Shane Black stormed on the scene back in the early 80s when as a 23-year-old he sold his script Lethal Weapon. That film came out in ’87 and was a solid hit that turned into a franchise. Black was then paid a reported $1.75 million for his script The Last Boy Scout, and then made $4 million writing The Long Kiss Goodnight.
“Here’s what it is…here’s what I didn’t know when I was starting out that I now know…I thought when you were starting out it was really hard to write because you hadn’t broken in yet, you hadn’t really hit your stride yet. What I found out paradoxically is that the next script you write doesn’t get easier because you wrote one before …each one gets harder by a factor of ten.”
Shane Black
Speaking at Sherman Oaks Experimental College
That may somewhat explain why Black has only had two produced screenplays in the last 13 years, why Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have just a total of two produced screenplays in the last 12 years after winning an Oscar for writing Good Will Hunting and why Callie Khouri has just two features produced since she won an Oscar back in 1991 for writing Thelma & Louise. That doesn’t take anything away from these artists as writers, directors and/or actors — it just points out how hard it is to write a good script that gets produced and finds an audience.
[…] Shane Black stormed on the scene back in early 80s when as a 23-year old he sold his script Lethal Weapon. The film came out in 87 and was a hit and he was paid a reported $1.75 million for his script for the 1991 film The Last Boy Scout, and then made $4 million […] Original Source… […]