Jack Howard & Shane Black | Talking filmmaking

just remember to stay on top you gotta remember when to touch bottom go back and remember why you're doing this in the first place when I started Fred Dekker and I we had a piece of paper with tape on we put over the typewriter just said this is important don't talk about someday I'm gonna write a book right at the book there's a typer to sit down and tap the keys and just start doing it just do it just do it Shane black man just giving every creative person ever the advice to every creative person needs ever I've done a few interviews before I've done one with Sam Mendes I did one with Danny Boyle that you still haven't seen yet but I promise I will make a video about that because I still want to but this I think is the most beneficial one that I've ever done for me personally because I've just not just finished the jachnoon series I finished it a few months ago and right now I've mentioned before another video so I would stop going on about it I'm in a bit of a creative ruts I don't really know what my next project is I don't know what I'm doing at the moment I'm just throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks but there's not really a creative direction at the moment and hearing what you had to say about just do it and you know I'll just let you watch it because there's a lot of things I learned from this and hopefully you'll get something from it as well if you have anything that you want to achieve within the creative industry this is absolutely worth a watch it's quite long so just have it on in the background have a little listen to what they have to say I definitely think it's vital information that they're sharing and you should know as well just before this interview started Shane back complimented my shoes hey how's it going everyone today I have the pleasure of being joined or joining Shane black the director of the nice guys and also Joe Silva the producer of every movie you've ever liked but just for context and just say no I'm a filmmaker myself really a lot of my audience are also like they're quite young and up-and-coming filmmakers and have an interest in all about so that's sort of the perspective I want to take on this and sure to be an interesting thing for them to hear and so first of all like in the writing of the nice guys and this is going to be quite a big question to start with but how when you've got such experience writing movies does the fear that you've that this is worth it or this is good enough never go away they're like what you know their self doubts that you have when you're writing something know for your viewers and just so yeah writing to me is the process of turning fear into problem-solving you sit down and you go and there's a blank space a page and you're terrified then you start typing and there's terror terror Terrence Lee and then suddenly what if that's kind of a that's a nice bit what if he said this here in this and you just you just start doing it until you find something that momentarily in in the moment is just temporarily more interesting than your own fear your brain is fear fear fear and then it catches something and it's just momentarily more interesting than being afraid and so that's what you do you write until fear morphs into just problem solving right and that's that's but the fear itself that you start with that never the fear of a sense of fraudulence of being behind i I've written my last funny line people good at this anymore that was my luck man that was a fluke or anything yes seriously I mean Joel doesn't producers don't feel this by the way producers don't have this sense of fraudulence I mean it's it all starts with the writer I mean it starts with it you know I mean even if I'm developing a material pretty John we have an idea the writer has to do it but look let me taste something we're all scared shitless so I mean every everything we do we're always yeah I mean I mean obvious that's that's part of it like that's part of why movies these days are all based on ideas because everyone's scared that no one's gonna make any money and this is you know every critic is throwing around the word original for this and I completely agree is the most refreshing thing I've seen in a long time and a part of that is because occasionally you allow yourself to be quite surreal now I want to ask you like about that and I also want to ask you when you read that like no spoilers but there's a part where there's a bee in a car now they don't have to see the dam like what was that like for you like how did that come about when you read that were you thinking that because that what's this about or do you just trust Shane to do it what we already done a film called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang yeah we did a lot of meta stuff and a lot of crazy stuff like at one point the narrator tells two people to get out of the way and they jump on this on screen and run away because the narrator ordered them off screen so we already and also we freeze the frame a couple times and kiss kiss and then we we freezed it and we talked a little about what was happening when in the frozen frame and then we start up again so look I mean look I I read the scene I said you really want to do this here he said yeah it's a no question he said what are you thinking I said we got to make sure it's really good and it looks good and you buy it and yeah it was a complicated gag cuz we had a puppet of a bee in the car I mean hopefully you'll see the movie first we do puppet of the bee which we shot him and went back in and augmented it would end with the CGI cgi so it's kind of it's the puppet with an Augmented energy I used it I was just wondering about like like tonal is where like how you decided that that was where you wanted to go and how surreal you wanted to be because that was one of the things that felt like really refreshing that like I didn't think anyone else would dare go there even though it is so like you owe it to yourself to be playful in these things as best you can and and there's something about deconstructing mm-hmm that appeals to me especially the privatized genre everyone's seen the scene where someone won't give information and so the good guy takes a single bullet puts the gun spins yeah and says all right talk to me they go click you're crazy stop it stop it I'll talk I'll talk you know thinking to myself would it just hit that one bullet and you're done you know did you just do so we did that in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang here we have a scene where guy you know very carefully wraps his knuckles with a cloth and tries to break the window and you know but that's the whole thing you have to be playful you have to sort of deconstruct the and you can get as weird as you want I mean to me it's a satire was in seventies movies a lot and satire is something I just always thought was terrific too and you don't see as much of anymore people assume you have to sort of one tone that operates solely throughout the entire film yeah my favorite thing is when you're drawn into a false sense of security with something that's maybe like hard or funny and then all of a sudden it punches you and goes look now you care when something sad or you know bad happens to the cattle shifts absolutely tonal shifts your viewers should do that coming people yeah and also a lot of people as well when they talk about like how should they get into stuff and I should they do it in stuff that they at this level they're just writing it for them and not some stuff but when you get to your level you're writing something and then submitting it to like a producer or a studio how do you do with the notes that come back and how does that affect a description let him read them I mean sometimes notes are I try to be sensitive a radiata k-- and I mean at one point were try and do this movie for it we tried it as a series with a prominent Network and we were in the process of kind of working on potentially a pilot and you know there was this scene where you know if you see the movie where Holly is in the trunk of Colin Marquez car and he closes the trunk yeah and you know of course he goes right back there and opens it up and gets it out but you know the network said you can't do that then we said but he comes back in a minute and let's say yes but it's you know child abuse you can't have a child in the trunk my said well he doesn't leave her and I mean it doesn't matter you can't do it and look that I understand the point of view that they felt but he kept saying it's funny yeah not just funny it to me that little girl says you're gonna take me in right and he goes click and closes the trunk and starts to give the keys that to me cements the no-bullshit relations yeah a father and daughter he doesn't put up with that and she knows you know she's not gonna let her suffocate in a trunk it actually makes them more loving in a way but all people see is just the sort of guideline the template of behavior that qualifies there's none the worst case scenario reaction to that and you just said that existed in a pilot for a series and things I had no idea that was was the case and it seems like the script has existed for a while we were just talking before the camera started rolling about the fact it was written around the same time as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang oh it was everything right it was it was movie said in present day was a TV show as this was like a little series of comics you got me open bubblegum right she's a nice man it was it was everything well that's amazing to know that like that it can you can try in so many different ways there's no hair icterus we're sorry and we just had those guys you can throw them into anything yeah because they populate whatever era whatever sort of venue you you put them in they're just we had fun characters that we knew so well that we could just write them anywhere and and in the scripts like happen if you were to read the script now how much does it resemble like obviously wasn't stopped going on about the fact that scripts change all the time so if you were to read there's the script for the nice guys how much does it resemble the original draft was a contemporary story hmm and it didn't have the catalytic converter but it had a a similar it was a similar concept that you know these two guys looking for a missing girl and she was not the same girl they were looking for I mean is the same kind of thing but it was it's much more sophisticated now it's much more it's much smarter it's it's got more of the mysteries greater I mean this is a serious movie that is a drama in that it has it has it's a thriller that's a mystery but yeah it is very funny it's plot takes itself seriously and the characters the ones that mess it up and that's like my favorite thing about this comedy is it snow like that was a I got that the first day saw that was Peter Sellers clue so movies yeah right the best ones the first like three or four clue so is an idiot but the bad guys are real hmm and that's what was fun if the bad guys had been funny we're Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein is another one where AB and Costello as funny as they've ever been but the monsters are scary yeah as a kid I'd be terrified it's a real threat for the here and it and that's what makes you care about what's going on rather than just like oh this is gonna be fine and I don't I think it makes it funnier yeah yeah it does and on set as a director we talk about writing quite a lot but as a director things go wrong all the time but sometimes things not for us who would those are all things that sometimes things do do perfectly fine you're like how did I get such a perfect day what are one of those things that like if you were to read the script that is exactly what I wanted it to be on the screen and what are some things that you have to change on the day because of situations or not foreseeable that's that's tough to say we always had an out we always had a way to go to something that we liked and usually if we had a budget problem where we're trying to make a day we needed to cut something down we'd meet the night before and invariably talking with Russell and Ryan the night before what we come up with to make our day the next day was was every bit as good or better than what we had had originally intended the one that came off interestingly better than I'd anticipated was where Ryan and one Scene finds a dead body right and all we did was was right you know he stumbles backwards stairs you know and you know basically loses his shift and loses his can be interpreted in a number of ways Ryan chose to do it as avid Costello yeah that kind of thing and I just said god damn man that's a perfect thing you just put it in yeah that's so great and and mention Ryan and obviously they're great together how long did it take to find the two dyes - with that chemistry was it just immediately or did you test that different people no no I mean what and finally can't be yet again after EFT in 2013 after that's why I'm in three you know it was you know it was it's like so much of the process works I'm his agent seals represents Russell we got a call from Russell's agent it says would you consider Russell and we said Russell Crowe and he goes yeah he says really he wants to do boy he's very funny that's it okay so he went to meet him at the same time I had always been chasing Ryan and I said - Ryan's people do you think that he'd want to do this with Russell let's read the script he said he loves me via Brussels so by the time Shane got to Australia to Sydney to see Russell he said what about with rhymings I mean yeah the deal happened in midair while I was halfway over the ocean asleep Ryan was back in LA saying I'd like to work with Russell so the minute I landed I could say to Russell hey Ryan Gosling that interest you and all that he'd I'm in alright yeah I just stuff this comes together like that yeah final question you have produced things like the matrix huge movies and you obviously directed Iron Man 3 how is it different to make a movie of that scale just I mean it's not as quite a fax lid or studio that it's the same is it really I mean look you you have a bigger palette to work with but you're still dealing with people and their relationships and trying to you know put all the pieces together we look we have less visual effects in this than something like that but it's still you know you're dealing with the essence of it is you know people relating to each other and writing good scenes and writing the dialogue and yeah I mean the action beats in our movie are small compared to those movies but that's the question if you know it's just that question of time it's all that time you know we we get 50 days and movie is honor days and they've dependent yeah if you have all the time in the world and all the money in the world you can do anything I mean that's the it's the kind of guerrilla filmmaking the street corner juggler you know approach to this thing that was fun in Iron Man literally I had a special effects I asked our supervisor or VFX guy do you ever say no if I asked is there anything I ask for that you can't give me it was I will always say yes to you it's all about money right there's nothing we can't do it's just all about money and in this one you know we were making a more modest picture but we had to be innovative for that reason and Joel is great at finding ways to make 70s la pop out of Atlanta magically you know for a cost for a price so we're great we're lucky there we go like seems to me that filmmaking is is all about dancing and problem-solving I haven't learned anything new I already knew that this was pointless people you know just just just remember to stay on top you can remember when to touch bottom go back and remember why you're doing this in the first place when I started Fred Dekker and I we had a piece of paper with tape on it we put over the typewriter just said this is important meaning don't go out to dinner don't screw around with your friends just you don't talk about some day I'm gonna write a book right at the book there's a typer to sit down and tap the keys and just start doing it just do it just do it there you go and also go see the nice guys I'm not joking it's the best film I've seen this year without a doubt if you're interested that those are the shoes so so that was my interview with Shane black and John Silver we enjoyed it too give it a thumbs up if you did if you enjoyed this sort of longer discussion type video or this video just about movies and stuff let me know I'm happy to do more stuff like this like I said before I'm gonna do a video about writing and you know all the sort process stuff pretty soon because I want to start talking about the Jacobean series because it's coming out in about a month this time so that's really exciting and let me know as well what you what you got out of this like what was it within this video that really spoke to you for me it was absolutely the end but that I showed at the beginning of him being like just do it like don't don't let the fear take over because it absolutely does with me sometimes but yeah until next time thanks very much watching bye like thank you thank you cheers guys thanks very much thank you thank pleasure

Channel: JackHoward

Views: 43,716

Rating: 4.9726653 out of 5

Keywords: the nice guys, shane black interview, kiss kiss bang bang, ryan gosling, russell crowe, jack howard, jack and dean, screenwriting, screen writing, script, directing, tips

Id: eIjbS7Agicc

Length: 16min 31sec (991 seconds)

Published: Wed May 18 2016