Shane Black (born December 16, 1961)[1] is an American filmmaker and actor who has written such films as Lethal Weapon, The Monster Squad, The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero, and The Long Kiss Goodnight.

His father was in the printing business,[1] and helped Black develop his interest in hardboiled fiction, including the works of Mickey Spillane and the Matt Helm series.

[5] He grew up in the suburbs of Lower Burrell and Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and later moved to Fullerton, California, during his sophomore year of high school.

[7] During his senior year, he decided to make a living in the film industry once his classmate, Fred Dekker, showed him a science fiction script he did for an assignment.

[8] After graduating, Black worked as a typist for a temp agency, a data entry clerk for the 1984 Summer Olympics and an usher in a Westwood movie theater.

Eventually he asked for financial support of his parents during the six-month development of a script, The Shadow Company, a supernatural thriller set in Vietnam.

[10][11][12] Feeling burned out and having conflicts with the studio, Black left the project after six months, earning $125,000 out of a $250,000 payment split with Murphy, for his work.

[20] Black hired his friend Steven Wilder Striegel for a minor, un-auditioned role in The Predator (as well as, previously, Iron Man 3 and The Nice Guys).

Striegel spent six months in prison in 2010, having pleaded guilty to risk of injury to a child and enticing a minor by computer after he had attempted to lure a 14-year-old girl into a sexual relationship via email.

He was briefly attached by Warner Bros. in 2011 to direct a live-action American adaptation of the Japanese supernatural-thriller manga series Death Note, bringing his collaborators Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry to write the screenplay, replacing Charley and Vlas Parlapanides as the project's previous screenwriters.

[citation needed] Black has a recognizable writing style characterized by stories in which two main characters become friends, problematic protagonists who become better human beings at the end of the narrative,[26] and trade witty dialogue, featuring labyrinthine crime plots, often set during Christmas time.

The first time I noticed it was Three Days of the Condor, the Sydney Pollack film, where Christmas in the background adds this really odd, chilling counterpoint to the espionage plot.

One night, on Christmas Eve, I walked past a Mexican lunch wagon serving tacos, and I saw this little string, and on it was a little broken plastic figurine, with a light bulb inside it, of the Virgin Mary.