Shane Black (Writer, Director) on Redefining Action Movies and Embracing Authenticity

From script to screen, every film is brought to life by visionary creatives and executives, all sharing one mission, to captivate the audience. Hosted by award-winning movie strategist Kevin Goetz, our podcast, Don't Kill the Messenger, offers a filmmaking masterclass through intimate conversations with Hollywood's most influential voices. And now, your host, Kevin Goetz. You know, I'm too old for this shit. I'm just kidding. That is a classic line from Danny Glover's character in Lethal Weapon, the 1987 film written by none other than today's guest. One of the top 10 highest-paid screenwriters in Hollywood as of 2024, Shane Black redefined action films with witty dialogue, dark humor, and unforgettable characters, from Lethal Weapon to The Nice Guys, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Iron Man 3. His work has helped shape modern filmmaking and has influenced a generation of writers. Beyond screenwriting, he's also made his mark as a director, and I am thrilled to have him here today. Shane, my friend, welcome to the show. Thank you. And having seen just the pantheon of guests that you've had, I'm honored to be here. I mean, this is a big deal, this show. Well, that's incredibly kind of you. I want to start with the fact that we saw each other about 12 hours ago. Right? We were at a test screening. Again. We'll talk about that later in the program. But I do want to say that I think that was, I'm going to say, a turning point for you in terms of your relationship with test screenings and the screening process. Would that be fair to say? Yes. Although I will also say that I'm blessed just to be in a test screening, because I've been around a long time. And the fact that I haven't been afforded the opportunity to sit there, you know, it's hard to break in. So getting a movie made, Minor Miracle, sitting with you, looking at the movie, and it going pretty well, is a blessing. He's being modest. No, I have to be. I have to stress that this business isn't about being, it's about being weird and screwed up and going through ups and downs. And then finally, just admitting that you're still here is enough to carry the day. Well, what I have learned about you in this latest process, because we have actually met a couple of times before on other movies. And actually, I was at the original Lethal Weapons screenings, by the way. But Joe Farrell at the time was working on them and Catherine Porra. I was working at the company, so I didn't actually physically do the focus group, but I was there. You started in Pittsburgh. Yes. Outside of Pittsburgh? In the suburbs. I was in Lower Burrell and then Mount Lebanon. My roommate from college, who's like my brother, Joe Brunetti, he was at the Dormant section of Pittsburgh. Right, right next to Mount Lebanon. There's a bunch of other folks like Jimmy Miller. There's other in our business who... Michael Keat. Yeah. We used to hang out at the Dormant pool. There was a public pool. He was on Texas Avenue. Do you know Texas Avenue? I can't remember. When did you move to Fullerton, right? We moved to Fullerton like 1975. Oh, so we're about the same age. He's one year older than me, by the way. I'll just throw that in as a... So you had kind of a love of books and things because your father, he had a printing business? He did. And he designed the forms for, like, if you're applying for a job or if this is your inventory, if you're doing a menu for your new restaurant, he would design and print those. Now, here's the good news. He designed the stuff, but he didn't own the presses. So when desktop publishing came in, all of a sudden, all those people that invested in those giant machines, it's just dead pig weight sitting in their warehouses. So my father, I think, got out just in time because the internet and desktop publishing changed everything. So as far as me, what he left me as a legacy was not the printing aspect of it. It was a bookshelf down in our living room. And he used to read a lot of detective tough guy stories. My dad was a football player, a prototypical tough guy. Married to your mom? Yes. But my God, throughout my life, I loved the man. We had a great relationship, especially towards the end of his life. I was always scared of him because he was tough and I thought I wasn't. But I would read these books of his, like the Mickey Spillane and the Shell Scott, the detective who ended up... I moved to California, ended up living right near where Shell Scott, the fictional detective, lived. I'm like, oh my God, this has, like, come full circle. And I became fascinated with tough guy literature as a way of putting myself up against these sorts of fearless people and facing what, to me, would be... I was a coward. Do you have one sibling, a brother? I have two brothers and a sister by now. There's four of you. Yep. Your parents still around? My mom is still around. My dad passed over in 2002. That's a while ago. It is a while, but it never goes away. My dad died this past July. He was a Marine. So I sort of can understand. I wasn't scared of him though. Well, I was scared of his opinion of me. Not that he would do anything to me, but just that I didn't date in high school. And I'm sure he was like, what's wrong with the kid? Yeah. He must be gay. Well, possibly. I mean, during lunch, I was so socially inept that I would just sit under a tree reading a paperback while everyone else is fraternizing. You were that odd kid. I was odd. Yeah. I was good at journalism and I won a couple awards in high school. I just knew how to distill things down to the words that were necessary to get a point across quickly. Now journalism is screwed because I was taught that you tell the news, first paragraph, the most important thing, and then it's the inverted pyramid. You get to the details, but now they bury the most important part halfway through. So you read. Did you have friends in high school and stuff? Like, did you have a group? It sounds like you were kind of a loner. I was in some ways, but oddly, I was of necessity a chameleon. So I had friends at chess club and journalism club. I was on the football team. I did play football and I did it to please my father. Robert Anderson, the playwright, said a death of a parent, it ends your ability to interact with them, but it does not end the relationship. Oh boy, that's true. He saw at least some of your success. Some of it. Yeah. Well, I mean, Lethal Weapon, what did he think about you as a fancy Hollywood writer who had made headlines for having the largest script sale in the history of, at that time, of Hollywood? I think he was very pleased, but I will say this in his honor, is that he loved all his kids equally. And he just, he said to me a week before he died, he said, what did I do to get such great kids? Oh, wow. That's beautiful. Irishmen? Yes. My grandfather's name was Shanahan. And I'm Shane. I have a brother, Sean, and a sister, Shannon, and oddly, Terrence is the other one. I'm looking at our engineer, Gary, like, you think Irish? Yeah. Yeah. Good Jewish boys. Shane, Shannon. In my opinion, Schmeckle and Shlomo and, you know. Unfortunately, you know, I would have rather in some ways had that because with the Irish background came an alcoholic gene, which later expressed itself in my life. So. How about your siblings? They're good. It's random, that gene. Not every family, if they have a parent who is an alcoholic. It skips. It could skip, right? Yeah. The truth is, though, that looking back, man, I was alcoholic from the day I was born. The type of thinking I had was alcoholic. Absolutely. I understand that completely. Not that I'm an alcoholic, but that I have other ailments, if you will, or other challenges that I have to overcome. OCD being one of them. I was hospitalized. I was in a mental institution for three months in high school because of OCD. It was so overpowering. I was paralyzed. Why do we connect so much? I'm sort of understanding it now. I'm not kidding you. Because we do. There's something about us, isn't there, that has a vibe that. You're very confident. You're very accomplished. But you're also very honest about being an oddball. And I'm the same way. I tell audiences, if I speak at a school or to students, I say, just lean into being weird. Just screw it. You have the option of being ashamed or of leaning in and embracing something that, even though it's embarrassing for you now, will pay off later. I kind of say it a little differently. I never saw myself as an oddball. Okay. I saw myself as an original. Well, see, you were already evolved into that place. Yeah. No, seriously. Because I was an entertainer. I was a performer when I was a kid. And I started really young and became a professional pretty young. So I had a confidence, of course, but I was teased endlessly and, dare I say, bullied endlessly. Yes. Because I was different. My very dear friend who has been a guest on the show, Sharon Stone, said it on an Oprah Winfrey special. Sure. She said that when she was like 10 years old, she was on the playground reading her book, Against the Tree, and this group of popular girls came over to her and the head of the pack came over and walked up to her and she thought, oh my gosh, they're going to befriend me. And what she did is slapped her across the frigging face and it left a handprint. And years later, when she was thinking about that and the effect that had, I think I said to her, oh, I know what she was doing. She tried to slap the different out of you. And that's what people did to me too. They tried to slap the different out of me and it wasn't going to happen. Others succumb. There may be a more dramatic result. Well, there's a baseline of insecurity where you feel like they're confirming what you already knew. Like there's something wrong. Guilt is you did something wrong. Shame is you are something wrong. And it sounds like you had managed to cope with this in a way that led you to say, you know what? I'm not going to back down. Whereas so many other people... You got it. ...destroyed by bullying. That's exactly right. I let it feed the drive. Yeah. I'll show you, you small minded motherfuckers. I will show you I will succeed. And then you get to a point when you become a fully formed adult where it doesn't effing matter anymore. Oh my God. Right? I'm shocked to this day when I see adults like dodging or lying, even as I'm in a program of recovery, I'm a recovering alcoholic. And I knew from an early age, someone offers me a drink, no thanks, I'm an alcoholic. You can say that. My dad used to do that, even though he wasn't an alcoholic, he would just say it so he didn't have to deal with his friends who were obsessed with drinking. You mean he didn't want to drink, just didn't want to? Yeah, he didn't want to. And I want to, I've always wanted to, but I've learned that there's so little shame. What's wrong with saying, I don't drink, I'm an alcoholic? It's very healthy what we just did. We as 60 plus year old men can have a real authentic conversation in front of many thousands of folks who are listening and to say to them, hey, it's cool to be authentic and to be who you are and we're all flawed humans. Oh, it's powerful to own it. Yeah. And by the way, your characters are like that. I want to start getting into some of the, now because we could talk for hours just about our own psyche. Sure. You write such interesting characters that your characters are flawed. You're working on a character right now played by Mark Wahlberg, the character of Parker. He's a crook. He's a serial, lifelong gangster, if you will. He murders people, but he's kind of got a heart of gold and he's got an honor and an honor code. And I find that just truly interesting. Well, yeah, his code is very pragmatic. It's walking the line. If you're going to show someone be a sociopath, it's interesting to a point. But for instance, without giving anything away about the film, there were scenes we wrote initially where he would be leaving and he would go back to try to save this woman. But that wouldn't have worked in the movie unless the woman said something like, oh, I have this thing with your fingerprints on it. Because then you get to wonder, did he go back to save her because he has a heart of gold or did he go back to get his fingerprints from her? So that's the idea, is to keep that ambiguity alive so you're not just leaning into either one. What do you do when you approach a script? I guess it would be different if it's an original idea coming from your head or if it's a work for hire that you're brought on to do. And I know you do both and you've been, as I said in the beginning, one of the most successful writers and also rewriters in Hollywood history, truly. Okay, yes. Well, you have been. No, there's been money involved. In that regard, yes, I've been very lucky, very blessed. And it's because I am lucky enough to be skewed and even perhaps mentally challenged in the perfect kind of way, which is once I get a hold of something, I can't let go of it. I hesitate to commit to a writing job because it plagues me. Once I get into it, I hate... You're obsessed with it. Yeah, I can't sleep because I'm just... Turning a negative into a positive. Turning an obsession and an inability to stop thinking about something into a healthy way of doing the same thing. It's great. So you're creating a character, you're writing a script. Are you thinking about the story first? Are you thinking about the plot? Are you thinking about the characters? How do you begin? Where does the germ come from? Well, 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. Because you know you've got this great plot but you haven't done the real work yet. 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. In other ways, it could be completely different. Because 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. Lethal Weapon, for example. Did that start as an idea of two buddies? You almost started a whole new genre. Well, that was a spec script, but it was inspired and equally informed by previous successes which I think are equally deserving, such as Dirty Harry and 48 Hours, which redefined everything. 48 Hours, especially. That's the one that changed everything. Then I came along and sort of did my own 48 Hours with a different spin on it, but my God. Well, that was a comedy. Yeah, and Lethal Weapon had a little bit more, in the first one anyway, a little more sort of attempt to portray a melancholy character. But that's the fun. There was a grit and an integrity to early 70s cop movies. It was rough. And it wasn't rough because it was engineered. It's just unconsciously the way you did it back then. But did you see the thing as like, I'm going to write now my own version of Dirty Harry? What inspired you to write it? Lethal Weapon, to me, is an urban Western. And instead of the old gunslinger who's become sort of useless and outmoded, you had the Vietnam veteran who comes back from having these horrible experiences, is 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. And meanwhile, society has this illusion in America that we sort of live in a gentrified bubble that can never be once again. You know, war is somewhere else. Violence is somewhere else. We're able to relax, and he knows the war isn't. 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 then when something happens and violence intrudes on this otherwise sort of beatific, they take a kid, they kidnap someone, they come to him and say, oh shit, we've got to go to the Frankenstein now. So they come to the old gunslinger and they say, look, we reviled you, we called you a baby killer, but we kind of need you. Because he knew all along the war's not over. They still hate him, but they need his skills. And so that's just a Western template. How'd you come up with the name Leo Goetz? Oh, that's my name. Yeah, it is. Did I inspire that? By the way, my name is G-O-E-T-Z. I think it's G-E-T-Z. How'd you come up with Goetz? Goetz wasn't mine. Goetz was Jeff Bomes. I had a character similar named something else, I can't remember what I named him, who was just a sort of babbling guy in Lethal Weapon 2. And when Jeff Bome came in and sort of took over that movie in part two, I had written a draft of it. It was a lot darker. Yeah, you killed the character at the end, right? They didn't like that. Warner Brothers thought that was sort of sending away the bread truck. Of course. And to some extent, of course they're right. Yeah. But I thought that if you're going to extend it to a sequel, you have to sort of make it feel like it was intended. And the way to do that is to say, well, this relationship he established with Danny Glover bought him some borrowed time that he never knew he deserved or was entitled to. That he was able to be part of the human race again, and not just this sort of reviled killer. But in the end, in order to save that family, he had to say, well, I had a good run, but that was borrowed time. And at the end he dies. And it feels almost like you planned the whole thing from the beginning. You talk about being a chameleon. When I see that kid reading that book against the tree in the playground or wherever it was. In high school quad. Yeah, in the quad. I know you acted, and then you went into film and theater. You were on the chess team. And what's your leitmotif? Is it curiosity? Well, first off, it was escape. It was full flight from reality. What I would prefer it is, is that it's the ability to act counterintuitively. In other words, to not just be ruled by the knee-jerk response. For instance, there was a self-defense expert that I love who was on TikTok. And he said, say to me, what the **** are you looking at? What the **** are you looking at? That shirt. Oh, I mean, I love, you know, my girlfriend was going to buy, where did you get that? Because she wants a birth. I love your shirt. Just diffuse it. And he goes, oh, really? Yeah. No, you complimented his shirt. In other words, don't go with, who wants to walk around like, what the **** are you looking at? Because it's a false conference. It's a false belligerence. Or just, for instance, Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. A few people have seen this film without giving too much away. There's a scene where, I remember in my head how the traditional cliche is that they're interrogating a suspect. Then the cop puts one bullet in a gun and spins it. He goes, I'm not telling you. He spins it, slaps it and pulls the trigger, click. And they go, okay, okay. Don't do that again. Yeah. It's in the warehouse. I'll take you there. But I thought, what if that first trigger pulls a, and he's dead. It's like, ****. That's the cliche overturned. Another thing I like to do is, this is a Hitchcock principle, which he says, don't have a bomb just explode and shock everyone. Show the bomb under the table. And then they talk about baseball and you tick, tick, and you see the bomb and you see them talking. It's like, get out of there. I love that, but I love it too, when the bomb just goes off. I love it when someone's just talking and they turn a key and, right. Rather than, oh, you know, they're going to get out, even though it's tense, but they have to cut that blue wire. No, the red, no, the blue. And then it just goes off. Yeah. Before it even has time to debate whether you do the blue or the red. I love that. So every actor has a sort of super objective for the whole piece and an objective in a scene. So I'm playing Shane Black. What's my super objective? I'd say the super objective in the characters that I tend to like is that there's sort of an obliviousness to what's expected, a disdain for fitting in, and a desire to figure out what it is in people that gets them off the ground after they've been knocked down. So much of the characters that I'm drawn to are just downtrodden people who've taken a few hits and who just can't get back up. And what is it that gets them off the couch? What is it that awakens in them that spark, which has dwindled, but is never quite extinguished? How do you take a dwindling spark and find the thing in the character that suddenly brings them back to themselves? Even if it's an ability they can't control, like a detective ability in The Nice Guys. Here's a guy who tried to drown his talent with alcohol, tried to ignore it, tried to subjugate himself and be humiliated, but he can't help being a good detective. It's still in there. And so when it starts to come out, all you have to do is feed it. You're describing yourself. Well, maybe, maybe not, but that's the kind of character I like. It may be the same question, but it may not be. Okay. What is your superpower? My superpower, which is, it's very obvious in terms of people say, wow, what an original idea. No, it's not. It's been done a hundred times, but it's been done in books that you didn't read because Hollywood only reads magazines and Hollywood only watches movies. But my superpower of having read a book a week since I was eight years old, I have access. In my head is this library of things that seem new to people, but I'm like, no, it's not new. I've read a hundred books like that. But you haven't seen theater, you said, in a long time. Yeah. Are you a, and I'm not being funny when I ask this, are you a movie fan? I'm a huge movie fan, but I also was raised, I think you benefit from the theatrical tradition. There's something very powerful about this notion of the British stage actor and the tradition, the feel of honor, integrity, and just commitment where the stage and the theater becomes a church. You leave your problems at the door. That's why I revere the theater and theater trained actors. And it's truly understanding the craft of it, isn't it? Yeah. It's kind of like why I guess I, as a dancer, I chose ballet as opposed to tap because I felt the sort of technique and the purest nature of that discipline exactly turned me on. And it was something that created structure in my life. When I think about the number of classes I went to, getting out when I didn't want to go, and I had to do that. And you suddenly begin to understand, oh, that feeds into my business acumen today and how I run my business and how I demand this, and I want this. And it's a very interesting kind of correlation. That's why I'm forever grateful to my father who pushed me. I thought, well, he wants me to be tougher than I am. And it's kind of, at the time I was afraid, I was just working myself to the bone just to try to be tough enough to get him to accept me in a way. Although he always did, I just never knew it. But the point is, as a result, I showed up when I didn't want to. I went and lifted weights when I felt tired. I ran when I didn't want to. And today, even in the program of recovery, I go to meetings when I don't want to. I just make my feet move. That's that Mel Robbins book, who just wrote Let Them, I'm reading it right now, has also started doing the TED Talk of 5-4-3-2-1. And 5-4-3-2-1 is an activation technique to get you to do some kind of action. And you don't think about it, you just do it. And it really can change your life. It does. David Milch said the same thing. He said, look, if you think about going to the gym, you're never going to go. So what you do is the minute it occurs, you get in your car, you open the door, you just get in right from the house. You walk to your car, get in, push the pedal, you're driving, go to the gym, you run inside to pick up a weight, now you're the man. One of my best friends, Jordan Baker Kilner, said she was told, go out to the mailbox to get the mail and keep walking. And just then you'll start your walk around the block for two miles. We live like kings. Someone said this recently on an interview, I forget who said, look at the technology, look at what we have in our life. A hot shower, a working toilet. We live like kings nowadays. And yet we're lazy. So we have to find ways to trick ourselves. Absolutely. Absolutely. When we come back, we're going to talk to you, Shane, about the people you've worked with, the movies you've done, and get more into the logistics, the mechanics of what it takes to be a successful writer, director. We'll be back in a moment. In the areas of health and social services, including temporary financial assistance, case management, and residential living, and has been a crucial lifeline to thousands during and beyond the strikes. To learn more, visit mptf.com. Please join me in helping others in our industry during times of need. There are so many ways to offer support and get involved. Thank you. We are back with the incredibly talented and prolific writer, director, and actor, Shane Black. And I'd like to do something that I've done with some of my guests, and I think it's kind of fun, and I hope you like it. Well, it's kind of a speed round. You've worked with some very interesting folks, people, many of whom I've worked with. And so I'd like to get your first word or phrase that comes to mind about when I mention their names. Richard Donner. Big heart. Yeah. Dick Donner. Boy, I love that guy. Yeah. Just felt the need to include everyone. He would have a birthday party for one of the key grips or something. He was just always aware of the people around him. Tony Scott. Meticulous and easygoing. The most amazing combination. The easiest guy to work with I've ever worked with. Just fun. When I had an article, the LA Times did a story on me years ago, and this delivery came, and it was Tony who drew a picture of him with a cigar and a baseball cap, and he writes a bubble, and it says, pretty cool dude. It was just so sweet and so wonderfully spirited. Yeah. In Hollywood, there are people you don't want to work with. But Tony, he even came up to me at one point after the movie and said, hey, that scene, I'm sorry we didn't quite get it, because I thought your script was better than the scene we got. I was, what? You don't have to say that. When he died, it was one of those where were you moments. I remember hearing it and not believing it, because it was so random. And I still miss him. I've told Ridley the same sort of thing. The producer on our latest film, Jules Daly, who worked with Tony for years, and you can see her still tear up. It's just one of those things. He was, in my thinking at least, a force for good, calm, peace, and tolerance in an industry that was very much about bullies. Joel Silver. Out of his mind, but delightful. He always scared me. And to me, he always was, when I pictured Hollywood producer, he was the Hollywood producer. Do you know what I mean? The look, the feel, the energy, the whole thing. And I really never knew Joel very well. He is a historian of Hollywood. And so he grew up as a 10-year-old trying to meet Zanuck. It was in his blood. He also, in high school, was the first one to say, you know this William Shatner guy, I bet Star Trek is sort of becoming a phenomenon. So he booked William Shatner to his high school thinking, oh, this is going to be a failure. Showed up, there's a line like a mile long. And it was one of the first people to start the Trek phenomenon. That's incredible. Because he just had... He had the foresight. The foresight. And he was a producer in high school. He was producing a show that got all this attention for having been this remarkable discovery. Wow. He really was a formidable producer and I hope still making movies. He still is. And here's the thing, Joel may be flamboyant, he may be controversial at times, but the reason I keep coming back to him is that he had actual skill. He had actual, in the edit room, made everything better because he understood the movie I was trying to make. We had similar sensibility. We're on the same wavelength as far as this kind of thriller is concerned. You went to him on Lethal Weapon? Lethal Weapon, we were put together by agents. Was that how you got together? Yes. He had just done a film called Commando, which did very well. And we just clicked instantly. Back then he'd say, we need to rewrite this. I said, yeah, give me a minute. I'll go and rewrite it, read it to him. He'd go, okay, yeah. And we just walked back and forth to each other's offices, much like the group I came up with of friends who lived in the same house and just always swapped scripts back and forth. Joel was another one of those. There was a point where you didn't think of it as a business. You thought of it as having fun with people that are on your same wavelength. And then pretty soon you start to meet people and, oh, I get it. This is a business. This is tough. But I didn't know that for a while because Joel smoothed that transition. He made it more like a friend. Isn't there a story where you were actually acting in a movie and he asked you to polish a scene or something? I was a jerk. He said, hey, we have this predator thing. We're going to go down to Mexico and film this. If you're an actor in it, maybe you can help out with the writing a little bit if we get in trouble or if we need some character work. So I went down to Mexico and didn't write a thing. Oh, you didn't? No. But you got to be in it. Yeah. I said, it's fine. Still get those 10 cent residual checks? I do. As a matter of fact, I think one recently was actually for more like 30 bucks. The reassurance is that someone out there remarkably is still paying attention, that it's on someone's records book somewhere in their computer. I love it. Honorable people. Well... Because there's plenty of things that I wonder, wait a minute, I remember I did that. I haven't heard... People have to be bludgeoned into it. But yes, there are groups like the WGA and the DGA that say, no, no, no, guys, look, we know you want to do some creative accounting here, but we're going to hold your feet to the fire. And to some extent, the big one was, of course, coming to America, where they claimed it made no money and stuff like that. That was a great lawsuit, wasn't it? Yeah. Art Buchwald. Art Buchwald. Let me take you back to your roots before we continue our game. Sure. To being a student, graduating, kind of being a broke guy, doing survival jobs like I did. Now, again, we share this. I sold typewriter ribbons for three days, worked at a video store, I sold sofas, I catered, used to serve Michael Milken his lunch at DBL. Those were my survival jobs until I got, as an actor, because I came out to do theater and so my residuals ran out and I had to get that first job again. And until that first job, I did what I had to do, which you did too. And then you sell your first spec script, which was Lethal Weapon, was it not? Yes, that was the first one. Okay. What did you get for that? How much did they pay you for that? $250,000, which is fine. Well, at the time, I remember thinking just, oh shit, because I was a Kelly girl. I worked for Kelly Employment, so I would go type things. How adorable you were. I just wanted to pinch your cheeks for a minute, because he looks like a dude right now. He's got his sneakers, his baseball cap on, his sweatshirt, and he's saying, I was a Kelly girl. You remember what a Kelly girl was, Gary? Yeah. You have to tell your viewers, there was a Kelly girl was someone who you hired on a rotating basis. You just called the organization and they'd say, oh, we'll send you someone for a few days. Kelly Services was the name of the company. But I would come to do a temp job and they'd like my work and I'd stay for three or four weeks working, typing, and just doing odd jobs. I did not like doing that. I would rather be doing what I'm doing now, but you have to have smart feet and you need money. So you banked it? Yeah. Yeah, I did. What was the most reckless thing you did with your early money, with that newfound cash? I would get things from my parents. Oh my God. I think we're twins. Do you know when I was seven years old, I've never told anyone this, but I lived in Brooklyn, and I lived two blocks away from the main, what we called 86th Street in Bensonhurst. 86th Street was where you had the deli and the bank and the Ebbinger's Bakery, and you had Toland's. And Toland's was what is now a Target. It was a five and dime, if you remember. I love five and dimes. I love them. And this almost makes me emotional when I say this story, because I'd go in there, if I got a little bit of money, maybe a dollar or two, I'd go in there and I'd buy like a plate from my mom. Right. And then I'd get a little more and I'd buy another plate. And I think about it now, and I, why did I do that? I guess I did it because I wanted her to have things. Yeah. You want your parents, maybe there's a selfishness in it for me of wanting them to be proud of me, but also it's continuity. It's, you've grown up with these people, why not help? I mean, it just, it seems like the natural next step. Why would you sever ties and say- And there's also- I must have sensed that she wasn't getting enough. Or that she was unhappy for some reason, flirting with depression. And something. You thought as a kid, yeah, you could do the dance and cheer her up. See, folks, how we're writing a screenplay right now. We're writing a character. We're developing a character. Absolutely true. And by the way, I was really happy later in life when I began to get more success to give them the down payment for their home. And then of course, ultimately my mom passed and to take care of my father because basically he lived long and he ran out of money. So I had to take care of him. It was an honor. It is an honor and it's a necessity and it's self-rewarding. It's the best money you'll ever spend. And I have to add as a caveat, when I was doing my Kelly work, I had to take six months off even from that to write a script. And I didn't have enough money. And my parents said, look, you want to try this, we'll pay your rent for six months while you go do that. And I'm sure they thought, let him get it out of his system. Let him try these little stories of his, but just let him take a stab at it and then he can get back to a real job. And I was able to do in six months the thing that would then set me up. You had a degree from UCLA in theater. You might as well be a poet. That's the sort of financial side of that. But the screenwriting thing paid off and my God, their beneficence in there, even if they didn't think necessarily that it was a lock that I'd succeed, they gave me the shot. They took six months out of their money. And so how can you not then say, well, this is a bond. But the thing is they never asked either. Yeah, absolutely. They would never come to me and say, hey, since you've got this money, we need this. My father was, and my mother too, so proud, too proud. I love that. But you also know that there, I'm sure, were people in your life who do come to you often and it's a tough situation. I remember reading one of Oprah's books and she said that there was a time when she just had to say enough because she was writing check after check after check and things and taking care of people. And it gets to the point where enough is never enough. And there's also a point along the way, it was in my twenties, where you realize that you're lending money. These are donations. You're never getting it back. Oh, the only time I've ever lost relationships in my life was when I lent money. So I learned that, I think in my thirties, that I give money, I don't lend it. And if you expect it back, you'll probably never get it back and there'll be bad feelings. Well, two people surprised me. One was a woman who established a business and found me five years later and handed me the money back. And I was like, oh, I forgot about it. And the other was someone who I worked with in recovery who I thought, well, he's off, I'm never going to... And five years later, he said, I've been saving a little bit every week and here it is. Oh, wow. Yeah. Life is short. You want to be able to look in the mirror. A hundred percent. Anyway, let's go back to our fun game, Kevin Feige. Kevin is a pro. The reason he's a pro is like, I watched some of these Warner Brothers cartoon characters or comic book movies fail because the execs didn't understand them. They were like, we think that this is a great move for our company, but they didn't read comic books. And Kevin, this is the early, like number 50 through 75 Fantastic Four back in 1972, they had this happen. Now we might do that, but then the time travel arc that they did 10 years later, holy shit. I mean, this guy knows everything about his craft. So there's no one more capable. And there's a certain arrogance in sort of shepherding an entire universe, but at the same time, no one was more suited for it. So I was someone who basically takes over and runs things. My alcoholic side says, hey, wait, I want to... But then I go, look, trust the machine. This guy runs it. And this guy does the machine better than anybody. Which leads me to Robert Downey Jr. Yeah. Downey Jr., lightning in a bottle. 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 actor who 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. And you just go, okay, I'll take credit for that. For those of you who don't or have never seen Chaplin, it's a masterclass in acting. Yes. Dickie Attenborough directed it. I worked on it, I remember, years ago. He's exquisite in that movie. And he's such a gifted, gifted, talented actor. Now, I want to ask you, how terrified were you the night before the first day of shooting Iron Man 3? You're inheriting probably now the biggest franchise. Not terrified because you do a lot of work beforehand and you work with the actor, and you have a magic man. I'd seen Iron Man 1 and 2. You felt confident. Oh, yeah. I'm too stupid. I live a day at a time. I don't project into, I try to stay in the now. And in the now, you're insanely ignorant of what can go wrong. What compelled you to direct from the start? Why did you want to do Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang? Well, I'll tell you, it's because, number one, I'd see little things in the movies that I'd written, where I'd go, that wasn't supposed to play that way. And my own arrogance, like, oh, Jesus, that wasn't supposed to play that way. That plays in a one-er, or that's a long-er. Don't break that down to three shots. They just ruin the rhythm of it. And so, even though I generally liked the movies, I thought, I'm running scenes in my head in a slightly different way. I said, I want to try that. Number two, and most important, I think, is that 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 do all this work only to give it away and be exactly where you started, and that's all uphill again. There's no second step. When you direct, you get to move to the next level. You get to be social. You get to get up at three in the morning. And you like that. Oh, yeah. But most of what I love about directing isn't on set. 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 is everything. That's where you cook. Always my favorite part of the process. Love the editing room. And I've had guests here who are pretty well-known editors, love editors. I think that it's extraordinary to have that skill, and they can make or break your movie. But why haven't you directed more? Because you are so good at it. I mean, I watch you in post-mortem meetings after the screening, and just the way you hear notes, the way you embrace an idea, you don't get defensive. Maybe you did, but you don't now. Well, you stay teachable, and you try to live not in the problem, but in the solution. So if someone presents a problem, their solution may not be right. They may jump to say, what if you did more of this? But you ignore that, and you listen to, they had a problem. I don't think they've correctly identified why it doesn't work there. But the fact that they had a problem means, okay, so I'll flag that, and now I have to come up with a solution. May not be theirs, but I'll come back to them and say, isn't this what you really want? When I give notes about what the audience is saying, I try not to ever do that. But sometimes, by example, I'll say, I think what they're saying is they want to see something like this, but just to spark the discussion. Yeah. Walter Hill. Old school. Walter is the sort of rough, tough — you expect him to walk out the door of the soundstage and go off with his biker gang. Even now, he's a little older, but he just is — he's very supportive. You have a very close relationship with him. I adore the man. Yeah. I mean, and he's the one who, when I say 48 hours, was the real culprit behind reshaping the Buddy movie. I mean, yeah, don't blame it on Lethal Weapon. Walter Hill was in there doing it before me. He's the real juice. Yeah, he's really insane. William Goldman. Goldman. Empathetic genius. Just rabbi. Everyone thinks of him as a rabbi, because he just gives back. And he has this endless wealth of accrued, cynical knowledge tempered with this unbelievable optimism, despite all the cynical things he points out. He says it can be better. You and I both talked about this before we went on air, but we mentioned that at the Carlyle Hotel, he lived in the entire floor at the top, and the elevator would open, and he would greet you. You also told me something very interesting about the phone book. Yeah, he was in the New York phone book, and he insisted on it. So he'd go, William Goldman, my favorite writer, he can't be in the — and you would open the book in the 90s, and you'd call him and go, hello, and it's him. It's incredible. Did you ever hold his Oscars? No. I did. I saw it. I've seen it. Two of them for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and of course, one's for — All the President's Men? All the President's Men. Very good. And they actually weigh a little differently. Non sequitur, I was in New York last week, and I went to visit my dear friend Maria Cooper, who's Gary Cooper's daughter. Maria Cooper Janis. I saw three Oscars sitting there on her shelf, and she said, pick them up. And I said, well, somebody told me if you hold Oscars, you'll never get one. Oh, bullshit. So I picked up the Oscars and won, because it was during the war, probably Sergeant York. He won for High Noon also, and then he won a Lifetime Achievement Award. Was so heavy. I could only picture a smaller woman actress being handed this, because some of those women were tiny. And this thing weighed, must have been 12 pounds. I kid you not. It was so heavy, because they made it with a heavier metal, because of the war. Anyway, just thought it was interesting. You're like Joel, you're a historian. Here it is. I'm a bit starstruck still, but of people that have done the work, that have paid their dues, I'm very big on that. And I revere age and experience. And in fact, I will pay dearly for it, because I will tend to go out of my way to hire people who are smarter than I am, often older than I am, and have great experience that can't be taught. It has to be learned. I agree. And there are people who say they can codify genius. I mean, there are authors like Sid Field, who wrote a book on screenwriting, and it's very good in its depiction of what constitutes a structured screenplay. But you could also make a screenplay that touches every single one of those points and holds together exactly like that structure, and it's awful. What's the quintessential book for you, for the young filmmaker? Audiencology? Oh, audiencology, yes. It's good about talking about how moviegoers perceive films. And you're very good at finding out not just what their impressions are, but what underlies the impression. You get at what the problem is, not what they say it is. Exactly. And I'll tell you, that has to do with my acting craft. And that was getting to the truth of a character relentlessly, pursuing the truth. So what? That happens. So what? That happens. So what? And you have to dig and dig and dig and dig. And that is how I think I have been approaching the work that I've done for years with filmmakers, is to understand what's really going on underneath what the audience is saying. It's not just the written words, but what's the implicit response? What's sort of the... And studio executives are guilty of it as well. They will say, we want this fixed. And you go, do you really? Because I think what you're really saying is there's a problem here, but I bet you if you change this, especially what are some of the greatest classic movies of all time that have sad endings? Like Old Yeller, Gunga Din. The sadness is what makes them great, but the instant response on the studio, well, that's a downer at the end. I don't think that I ever really experience it's a downer at the end. I experience it's not satisfying because- That's a good one. That really is a difference. And there's many filmmakers who will do a downer ending, but it doesn't benefit the overall piece. And I think probably they were telling you that in Lethal Weapon 2, of course, that was a cash play. They wanted to continue the franchise, but at the same time, was it really necessary? They didn't think so, I suppose. And yeah, there are some movies- That might be a shitty example, but- No, no, no. I tried my best to justify it, but they were probably right in the end. I remember a Burt Reynolds movie that was affected for me, Hustle. And you go through this whole movie where he solves this crime and takes down the bad guys. At the end, he's on the phone with his girlfriend and the guy walks into the convenience store to rob it and shoots him dead. And I thought, okay, this is the 70s, man. Protagonist dies randomly on the brink of happiness. I would venture to say that was probably your favorite decade of movies. I'm right about that? Yes. From Bullet through 48 Hours, there's that inclusive period of grit. Is there a movie this year that you remember or recently that you remember that you really respected? Or a filmmaker. A film that I was shocked by but respected was Midsommar. I just saw it- Our movie. Yeah. There were a lot of very innovative horror movies happening now. And I think part of it is people see we can spend not a lot and make a ton. It's the one low budget sort of area that is sort of open to all comers. And you just have to be clever. You have to do a dance. When I was a kid in college, the newest thing you could think of was the scene where the girl goes in the bathroom and there's a shower curtain. Oh, the killer's in there. And she walks up, suspense, and she goes, pulls it aside. Nobody there. And she turns and he's right in her face. That was new back then. I can't teach that. I talk to people like, you got to do that thing where the refrigerator door opens, closes it, there's no one there, opens it again, close it again, the killer's there. It's a dance though. Because once you become aware of it, now you go, oh, we saw that. So now you have to have her pull the shower curtain. The guy's not there when she turns around. And then she walks out and now he's there. So anything to tweak this to make a dance with the audience who are in some cases very sort of slow and lazy, but in other cases, infinitely perceptive when it comes to tricks or being tricked. So you're dancing with them in a horror movie. Let me ask you about women, because I've mentioned every one of my names, and I purposely didn't mention Geena Davis and Susan Downey, for example, who's producing your latest movie, who I know you've had very strong connections with, but I didn't mention women, and your somehow influences and so forth in your life have largely been male. They have, but I'm also was accused of being a mama's boy. Who accused you of that? Well, my psychiatrist, number one, who said, you've tried to protect your mother your whole life, didn't you? That kind of thing. I didn't want to go to school because I had to stay with mom, make sure she was okay. So I'd weep and cry when they tried to drag me out to go to school. I just felt like mom needed protecting. Wow. Yeah, it was some quirk in my own head or some phobia I developed, but I am so drawn to the notion of doing a female-centric movie where I actually try to think through different eyes. The problem is today you really can't, because if you do a female-driven movie that's in any way controversial and you direct it as a male, you'll get shafted. I couldn't have done Promising Young Woman where she gets... That was so brutal. Fabulous, wasn't that? It was a fabulous movie, but there's some scenes that are hard to take, and if a male had directed it, it would be branded. Likely very true. Yeah. And particularly somebody who has the musculature, I guess, of you as a filmmaker, as a writer and a director of very testosterone-driven stuff. Right, and they'll think I was just doing a stunt. But yet I feel, based on our conversation, that you have a tremendous love for women. I have a tremendous feminine side. Like I said, who wants to go through life saying, what the **** are you looking at? It's like, that's just happy life? So the idea of women sort of being a sobering and ultimately more tolerant and intelligent force in life is probably closer to the truth. I'm glad you said that, because I can't believe that people weren't listening to the names of the people and going, where are the women? Yeah. No, absolutely. Before we break, because we could talk for hours, literally, because we have such a common language, Play Dirty is your latest movie for Amazon. Can you just give us a couple of lines on why you did that movie and what it means to you? Well, one of my favorite writers has always been Donald Westlake, and he did this remarkable thing where he would do a series of comic crime novels about a guy named Dortmunder, and the movie The Hot Rock was based on those, for instance. 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 going to be this guy Westlake. And he never achieved James Patterson popularity, but he was very prolific, and movies were made from his stuff. And among mystery writers, he's the king. And so the Parker books finally came out as a potential rights availability. And so we had to. There's just no question. We had to do. When did you first read that series? Oh, 12 years old. Incredible. Yeah. I've known Westlake stuff my entire life and my addiction to mystery novels. I mean, that's what I mean when I say the superpower is having read a thousand books that other people are potentially unaware of. And you say this and they go, oh, that's so new. And you go, yeah, no, it's not. But Donald Westlake did the Parker series. And if anything, we may be guilty of putting a little Dortmunder in the Parker world, but I've always loved Westlake. Shane Black, what I've learned in this interview is how deep you are, how curious you are, how chameleon-like you are, and somebody that I just want to hang with because you're so deep. And you're just a fascinating guy. And you also correctly interpret that curiosity trumps fear. And that's when life is best. You can be afraid of something or you can replace it with curiosity. I'll tell you one story before we go. I think it's a true story. It's been described to me as true is that John Cassavetes was walking in the park, New Central Park, with his friends, like Ben Gazzara, Peter, whoever. And as they're walking, a guy comes out from under the trees with a gun and says, hey, give me your money. He goes, what? Give me your money. He said, well, look, I don't know. We got a few bucks. We're just going to get some ice cream. He goes, no, no, no, you're an actor. I've seen you on TV. Give me your money. John Cassavetes said, what? Oh, my God, you didn't wake up this morning and say, I'm going to have a gun in my hand this afternoon. What kind of day you must have had? He says, you know what? I don't know what you're doing or where it comes from, but I'm fascinated. Would you like to go get some ice cream with us? And the guy's like, okay. And they went and all had ice cream together. And that's when curiosity trumps fear. Now, it doesn't always work. If some guy comes at you with a knife and says, hey, you want to go to the movies? It's probably not going to work. But there was something probably not so threatening about the guy and yet pathetic in a way. He said, I want to know more. This will be useful to me. So that's, I think, the basis for all writing is just replacing that fear of being found out as an imposter or the fear of failing with a curiosity. Then when it kicks in, you go, oh, I'm not worried about the fear anymore. Fascinating. Well, you are just a treasure. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kevin. I'm honored to be here. To our listeners, I hope you enjoyed our interview today. I encourage you to watch many of the films discussed. For more filmmaking and audience testing stories, I invite you to check out my book, Audienceology, at Amazon or through my website at kevingetz360.com. You can also follow me on my social media. Next time on Don't Kill the Messenger, I'll welcome former studio executive and marketing guru, Tony Sella. Until then, I'm Kevin Getz. And to you, our listeners, I appreciate you being part of the moviemaking process. Your opinions matter.