The end of a fade for Black

To watch "Lethal Weapon" today is to see a film filled with that-was-fun car crashes and plot points that seem optional to follow -- fun, a la carte -- but there's also brilliance to its tough-talking, explosions-filled glory. The tagline for the film was "Two Cops. Glover carries a weapon ... Gibson is one," and what Black got into his script was testosterone incarnate. Mel Gibson's heartbroken, on-a-death-mission detective Martin Riggs may be the purest embodiment of macho adolescent fantasy ever committed to celluloid.

His next films had a similar magic: "The Last Boy Scout," starring Bruce Willis, and even "The Long Kiss Goodnight," a hybrid of radical feminism and hard-core action starring Geena Davis, had an almost animal intensity to them. But "The Long Kiss Goodnight," which was made for $75 million, would gross only half that at the box office in 1996.

Black said the failure didn't have as big an effect as many thought, but it may have further eaten away at his confidence: Success had already taken a toll on his psyche. "The biggest task I had to face was managing to believe that I in any way deserved it," Black said of his swift rise, "especially in light of all the people who had worked just as hard, as strenuously, but to whom it didn't come quite so easily."

A falling out with his best friend in the mid-'90s only added to his guilt. The man, whom he'd first met at UCLA, had decided he wanted to be a writer too, but his career never caught fire. Black said "he was very angered by my success," and several months after they stopped speaking Black received a letter. "[It] said, 'I still hate you, I don't want to see you anymore, but here's a bank account number. Wire as much as you think our friendship is worth into it.' "

Black, who sent the man a large sum, remains stunned. "I said, 'Is this what writing does? Does it make you lose your friends? Make people hate you?' "

But around this time Black was also grappling with another, perhaps larger, issue: the problems of the Hollywood machine.

After "Lethal Weapon" came out, Silver asked Black to write a sequel. He did, formulating what was thought by many to be a brilliant script, "Play Dirty." But in it, Black committed the ultimate Hollywood sin: He killed off the franchise's main character, Gibson's Riggs. "I got a call from Warner Bros.," Greenblatt remembered. "[They said,] 'You can't do this!' "

Black parted ways with Silver on the project. Things went further downhill.