Shane Black

“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.”

“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.”

“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 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.”

“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.”

“You have to keep surprising your audience.”