Written Interview: Shane Black (“Iron Man 3”)

Interview with Shane Black who is prepping to shoot his second directorial effort Iron Man 3. Interesting what he has to say about the “monkey bar” approach to screenwriting:

CBR News: I was at your Q&A earlier today, where you were saying how much you want “Iron Man 3,” visually, to be grounded in reality and to avoid having it look like a cartoon. Is this realism something you’re emphasizing in the script as well?

Shane Black: Yeah, I think the approach is not just a visual or cinema-graphic approach. Iron Man is a different type of property, in a way, because Robert Downy is a different type of actor, number one. If you look at the first “Iron Man,” the events of the story feels like the crossover between what’s in a comic book and what’s in real life. There’s always been the tendency to make Iron Man the real-world superhero who deals with things a bit more rooted in geopolitical reality and then have comic book elements added. What’s interesting to me about the first movie, and to some extent the second movie, is the character. If you’re really paying attention to the story, the more people care about the character, the more people will care about the outcome, I think.

That being said, the first two movies are very improv-heavy and very much in Jon Favreau’s specific style. How much of your own stylistic stamp do you feel can you put on the third installment?

I believe in something I didn’t make up; it’s called the monkey bars approach. If you’ve ever been to a jungle gym, it looks on the outside very rigid and structured because there’s all these bars that are locked in place and elaborately structured. But if you go inside the monkey bars, there’s room to play around. So as long as the monkey bars framework exists, you can still play. What I wouldn’t want to do is just play and that’s it. Get the script first, get the script nailed down — we’re working very hard to ensure we’re not writing the script as we approach production, that we actually know what we’re doing so we can make production the process of enhancing and enriching and fulfilling the potential of our preexisting script instead of trying to make it up as we go along. I’m really thrilled to be as far along as we are, already.

For more of the interview from Comic Book Resources, go here.

HT to @UnkScreenwriter for the link.