Shane Black on Redefining Action Movies and Embracing Authenticity

Black offers fascinating insights into his character development process, explaining how his characters often represent different aspects of his own psychology.

My nightmare is to have a really amazing plot that you’ve acquired either from a book or in your own, but not have a character inhabit it yet,” he shares. “The real work is finding a character who you can actually sort of feel comes from something that it’s a DNA that you feel in your bones, that you sort of translate to an attitude of life that you, in some ways share with this character.

He continues with a profound observation about the psychology of screenwriting: “If you write a script, let’s say about an old guy who’s curmudgeonly and a young guy who’s optimistic, and they always fight. It is psychology. It’s a part of you fighting another part of you. You have both viewpoints. You’re just allowing the battle.”

Black describes Lethal Weapon as “an urban western” with Mel Gibson’s character representing a complex, damaged figure.

Lethal Weapon, to me, is an urban western. And instead of the old gun slinger who’s become sort of useless and outmoded, you had the Vietnam veteran who comes back from having these horrible experiences, branded a baby killer, and yelled at and excluded. And they view him as a monster. Mel Gibson’s character is essentially a Frankenstein kept in a cage who lives by himself.

This character analysis reveals Black’s deeper themes: “He knows evil never sleeps. So, he just sits by himself and is reviled for the knowledge that everyone else wishes weren’t true. He knows the thing. And so when something happens and violence intrudes on this, otherwise sort of beautific, they take a kid, they kidnap someone, they come to him and say, oh shit, we gotta go to the Frankenstein now.”

Black shares insights about working with legends like Richard Donner (“Big Heart”), Tony Scott (“Meticulous and easygoing”), Joel Silver (“Out of his mind, but delightful”), and Robert Downey Jr., whom he describes as “Lightning in a bottle.”

On Downey Jr., Black elaborates: “Lightning in a bottle is a guy who, once you get a movie going, sometimes you have a good script, but you lack the magic man. So you have an actress says, I’ll say the lines, Downey was like, I’ll say the lines and then I’ll give you more. And sometimes it would be something off track that you didn’t expect. But I’ll tell you what, when you’ve got a magic man like that, you find that like 30% of your movie is now elevated with stuff that wasn’t there when you wrote it.”

Black explains his transition to directing to have more creative control over his work, highlighting the frustrations of handing over screenplays.

When you write something, you turn it over and it goes, ‘Hey, we’ll take it from here.’ And they make a movie and you’re back at square one on page one with the same terrifying blank space. And you have to start all over again. And so you, you do all this work only to give it away and be exactly where you started. And that’s all uphill again. When you direct, you get to move to the next level.

He adds an interesting perspective on the filmmaking process: “Someone once said that filming a movie is shopping. It’s like when you go to the store and you get your tomatoes, it’s getting the ingredients and then the editing room was everything. That’s where you cook.”

Black discusses working with Mark Wahlberg and adapting Donald Westlake’s Parker series for Amazon, calling Westlake “the king” among mystery writers and explaining his lifelong admiration for these stories he first read at age 12.

One of my favorite writers has always been Donald Westlake,” Black explains with enthusiasm. “He did this remarkable thing where he would do a series of comic crime novels about a guy named Dortmunder…but then he would also do this darker thing. He’d put on a different hat and write about this professional thief named Parker. And they were the gold standard that other mystery writers would point to and go, yeah, well, we’re good, but really the king is gonna be this guy Westlake.

Throughout the conversation, Black offers a masterclass on screenwriting in Hollywood. Black and host, Kevin Goetz, discover numerous personal connections, creating an intimate portrait of a filmmaker who transformed Hollywood’s action genre. His journey from a bookish child to acclaimed filmmaker serves as proof that leaning into one’s uniqueness can lead to extraordinary creative achievements.

Don’t miss the full conversation on “Don’t Kill the Messenger” to hear more about Chris Landon’s Hollywood journey and insights into his groundbreaking films.

Don’t Kill the Messenger, hosted by movie and entertainment research expert Kevin Goetz, brings his book Audienceology to life. This bi-monthly podcast takes a peek behind the filmmaking curtain as Kevin talks with famous filmmakers, studio executives, stars, and other creatives about movies, filmmaking, audience test screenings, and much more.