Writing “Lethal Weapon”
It was a different time and spec scripts still sold. So I would go home and lock the door and I would do nothing but fret and moan and piss and say to myself, “I’m a fraud, I can’t write.” And eventually I’d write “The End” and I’d say, “This is shit.” In fact, “Lethal Weapon,” halfway through, I hated it so much I threw it in the trash. And then I was almost in tears a week later. I was so despondent, I’d go, “What do I do? Do I start over? I’m not a writer, I guess.” And then I’d just pull “Lethal Weapon” out and it’s either jump out the window or finish this. So why not take it out of the trash and give it a shot? And eventually it became something that attracted a lot of attention.
But it was in the trash. I have the initial draft. I sold it, actually, in an auction. It’s covered in lettuce and coffee grounds. ‘Cause back then I typed [on a typewriter] and if you wanted to make a change to your work, you’d have to re-type the page or get a cartridge that you plugged in, that had white on it, that would type it over. Basically so, out of the trash and into a career.
The Pitch For “Lethal Weapon 5”
I wrote a 62-page treatment with my friend Chuck for “Lethal Weapon 5” that would’ve been, I think, a very good movie. It was interesting. It was essentially an older Riggs and Murtagh in New York City during the worst blizzard in east coast history, fighting a team of expert Blackwater guys from Afghanistan that’s smuggling antiquities. And we had a young character that actually counter-pointed them. But I didn’t wanna do what people do when they’re trying to transition which is, they sorta put the two older guys in the movie, but really it’s about their son! And he’s gonna take over and we’re gonna do a spinoff. Fuck that: If they’re gonna be in the movie, they’re gonna be in the movie — I don’t care how old they are.
Defending Mel Gibson
Mel Gibson didn’t know if he wanted to do [“Lethal Weapon 5”] or not. There was negotiations and some things were happening with Mel. I don’t believe anybody should be held accountable for anything they say while drunk. If you say it sober, that’s one thing, but if you’re drunk, I mean, I would say the most heinous things to you. But unfortunately, what he said while drunk was enough to yank him from projects. I worked on “The Cold Warrior,” and that was with Mel. So I lost both of those [films].
[Black also strenuously defended Gibson on the Happy Sad Confused Podcast. — read his comments here]
The Take On “Doc Savage”
Basically, Doc is a perfect man, a physically perfect, mentally adept guy trained from birth to be a soldier, a scientist, and everything that a human being can achieve. The only problem is he has no social skills whatsoever to the point of even potentially being autistic in his actions. So you have a guy who’s a superhero, but he’s not smooth. He’d been told never to get involved with women. So he doesn’t grab the girl at the end of the killing spree. If anything, he’s obsessed with how, during the killing spree, he took too long or his leg was bent. It’s that sorta “learning to become human again” was our take.
Not Writing The Finished Product Of “Lethal Weapon 2”
It was clear, at the end of our draft [co-written with friend Warren Murphy] — which was pretty melancholy — that wasn’t really where [the studio] wanted to go. But there’s a lot of elements that are [ours] in “Lethal Weapon 2” — we still received a “story by” credit. I recognized things when I watched “Lethal Weapon 2” that was in the script that we wrote, but the tone is totally different. For instance, there’s something that I’d never do in a movie. There’s a car that crashes and a surfboard that comes off the top, flies through the air, kills a guy, and Mel Gibson says, “Total wipeout.” I would never do that. That’s just a dumb joke.
And I don’t think it was the studio, I think [director Richard] Donner was just a cheerful guy. He likes comedy. I mean, look at how many rules they broke in terms of writing and structure. There’s a scene in that movie where Joe Pesci says, “They fuck you at the drive-thru! They fuck you at the drive-thru, they left out my ketchup…” It has nothing to do with any part of the story. They could lift it and no one would ever know it. But they did it as an improv and that’s what they wanted to do. Just get them together and let the guys be guys and have fun, and I respect that because Donner did it very well, it was a very successful movie. It’s just not the kind of thing that I really do.
His Obsession With Setting Films During Christmas
The first time I saw Christmas used in a movie, as a backdrop, was “Three Days Of The Condor,” the Sydney Pollack film. And it just struck me [that] against the very sort of tense, serious events of being chased and pursued in New York, to just have carolers on the corner in the background singing and this muted sort of joy.
I realized that snow and Christmas provide this sort of odd hush; it’s very retrospective. It’s a very reflective time, Christmas, where you sorta look at where your life has been, how you got to where you are. And the regrets come out. If you’re lonely, you tend to be lonelier on Christmas. If you’re sad, you’re morose. If you’re standing in the middle of the night, on a street corner, just staring at little decorations like that with no one around, it sums up loneliness, but it also sums up peacefulness.