Shane Black Quotes

You have to keep surprising your audience.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 owe a great deal of thanks to this man who will be gracious enough to say I've helped him with his career and comeback, but it's every bit the opposite.

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

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

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

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.

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

I think it's an obligation to make a movie full, so you have to see it twice to get all the moments.

When you only have $15 million, you have to talk about something interesting. You can't just cut to a helicopter exploding.

I have no power, and that's what's so humbling.

I think the most important thing is to, without belligerence, stand up for what want. Argue compellingly if someone tries to change your script.

I wanted at one point to act, which is a weird thing for men to want to do. It's a very vain profession.

I wrote all the time, but the idea of doing it professionally seemed like pie in the sky. Who gets paid to write? I grew up in Pittsburgh, so it wasn't really a notion that a lot of people pursue.

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

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.