Screenwriting 101: Shane Black

“I studied William Goldman’s writing style, especially the scripts for Marathon Man and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I found both of those to be really riveting, entertaining in their own right, as if you were reading a condensed novel good for one sitting. Similarly, Walter Hill’s scripts for Alien and the original 48 Hours when they were looking for a Clint Eastwood kind of pairing — I thought these were wonderfully written scripts. I studied the language and the style. I didn’t realize as I was reading them, that these were very unusual. That most people wrote scripts much differently. I assumed there weren’t many rules and you just sort of did whatever you wanted to stylistically and had fun with it. So, I took those two writers as examples and mentors.”

— Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout) from “Best of Creative Screenwriting Interviews, 1994–2004”

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