“I Like Violence” – Shane Black

An in-depth interview with action genre pioneer Shane Black. By Eric Bauer. 

Shane Black is a Pittsburgh native whose solo screen-play credits include Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. In addition to these original scripts, Black co-wrote The Monster Squad and The Last Action Hero. Black enjoyed spectacular success in the ’90s spec-screenplay market, earning $1.75 million for his screenplay The Last Boy Scout and $4 million for The Long Kiss Goodnight. Originally drawn to acting, he studied theater for four years at UCLA and went on to appear in such films as Predator, Robocop 3, and the television drama Dark Justice.
You first studied theater. What interested you in screenwriting?
It was sort of default, in a way. I’ve read books ever since I was very young. I’m a voracious reader. I’ve escaped from a lot of my life by spiriting myself away and reading books in my room, reading books at school on my lunch hour. So, I had more of a sense of storytelling than anything else. I wanted to translate that to acting, but I wasn’t a very good actor and was very intimidated by the cattle call auditions where fifty guys looked just like me and I recognized one of them from a soap opera. You have to feel you’ve got something special to bring to the party. I didn’t have that feeling with acting. I felt like I was fighting to catch up.
Screenwriting seemed to tap more naturally into what I had known and loved all my life–basic storytelling. I had a friend, director Fred Dekker, who had gotten a few deals and was a buddy from college before any of us knew what we wanted to do. His scripts were really interesting. I read them and thought, “this looks like something I could do.” He was good enough, at one point, to show a piece of my work to his agent, who got me some meetings.  MORE...