He recalled his phone conversations with the producer regarding subsequent sequels, which he was always asked to work on: "I'd say to him, 'What is "Lethal Weapon 4"? Why is "Lethal Weapon 4"?' "
Black was disappointed with the handling of his original scripts as well. "What started to happen was, I'd write something very dark and I'd put some jokes in it and people would say, 'Oh, these are funny jokes. Just get rid of all this other stuff and we'll buy it.' They would want to lose the darker stuff. [But] you can't do one without the other," he said. "It's yin and yang."
Black wants it known that his fallow years weren't really close to a decade. Instead, he said that from 1996 to 1999 he took time out, but in 2000, he tried his hand at several scripts. While using an office that was lent to him by a friend, writer-director James L. Brooks, Black experienced false starts, he said.
But while the two were at lunch one day, Brooks suggested he try his hand at something like "Chinatown."
"I always thought there were similarities between ['Chinatown' screenwriter Robert] Towne and Shane just in terms of great screenwriters with a voice all their own, and with a sort of singular agenda," Brooks said.
The suggestion got Black thinking: What if Jack Nicholson's character in "As Good as It Gets" and his Jake Gittes persona in "Chinatown" were the same person? The premise for "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" -- a film populated by Brooks-esque characters ensnared in a plot reminiscent of "Chinatown" -- was crystal clear by dessert.
Black relocated to a cramped office in Westwood -- he needed a space all his own -- and got to work. But the going was still tough.
"I put that blank piece of paper in ... and there was nothing," said the man who always writes a first draft on a typewriter and later transfers it to a computer. "I said to myself, 'If whatever I'm typing happens -- if this becomes a movie and the movie gets made -- you should never be afraid again because this is the worst it can ever get.' "
Longtime friend Anthony Bagarozzi said that he worried during the darkest moments of "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang's" gestation. "He just seemed lost," he said of certain periods when Black was trying to get the film made. "Like sort of, 'What am I going to do if I don't get this going?' "
During the writing, Black tossed countless pages into the trash and battled malaise and anxiety, but at a certain point the clouds began to part.
