Shane Black Biography

Shane Black (born December 16, 1961) is an American screenwriter, director, producer and actor. He wrote the 1987 action film hit Lethal Weapon, and made his directorial debut with the film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in 2005. His acting credits include appearing in the original Predator film, for which he is currently set to write and direct in the next installment.

In 2013, he co-wrote and directed Iron Man 3, which as of mid-2016 ranks as the tenth highest-grossing film worldwide.

Early life

Black was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Paul and Patricia Ann Black. His father was in the printing business, and helped Black get an interest in hardboiled fiction, such as the works of Mickey Spillane and the Matt Helm series.

After living in the suburbs of Lower Burrell and Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, his family moved to Fullerton, California, during his sophomore year of high school. There he attended Sunny Hills High School and later UCLA where he majored in film and theater. While Black had a long history writing comic strips, short stories, and journalism, only during his senior year did he decide to make a living from it once his classmate Fred Dekker showed him a science fiction script he did for an assignment. Black's older brother Terry also wrote short stories and decided to move into screenplays starting with 1988's Dead Heat.

Career

Screenwriting and acting

After graduating, Black worked as a typist for a temp agency, a data entry clerk for the 1984 Summer Olympics and an usher in a Westwood movie theater. Eventually he asked for financial support of his parents during the six month development of a script, The Shadow Company, a supernatural thriller set in Vietnam. With Dekker's help, the script landed him an agent and several lunch meetings with mid-level studio executives. This attracted 20th Century Fox executives, who were interested in having Black rewrite scripts. Eventually Black wrote an action film script, Lethal Weapon, in about six weeks, which landed him a $250,000 deal with Warner Bros. During the rewrites, Black asked producer Joel Silver for a small acting role in another film Silver was preparing at the time, Predator, a film for which Black also made uncredited contributions to the script. At the same time, Black helped Dekker write The Monster Squad, which along with Lethal Weapon and Predator came out in 1987. Since then, Black has acted in five additional films and in one television episode for the TV series Dark Justice.

Once Warner Bros. requested a Lethal Weapon sequel, Black wrote the first draft of Lethal Weapon 2 with the help of novelist Warren Murphy. Although it wasn't used, Black said in later interviews that Warner Bros. didn't like his original script for Lethal Weapon 2, which was also titled Play Dirty, because of how dark and violent it was and due to his decision to kill off main character Martin Riggs in the ending of the script. Nevertheless, other people thought that his script was brilliant, and he himself considers it to be his best work and the best script he has ever written. Although many fans have tried to find a copy of it, Black's version of the script was never released.

Feeling burnt out and having conflicts with the studio, Black left the project after six months, earning only $125,000 (out of a $250,000 payment split with Murphy) for his work. After two sabbatical years, Black decided to take on an old idea of his that emerged during the production of Lethal Weapon and turn it into a full screenplay. The result, The Last Boy Scout, earned him $1.75 million in 1991. Black would also earn $1 million for his rewrite of Last Action Hero in 1993. He would set a record by receiving $4 million for writing The Long Kiss Goodnight in 1994.

Directing

Black made his directorial debut with 2005's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and later directed (and co-wrote with Drew Pearce) 2013's Iron Man 3, which ranks as the tenth highest-grossing film of all time worldwide.

Black next directed the murder conspiracy thriller The Nice Guys, starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, and produced by Joel Silver. Warner Bros. handles North American rights to the film, which was released on May 20, 2016.

In June 2014, it was also announced that Black would co-write with Fred Dekker and direct alone the next film in the Predator series. The film will be titled The Predator and will be released on March 2, 2018.

Black's next projects include an adaptation of Doc Savage, and The Destroyer, based on the 1985 film Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, starring Fred Ward.

Style

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

From Lethal Weapon: </ref>}}

From The Last Boy Scout:

This approach, which Black summed as "more open to the reader" and aimed as "trying to keep people awake", was described by himself as a combination of William Goldman, his mentor in screenwriting, and Walter Hill, who had a "terse and Spartan, punchy prose". Black gave a list of techniques he uses when writing films in an interview with The Guardian.

He has used kidnapping as a plot device in several films: Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3 and The Nice Guys, and also often sets his film during Christmas.

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

Year	Title	Functioned as			Notes
		Director	Writer	Role
1986	Night of the Creeps			Cop in Police Station	Uncredited
1987	Lethal Weapon
	Predator			Hawkins
	The Monster Squad
1988	Dead Heat			Patrolman
1989	Lethal Weapon 2
1990	The Hunt for Red October			USS Reuben James Crewman	Uncredited
1991	The Last Boy Scout				Also executive producer
	Dark Justice (TV series)			Caldecott Rush	Episode "Nowhere to Hide"
1993	RoboCop 3			Donnelly
	Last Action Hero
	Mike the Detective			Mike	Short film
1994	Night Realm			Role
1996	The Long Kiss Goodnight				Also producer
1997	As Good as It Gets			Brian, Cafe 24 manager
	An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn			Himself	Cameo
2002	The Boy Scout (short film)			Henchman #2
2005	Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
2006	A.W.O.L. (short)				Credited as Holly Martins Also executive producer as Harry Lime
2007	Monkeys			Role
2013	Iron Man 3
	Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter (short)			Disembodied Voice	Voice only
2015	Any Day			Gino
2016	The Nice Guys
2016	Swing State			Luke
2018	The Predator
TBA	The Destroyer
TBA	Doc Savage