"Shane Black Confront Your Fears"

Billy Mernit hits one out of the park in his latest over at Living the Romantic Comedy:

I had the great good fortune to have screenwriter/director Shane Black visit my Writing the Character-Driven Screenplay class this past week.

Yes, that Shane Black whose writing credits include Lethal Weapon (1987), The Last Boy Scout (1991), Last Action Hero (1993), The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005). As Billy says in his post:

Revered by those of us who know how hard it is to write good, character-driven action fare, he also became infamous, back in the day, for having committed the crime of being one of the most highly paid scribes in Hollywood history.

So one might expect Black to be rather snotty or whatever. Not so, says Billy:

Shane turned out to be an uncommonly generous, vulnerable, honest mensch of a guy. I got to play James Lipton and ask the questions, and Shane gave us over an hour and half's worth of enlightening answers re: creating memorable characters and crafting effective big screen stories. A few times in our conversation we talked about digging into one's dark places and dealing with one's fears in the writing process. The last question of the night came from a student who wanted to know how Shane dealt with such fears - where the fear came from and what it was about.

You have to follow the link over to Billy's post - Black spins a great yarn he calls "The Jack Story," a must read for any writer - but here's his summary re fear and writing:

"I walked through the fear. You can walk through anything. That's the fabulous truth that I've discovered, is that fear never goes away. But it doesn't top you from putting one foot in front of the other. And, the most important realization of all, it can't stop you from being creative. It can impede you, but it will not stop you from having great ideas. Fear will do everything except shut you down, mentally. It can't do that."

I won't sully Black's comments - although you can go here for some of my thoughts on the matter - but we'll take up the subject later this week.

Now go to Billy's blog and read his post with Shane Black. A definite must-read.