The end of a fade for Black

"I guess the easiest answer is just oblivion. I think anyone who's past 40 will understand that a phenomenon happens in [one's mid-30s], which is that time passes in a way it's never done before. It accelerates." He also says he spent a lot of time hanging with the guys: "I'd call my friends on a Saturday and we'd drive around like in 'Swingers.' That was me for, like, two years." He mentions bouts with guilt, false starts on scripts, teaching the occasional film seminar, and his father's death as well. But through it all, Black seems to be grasping at straws, throwing out pieces of the puzzle but unsure how they fit together.

So he goes back to the beginning. The answer he finally formulates could be encapsulated by several lines in the script of "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," a new film he wrote and directed. Starring two of Hollywood's bad boys, Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer, it is screening out of competition later this month at the Cannes Film Festival and in many ways signals a break with Black's old style.

"I guess you'd call this a detective story," the film's narrator says. "There are dull parts, but there's a murder in it. Also a broken heart, so I guess it's a love story. Oh, and everything's connected, it all loops back around, it's cool.... My hobbies include [messing] things up, and reading. Welcome to L.A. Welcome to the party."

An unusual kid

Meeting Black, one encounters a man who on different days looks alternately pasty or radiant. Sometimes, his confident aura seems exponentially increased by being in the context of his home, which has been decorated to resemble the '60s gothic soap opera "Dark Shadows." Black has four dogs -- Ava, Teddy, Roscoe and Honeybear -- and can himself appear to be the fifth one. A bruiser of a guy, he seems to be seeking love (although with a lot of pride thrown in) as he clomps around his house slightly haphazardly. One can picture him intently taking in a movie and then falling asleep -- as Roscoe did one early evening, to his owner's delight -- on one of the manse's opulent maroon couches.

Black was, by his own account, an unusual kid. He was born in Pittsburgh to a coal miner's daughter and a former University of Pittsburgh football star who, like many men of his generation, had trouble expressing emotion. The young Black liked books and found solace in them, but he also felt the pressure, and sting, of trying to live up to his father's expectations.