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" The great thing about detective stories, in particular, the case can always be interesting as well as the characters. "
Shane Black
Always
Interesting
Great
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" I'm cynical about the type of girl that swirls in the Hollywood community. "
Shane Black
Community
Cynical
Hollywood
" 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
Action
Beginning
Finish
" 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. "
Shane Black
Love
Find
Hero
" Writers are nerds. "
Shane Black
Writers
Nerds
" I hate 'The Professional.' It's one of the worst action/adventure movies ever made. "
Shane Black
Hate
Worst
Professional
" 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. "
Shane Black
Myself
My Own
Audience
" 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. "
Shane Black
Everything
You
Think
" 'Lethal Weapon' sold apropos of nothing when I was very young, but that was a very different market. "
Shane Black
Young
Different
Very
" '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. "
Shane Black
Man
Meetings
Money
" 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. "
Shane Black
Adventure
Back
Action
" I just want to write movies. And I try very hard. "
Shane Black
Try
Hard
Just
" Whatever film I'm making, no matter how harsh or edgy it is, there has to be a core underneath the ebb and flow of it that is heartfelt. "
Shane Black
Flow
Edgy
Film
" I try not to think about anybody's reaction to what I do. "
Shane Black
Reaction
Think
Try
" Probably my favorite piece of music, as an album taken as a whole, is Bruce Springsteen's 'Greetings from Asbury Park.' I just think it's incredibly pure. It's a sound that sort of broke new ground, and I think it paved the way for a hundred people that sound very similar. "
Shane Black
Sound
Way
Music
" Writing is tough. It's insanely obsessive work. "
Shane Black
Writing
Obsessive
Work
" 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
Think
Loved
Car
" 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
Powerful
Happy
Honesty
" No one cares about your ideas. They're not going to come knocking on your door looking for ideas. They're going to want some concrete evidence that you have the potential to serve them or give them value for money. So that's my advice: write your spec scripts, no matter what. They're essential as a calling card, even if they don't get produced. "
Shane Black
Door
Money
Ideas
" The reason I took on directing a film myself was because, no matter how skilful a director was or how much I liked the film, there'd always be beats where I'd go, 'Oh... well, that's skilful, in a way, but it doesn't get the flavour I'd intended in the script.' "
Shane Black
Reason
Way
Always
" 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. "
Shane Black
Win
You
Way
" 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
Think
You
Action
" 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.' "
Shane Black
Guilty
Watch
Failed
" 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
Film
Action
Boring
" 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. "
Shane Black
Someone
Run
Gun
" What strikes me as memorable about 'Predator' was a lot of the decisions that were made so quickly turned out to be so iconic. "
Shane Black
Iconic
Decisions
Memorable
" Writing scripts is a laborious job that can be a real pain. "
Shane Black
Writing
Scripts
Pain
" 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. "
Shane Black
Feel
Like
Movies
" 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
Mind
Money
People
" You have to keep surprising your audience. "
Shane Black
You
Audience
Your
" Estimation, assessment, looking back, retrospecting things - those are intellectual concepts, and they're always so subject to shifts in the wind. "
Shane Black
Back
Looking Back
Wind