A Quote by Shane Black
I wrote all the time, but the idea of doing it professionally seemed like pie in the sky. Who gets paid to write? I grew up in Pittsburgh, so it wasn't really a notion that a lot of people pursue.
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I just felt like actors - I watched a lot of 'SNL,' and those guys just seemed like they were superheroes - that that wasn't a reality for anyone other than people with superhuman strength. So, I mean, I acted a little bit in high school, but the idea of doing it professionally was just never really an option.
I wrote [Collateral Beauty] on my own. I didn't get paid to write it. I didn't sell it as a pitch. It was an idea I had that I really, really felt needed to be in script form before showing it to anyone in the industry because of the uniqueness of the idea, and the weirdness of the idea, to be frank.
I wrote as a teenager, and once I started acting, you know, you're learning lines, you're doing other people's words, it takes up a lot of time. Especially if you're dedicated to what you're doing, you're trying to do a decent job at it. But I would have said to myself, "Write more, please."
I grew up with a lot of people whose whole prime mover was dad rage. I never really had it - it always seemed so empty. It always seemed to be masking something else, which was really their own lack of initiative.
I grew up in a Navy family, and like most service families, we traveled a lot and moved a lot. I grew up on both coasts and in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., in Rockville, Maryland, and have had a great time doing it.
Pittsburgh is an underdog city because it's been in a recession for a really long time, since the steel industry collapsed, so it has this underdog mentality. Yeah, there are a lot of people who are conservative, but I also think they want to rally around their Pittsburgh people.
We had no idea what we were in for when we started Blue Sky. We just had an idea of what we wanted to do. When we got to a point where it seemed impossible, we just kept doing it. After 18 years, we have a lot of it done.
You have to resign yourself to the fact that you waste a lot of trees before you write anything you really like, and that's just the way it is. It's like learning an instrument, you've got to be prepared for hitting wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot, cause I wrote an awful lot before I wrote anything I was really happy with. And read a lot. Reading really helps. Read anything you can get your hands on.
If I grew up with a lot of money, where everything was just handed to me, I feel like those are the people that, a lot of time, grow up to do worse things. Or they'll start in a business really young, like eight or something, through all their schooling.
I've never done anything but what I wanted to do with my life. I don't think too many people can say that. I wrote the songs I wanted to write, for me. I had no idea that 'American Pie' would relate to anybody.
Why was I in a basement saying, "I'm alone here," wielding a lead pipe and crowbars? It was like I was doing the Vietnam War. It was like I was being America. If I put a blindfold on, I can't see you as people, which seemed to be what the United States was doing. I mean, it was important for people in my generation, because I grew up in the '40s, at a time when America was supposedly the hero nation. America saved Europe. And, some years later, we realized, America is a criminal.
I grew up in Pittsburgh, where you couldn't even see the noon sun in the sky, and that whole city was cleaned up without the federal government needing to be involved. I think we would have been much better served from the start if people would have better understood the principles of private property.
The idea of growing up in the South and being a man is an interesting thing; there's a lot masculinity involved, with hunting, fishing, and playing sports that rural people take pride in, but at the same time, I grew up really not wanting to hate anybody.
I've been singing for a really long time and I love a lot of genres, but country just seemed like the best fit. The people in that genre are just so nice and welcoming. And that seemed so appealing. Also my voice fit it and seemed like the way to go.
You know what I'm realizing? I always love a place if I like the movie I'm doing there. I've heard people say, 'I hate Pittsburgh,' and I'm like, 'I love Pittsburgh so much!' I loved what I was doing there, and I loved Austin for the same reason.
I mean, I've always felt like a lot of people's misconceptions of me have to do with how I grew up. I grew up poor, and I grew up rich. I think some people who have never met me have a misconception that when I was living with my father when he was successful, that I was somehow adversely affected by his success or the money he had and was making at the time.
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