Shane Black Quotes

My good films were independent and my bad films were not.

I'd like to do interesting indie films mixed with big, high-paying commercial blockbusters. 'One for you, one for me,' is what they say.

Nowadays you really have to pump out that blockbuster in order to have the luxury of getting a body of work, and that's sad because the work suffers. Today everything is based on money. The older actors, they inspire me.

The only way you can continue to make artistic films is to make an occasional one of those. They kind of keep your marketability going to the extent that people will employ you.

I sort of straddle the line... between personal movies and mainstream Hollywood.

it's difficult in Hollywood to be allowed to try anything. It's all a terrible compromise. There is no time for art. All that matters is what they call box office.

What I want to try to prove is that artistic games, when done properly, can still be a commercial success. By doing that, I will be able to essentially shift the industry and create more opportunity for people to create artistic games. In a way, making money is important for us right now. Not because we need it, but because the industry needs it.

In music industry they always want you to write something like the one that was popular. And that's something you kind of have to just - sometimes you just say yes to people, like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure," and then you just write the one you want to write.

I don't want the world to give me anything for my books except money enough to save me from the temptation to write only for money.

There's things that I can do as an actor that I couldn't do in any other form of life and I've got a strange personality. But film requires strange people, so I've got a nice comfy home.

You do the work and you want people to see it; but, um while I'm doing the work, the result doesn't matter at all to me. Ultimately, I don't, I don't care whether the film is - you know - some big giant box-office bonanza and I don't care if its a complete flop. To me, when a film gets made and it's actually finished it's a success. They're all a success in their own way.

The only people who get paid what they're worth are people who don't follow the instruction book, who create art, who are innovative, who work without a map.

You need to find a way to propel this creativity to the masses. People get brainwashed and they start to forget what's good.

Whatever field you can do that, that's where you want to do it, and I think that's why people like David Fincher and Ridley Scott are interested in it, too, because when you sit down on a meeting in HBO and they're like, "More, more." You're just like, "Oh yeah, I love this." Sometimes it's a little harder in film. I think also it's a great audience, take advantage of it. It's a great audience.

Most of the movies that I've made that I really felt good about and cared about made very little money anyway, so I'm not particularly worried about people downloading and sharing them.

You have to give people something to actually write music so that you're not just running your mouth all the time.

One of the great things about cartoons is that they're not real - you're not watching real people and it engages your imagination. One of the cornerstones of America is that we are creative thinkers. We're innovators.

When people asked to buy my work I always said no. I'd had this rather rarefied idea that I didn't want money going through my head while I was making work. But after the car crash I realized that none of my work was owned by anyone. After that, I grew up a bit.

The moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist.

As a screenwriter I'm often writing in genres where there have been thousands of movies; whereas when I direct movies they tend to be in between genres. They tend to have a little bit of a genre to them, but they're really about the people, and they're people we haven't met before.

I don't feel that way now. I don't want to make movies for the 10 people who feel exactly the same way about the world that I do. I want to make movies that many, many people see, and I want to say something that I believe is important in a way that people who don't agree with me can hear. And that involves making different kinds of choices, but it's not like a compromise that I'm making. It's that something else interests me, something else is appealing to me.

I don't *ever* write about real people. Art is supposed to be better than that. If you want a slice of life, look out the window.

It’s also true that I might have never made Taxi Driver [1976] were it not for the success of Alice [Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1974]. The question of commercialism is a source of worry. Must one make a choice, must it be a matter of either setting your sights on winning an Academy Award and becoming a millionaire, or making only the movies you want to make and starving to death?

The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists. Can you imagine a Beethoven making $100, 000 a year?

I don't ever try to anticipate my audience. I just write the songs I want to write, and hope people like 'em.