Shane Black

Shane Black
Born	December 16, 1961 (1961-12-16) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Other names	Harry Lime, Holly Martins, Henry Langham, Benn Slack
Occupation	Actor, screenwriter, film director
Years active	1987–current

Shane Black (born December 16, 1961) is an American actor, screenwriter and film director. He contributed to some of the biggest blockbuster action films of the late 1980s and early 1990s, including work on Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout. He made his debut as director with the film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Early life

Black was born and grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Patricia Ann James and Paul Black. His father was a football star in college and later founded his own printing business. Black's family moved to Fullerton, California. He attended Sunny Hills High School, a renowned magnet school.

He studied theater at UCLA and graduated in 1983 with the intent to become an actor. While looking for a way to make some income as he struggled to find acting roles, his friend Fred Dekker encouraged Black to try his hand at screenwriting. Remembering what he learned from a dramatic writing class he took in college, he borrowed a typewriter and went to work on his first script. At age 23, Black wrote his second screenplay, Lethal Weapon, in six weeks. His agent David Greenblatt sold the screenplay in three days. The film would become a successful franchise and help Mel Gibson become a superstar celebrity.

Career

Acting

Black's first acting role came in the film Predator; since then he has acted in a further five films and in one television episode for the TV series Dark Justice.

Screenwriting

The majority of Black's career is in screenwriting - he has written 10 scripts. He sold his first screenplay Lethal Weapon released in 1987 for $250,000 and was paid $125,000 as a co-writer of Lethal Weapon 2 released in 1989. Since then he made substantially more money as a screenwriter. He received $1.75 million for his screenplay The Last Boy Scout released in 1991, and $1 million for Last Action Hero released in 1993. At the height of his career he was the highest paid screenwriter in the Hollywood movie industry, making $4 million for penning The Long Kiss Goodnight. Black was the writer and director for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Black has admitted that many of the scripts he had written for other directors, although commanding a hefty sum, were rewritten to a point where they scarcely resembled his product. This is such a common experience in Hollywood that the Writers Guild of America, West conducts an arbitration system whereby the "multiple writers who contributed to a given screenplay contend for screen credit on the resulting film."

Black used the pseudonyms Harry Lime and Holly Martins, the names of two leading characters in the film The Third Man, for certain projects.

Style

Black has a recognizable writing style where he often adds comments (referred to as "Shane Blackisms") and jokes about the situations taking place in the story. He also sometimes directs comments at studio executives and certain script readers. Examples of these include:

From Lethal Weapon:

“

EXT. POSH BEVERLY HILLS HOME - TWILIGHT The kind of house that I'll buy if this movie is a huge hit. Chrome. Glass. Carved wood. Plus an outdoor solarium: A glass structure, like a greenhouse only there's a big swimming pool inside. This is a really great place to have sex.

”

From The Last Boy Scout:

“

Remember Jimmy's friend, Henry, who we met briefly near the opening of the film? Of course you do, you're a highly-paid reader or development person.

”

He has used kidnapping as a plot device in several films: Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Five of his scripts start with the letter L. At least four of his screenplays take place during Christmas.

Black gave a list of techniques he uses when writing films in an interview with The Guardian.

Awards and honors

Black received the Distinguished Screenwriter Award from the Austin Film Festival October 21, 2006. In 2005, he received the Best Original Screenplay award for Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang' from the San Diego Film Critics Association.

Filmography

Acting

• 1987: Predator as Hawkins
• 1988: Dead Heat as Patrolman
• 1991: Dark Justice (TV; 1 episode, "Nowhere to Hide")
• 1993: RoboCop 3 as Donnelly
• 1994: Night Realm
• 1997: As Good as It Gets as Brian, Cafe 24 manager
• 1997: An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn as Himself
• 2002: The Boy Scout as Henchman #2

Directing

• 2005: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
• 2013: Iron Man 3
• Forthcoming: Death Note

Producing

• 1991: The Last Boy Scout (executive producer)
• 1996: The Long Kiss Goodnight (producer)
• 2006: A.W.O.L. (executive producer) (as Harry Lime)

Screenwriting

• Lethal Weapon (1987)
• The Monster Squad (with Fred Dekker) (1987)
• Lethal Weapon 2 (1988) (Story Only)
• The Last Boy Scout (1991)
• Last Action Hero (1993)
• The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
• A.W.O.L. (2006) (as Holly Martins)

External links

• Shane Black at the Internet Movie Database
• Shane Black at AllRovi