Top Shane Black Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Shane Black Biography

Shane Black (born December 16, 1961) is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and actor. Black has written such films as Lethal Weapon and its sequel, The Monster Squad, The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. As an actor, Black is best known for his role as Hawkins in Predator (1987).

Read about Shane Black in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Shane Black Quotes

What I've learned being a writer is to just basically not buckle - not be belligerent, not be angry, not throw fits. Though there are times where you have to stand up and yell. If I've got to throw a chair, I'll throw a chair. There was a meekness about me when I started, and I think the meekness has sort of evaporated. I hope that it's left behind a more passionate person, not a meaner person. So I guess that's what I've learned.

Evaporated, Fit, Passionate, Stand, Thinking, Throw

I have these guilty pleasures, these failed films that don't work at all, but I'll watch them if they're on. Like 'The Game'.

Film, Games, Guilty, Like, Pleasures, Watches

People would say, "Well yeah, if I wrote action films, if I wrote the trash that you write, I could make millions too. But I want to write my real movie about these Guatemalan immigrants, and how they hid under a truck for 300 miles. " And that's fine. I'd love to make that film too, but to dismiss everything I did just because it's action seems wrong.

Action, Millions, People, Real, Writing, Wrote

I love the idea of a super villain that doesn't wear a cape, that doesn't wear a super suit.

Cape, Capes, Ideas, Love, Suits, Super

It really started after The Long Kiss Goodnight 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.

Engendered, Goodnight, Guy, Kissing, Long, People

You can win as long as you chose your battles. You can win more arguments then you might think as a writer, even though you legally have no recourse, and your script can get muddied and altered in any way possible. You can use reason, logic, and passion to argue persuasively for a case in your favor. So what I've learned is to just basically not buckle - not be belligerent, not be angry, not throw fits, but just not buckle.

Battles, Case, Passion, Reason, Thinking, Winning

Going to UCLA, as far as I'm concerned, afforded me two things. One was the advantage of meeting friends and getting to know a group of guys I hung out with, was chummy with. All of us eventually had success with film. Making films, cutting our own little movies together, 3 in the morning going out and shooting stuff, finding gels that people had thrown away, making our own lights. It was like a frat house for film geeks, the Pad O' Guys. That's what being at UCLA afforded me.

Away, Cutting, Morning, Movies, People

I have no power, and that's what's so humbling.

Humbling, Power

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.

Bed, Buy, Doe, Morning, Reason

Every director should take an acting class. At least one. You know, you panic with actors. It's like, "Okay, this is back in college, I know how to talk to these guys. I know their vocabulary, and I get what they're saying back to me. " So basically to learn the vernacular of acting, that's very important.

Actors, Basically, College, Guy, Important, Like

The other thing being at UCLA was just being in California and around the movie business. Which I honestly believe, and I've told this to screenwriters, you have to do. You have to be there in order to write or direct movies.

Believe, Honestly, Movie, Writing

An action film can have too much action; picture an equaliser on a stereo, with all the knobs pegged at 10. It becomes a cacophony and is, ultimately, quite boring.

Action, Cacophony, Picture, Too Much, Ultimately

When you are making a lot of money people forget you are trying to be creative and they picture you laughing all the way to the bank. . . especially with an action script, automatically it gets boo-hooed as being worthless. It was very difficult to hear that sort of thing and I lost a good many friends over money issues because they didn't have money or their scripts weren't selling and mine were.

Creative, Laughing, People, Picture, Sort

I have a shoebox: for ideas, fragments, snatches of conversation I hear. I scrawl it down, throw the scraps in the box. Every time I start a new script I start picking through the pieces. Suddenly you get five pieces together and think: this is almost the first Act of a movie, if I flesh it out a bit.

Act, Ideas, Shoebox, Snatches, Thinking, Together

I think it's an obligation to make a movie full, so you have to see it twice to get all the moments.

Full, Moments, Obligation, See, Thinking

I do think the challenge, in a way for me, is to write a narrative film and when you finish watching it you feel like it's a collage. You tell the narrative, you tell the story, but you feel like you've created this tapestry. But it also has a shape, a story. So I think there's a middle ground that I try to strike. . . away from where everyone else seems ready to go, which is, setup, payoff. You know, He's afraid of water, oh, and at the end he's swimming in water - oh, my God. I hate that stuff.

Collage, Hate, Narrative, Swimming, Way, Writing

Once you've got a concept and a sense of themes and what it's about, then you can start to add your plot and sort of Tetris in all of the elements that you want to see, but also attach them to something that has cohesion, like a mold.

Add, Like, Mold, Plot, Start, Tetris

I'll say, what makes me happy about making movies is, every once in a while through movies we find a kind of honesty. There's an honesty in fiction that's as effective or even more powerful than the honesty of our lives. We can find something that's genuinely true, like a chemistry between people or a statement that speaks to an audience.

Fiction, Happy, Honesty, People, Powerful, Say

I'm ashamed to say this, but I watched every episode of 'Starsky and Hutch' as a kid. I loved that show, but now I think it's stupid - they'd have a car chase for no reason, then Paul Michael Glaser would shoot the car and it would blow up.

Blow, Kids, Michael, Starsky, Stupid, Watched

Sometimes I'll have a scene that strikes me, I just feel like writing a scene, a mini-story that seems like it might lead somewhere. But that is such a tentative, fishing-hook way to go about it that these days I've found it's easier to kind of at least have your concept and start attaching things to a skeleton. So I try to find the armature, the kind of backbone of it first that you can start to hang those scenes on.

Easier, Fishing, Skeletons, Tentative, Writing

1