Shane Black Quotes

Quotes about:

• You have to keep surprising your audience.

  Shane Black

  Audience, Surprising

  "Crash, bang, wallop what a picture" by Sam Delaney, www.theguardian.com. May 21, 2009.

  44 Copy quote

• An action movie should, like any other, follow the narrative traditions of literature. That means there should be subtlety, a slow build and a gradual bringing together of all the separate threads of the plot. To see all of it coming together slowly is very rewarding for the audience.

  Shane Black

  Mean, Together, Plot

  "Crash, bang, wallop what a picture" by Sam Delaney, www.theguardian.com. May 21, 2009.

  27 Copy quote

• The only way you can stay on top is to remember to touch bottom and get back to basics.

  Shane Black

  Way, Remember, Basics

  Source: collider.com

  8 Copy quote

• You can just start writing, but you're gonna go off on 10 or 12 starts and weird tangents, and yeah you'll have those pages to use later - to gift wrap some fish for your mother - but either way you're gonna have pages.

  Shane Black

  Mother, Writing, Use

  Source: collider.com

  8 Copy quote

• I always have humour in my action movies. I think characters that make jokes under fire are more real. It somehow helps put you in their shoes.

  Shane Black

  Real, Character, Thinking

  "Crash, bang, wallop what a picture" by Sam Delaney, www.theguardian.com. May 21, 2009.

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shane Black

  Honesty, Powerful, People

  "10 Questions: Shane Black". Interview with Steve Head, www.ign.com. October 21, 2005.

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shane Black

  Mold, Plot, Add

  Source: collider.com

  6 Copy quote

• The worst of the action films are the ones where everything is one shout from beginning to finish. And there's no differentiation between beats, like small or big, or quiet or expansive. It's all just one loud shout.

  Shane Black

  Differentiation, Action, Quiet

  9 Copy quote

• If you're doing something on an interesting scale that involves an entire universe of characters, one way to unite them is to have them all undergo a common experience, and there is something at Christmas that unites everybody. It already sets a stage within the stage.

  Shane Black

  Character, Interesting, Common Experience

  Source: collider.com

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shane Black

  Stupid, Kids, Blow

  "Wright vs. Black". www.esquire.com. April 27, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

• Here's what I didn't know when I was starting out that I now know…I thought when you were starting out it was really hard to write because you hadn't broken in yet, you hadn't really hit your stride yet. What I found out paradoxically is that the next script you write doesn't get easier because you wrote one before…each one gets harder by a factor of 10.

  Shane Black

  Writing, Broken, Starting Out

  16 Copy quote

• I think the most important thing is to, without belligerence, stand up for what want. Argue compellingly if someone tries to change your script. Yeah, legally they can if they want to. But rather than give up, as some of the writers do, and just wail about how your script got rewritten, it's much more difficult - but well within the realm of possibility - to argue very sincerely, calmly, and reasonably from your point of view, such that the director or the producer might decide, "All right, let's do it that way."

  Shane Black

  Giving Up, Thinking, Important

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

• I felt that in a way, I hated the writing process so much. It's excruciating, as I'm sure you know, and so lonely being in the solitary prison of my office. A lot of brain-wracking. It just felt like it was so much hard work, and I would send it away. I felt as though I was doing all of this heavy lifting, this weightlifting, every day, all day. It was excruciating. And I stayed skinny, and someone else got all the muscles. I was eating all my vegetables, but then I wouldn't get dessert. To me, directing is the dessert.

  Shane Black

  Lonely, Hard Work, Writing

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

• I've turned down lots and lots of work. Things that could have made me some money.

  Shane Black

  Made, Turned Down

  "The Two Hollywoods: The Screenwriters; Shane Black; Harmony Korine". www.nytimes.com. November 16, 1997.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shane Black

  People, Laughing, Creative

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shane Black

  Writing, Skeletons, Fishing

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I thought of Joel Silver. He never changes. He's sort of the unmoving, unchanging rock of Gibraltar in the otherwise-shifting world of Hollywood. He's the same as he always was. He looks the same, talks the same, has the same enthusiasm.

  Shane Black

  World, Enthusiasm, Silver

  4 Copy quote

• I wanted out of the spotlight, so I subtracted myself for a few years. I just tried to do a couple producing projects. Of course, the problem is, in getting out of the spotlight to feel safe and invisible again, I overcompensated and went too far into the darkness. And now I come back and go, "Wait, I didn't mean to go that invisible. Hey, come on, I'm here, I want my voice to be heard."

  Shane Black

  Couple, Mean, Waiting

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

• It sometimes is better to write in a more directed, focused way when the pages are aimed at something already, a mission statement or a basic spine that represents the theme or the concept that you've agreed on, and writing partners are great for that because you can sit there until you get it.

  Shane Black

  Writing, Pages, Way

  Source: collider.com

  7 Copy quote

• Writing scripts is a laborious job that can be a real pain.

  Shane Black

  Jobs, Pain, Real

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shane Black

  Cacophony, Too Much, Action

  "Crash, bang, wallop what a picture". www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2009.

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Shane Black

  Thinking, Ideas, Together

  7 Copy quote

• Once I started selling scripts for a great deal of money - action scripts, no less, which people tend to pooh-pooh anyway - then I started to get some backlash. Which I didn't mind.

  Shane Black

  People, Mind, Scripts

  4 Copy quote

• You have to be in California in order to write or direct movies. People say, "Oh, I'm gonna do it from Pittsburgh. I'm just gonna deliver scripts or fly out, like, once, then fly back." You have to make a full commitment. You have to actually get on a plane, come to L.A., rent a place, and live there. And that's how you forge your career. Not just sort of haphazardly. Once you've got a few hits under your belt, assuming you do, then go back and move away and correspond with the studio.

  Shane Black

  Moving, Writing, Commitment

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

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

  Shane Black

  Ideas, Capes, Suits

  "Shane Black Explains How He Adapted Warren Ellis’ “Extremis” Storyline into IRON MAN 3; New Poster Released" by Matt Goldberg, collider.com. March 6, 2013.

  9 Copy quote

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