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All Quotes by author - Shane Black

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Any time anyone fires bullets in an action movie that don't hit the target it immediately undermines the movie. "

" Estimation, assessment, looking back, retrospecting things - those are intellectual concepts, and they're always so subject to shifts in the wind. "

" For me, the stamp that I impose on stuff comes from the fact that in the '80s, when I was starting to write movies, I looked back to the '70s. So the films I enjoyed as a kid were the thrillers that came out of the '70s. Back then, you didn't have action movies; you had adventure films or thrillers. "

" For years I was doing the excruciating weightlifting of writing scripts - but then I stayed thin and someone else got all the muscles. "

" 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. "

" I don't mind women who want to act. That's fine. It's odd that men want to act, in that there's still a degree of vanity associated with it. "

" 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. "

" If someone fires a gun in a movie, it should always be a big deal. I don't like movies where someone shoots at someone else but they just run away and manage to dodge the bullet. Or people are all firing at each other continuously for 10 minutes. "

" I go back to read 'Tarzan' books every now and again or 'John Carter,' and you realize Edgar Rice Burroughs is not a great writer by any means. But he was a great storyteller. You wanted to see what happened next. "

" I hate 'The Professional.' It's one of the worst action/adventure movies ever made. "

" 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.' "

" I just want to write movies. And I try very hard. "

" 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. "

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

" I love the notion of the feckless sort of knight in tarnished armor who would love to fill the shoes of the legendary hero but just can't. And then find a moment when they do. And I love the idea that there's a myth waiting for each of us to occupy. "

" 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. "

" I'm cynical about the type of girl that swirls in the Hollywood community. "

" I'm the kid in school who always, you know, got the straight A's. I got to be that, you know, alpha aggressive work-ethic guy. And to have people assume that I was just this blithe, in-your-face guy writing crap, tossing it off, garnering insane amounts of money, and laughing all the way to the bank - frankly, I guess I got sensitive. "

" 'Iron Man 3' was very educational. There's a train that starts moving which already has so many moving parts, and it's a constant process of animatics and storyboards and consulting meetings, and it's a very mechanical process once the script is written. It's sprawling, and they're throwing money at it to get these things accomplished. "

" I think about the audience in the sense that I serve as my own audience. I have to please myself the way, if I saw the movie in a theater, I would be pleased. Do I think about catering to an audience? No. "

" I think, in big-budget movies where everything seems so poured over and restricted and the studio wants to examine every frame to make sure it's vetted properly, you lose a little bit of playfulness. "

" I think it's very admirable, in a superhero movie, to be able to take a few risks. "

" I try not to think about anybody's reaction to what I do. "

" I try to make all the action in my movies subjective: to give a sense of what it would feel like to actually be a part of it. "

" I've read a thousand private-eye novels. "

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

" I would say 'The Chill' by Ross Macdonald is sort of a prototypical example of how the private detective genre elevates itself to the level of literature. "

" 'Lethal Weapon' sold apropos of nothing when I was very young, but that was a very different market. "

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