Shane Black’s Tumultuous Journey
Shane Black’s story is well known. At age 22 he wrote Lethal Weapon, giving new life to the action/buddy film genre. In 1990 he sold his script The Last Boy Scout for $1.75 million. Writer Joe Eszterhas eclipsed this figure with his sale of Basic Instinct for $3 million but Shane’s subsequent sale of The Long Kiss Goodnight for $4 million made him the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood. Shane continued writing screenplays into the 90s (The Last Action Hero) but then seemed to disappear. As with most Hollywood stories, Shane’s is complicated.
I lived with Shane for a year while attending UCLA. In those days, he was a theater major aspiring to be an actor. He loved 70s character-driven film thrillers like The French Connection, Dirty Harry and Bullitt. He was an avid reader of hard-boiled detective fiction like Ross Macdonald and John D. MacDonald. He carried a dog-eared copy of William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade wherever he went.
I remember watching Shane perform standup comedy at UCLA. He was frenetic on stage, trashing props and uttering punch lines about anal probes administered by UCLA security. Like many college seniors, he was uncertain about his future. He worked as an usher in a Westwood movie theater and took on temp jobs as a data entry clerk. He was gracious and kind but also brooding and intense.
