Really, it’s all Three Days Of The Condor’s fault. That’s the film that convinced a young, impressionable Shane Black that Christmas could be a suitably dramatic, sometimes ironic, sometimes sincere and heartfelt, backdrop for a thriller. “In it, Christmas played a huge part. It was set against the backdrop of people shopping, Christmas carols are blaring, there’s snow,” says Black, talking exclusively to Empire. “And even the pause at the end where Redford walks outside with the hitman, and the guy says, ‘Can I give you a ride?’ This is a guy who was about to kill him, or someone else. And it really felt appropriate to me that Christmas was the backdrop for that. It struck a spark, to take a holiday and make it not just a backdrop but a character itself.”
That, along with an intriguing grasp of the true meaning of Christmas, has resonated throughout Black’s career as a writer and director, leading to some of the most memorable – and action-packed – Christmas movies of all time. So, when we catch up with him on Zoom, it seems only fitting to ask him about A Very Shane Black Christmas. “You can wield Christmas in so many different ways,” he says. “It can be used as this unifier, where you see the beauty of a city decked out in Christmas splendour, or you can use it as this bleak landscape against which those same festive decorations seem to belie something else, when the streets are deserted, the wind is blowing, and it feels like you’re the last person on Earth staring in at the happy family having their dinner.”
As for what he’s doing this Christmas? “It’s seeing my mom briefly and then back to the drawing board,” he says. He’s currently working on the screenplay for what he hopes will be his next film, Parker, which could reunite him with Robert Downey Jr. yet again, and about which he can say nothing at this stage. Yet somehow, the author of some of the drollest, most subversive Christmas movies of the modern era spending his time writing on Christmas Day is none more Black. Have a very merry Shane Black Christmas, everyone.
Lethal Weapon
The screenplay that turned Shane Black into Shane Black. Before we descend into any tedious arguments a la Die Hard, Lethal Weapon is absolutely a Christmas movie right from the off, starting with a scene set in a Christmas tree lot (and featuring Blackie Dammett, aka the father of Red Hot Chilli Peppers frontman, Anthony Kiedis). But Black always intended it to be a Christmas movie with a difference…
“It was interesting, the idea of Christmas in LA. You have to find little nuggets of Christmas in Los Angeles. It’s an ironic counterpoint to this plot about people who are savaging the suburban way of life. And it takes a cowboy to save the day, in this case the Frankenstein from Vietnam, who was shunned and reviled. Now they realise there is still a threat, violence never sleeps and they have to go back to the Frankenstein they so reviled and say, here we are at Christmas and there’s evil afoot and we need you to come out of your retirement. Go nuts and save Christmas, save our ability to believe that we’re safe and secure behind our windows with our Christmas dinners. But I didn’t really think about it too much at the time — yeah, it’s nice, it’s Christmas. But afterwards, when [Richard] Donner got it on its feet, it was so powerful to see Hollywood Boulevard decked out for Christmas, and [Mel Gibson’s Martin Riggs] running barefoot down the street with a machine gun.”
The Long Kiss Goodnight
The screenplay that made Black the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood history (at the time), The Long Kiss Goodnight is his most openly Christmassy movie, following master-assassin-turned-loving-housewife-turned-master-assassin-again Geena Davis and sardonic private dick Samuel L. Jackson on a nightmarish, snow-covered odyssey that includes carollers being held at gunpoint, Christmas songs aplenty, and a finale in which Davis uses a bunch of Christmas lights to take out the bad guy.
“I love the snow. I love frozen landscapes, the hunkered down feel that it gives to a city in the course of a story. And I wanted to do something in the snow. That one felt especially good, as it’s about a housewife who isn’t really a housewife, who’s let go of her past. There’s an element of It’s A Wonderful Life, where she’s living out this life, and she had to forget that she’s a killer in order to do it. Christmas is the perfect time for that suburban housewife, it’s the perfect fantasy to pursue. ‘What if I was just someone making Christmas cookies? What if I was buying gifts instead of knives and guns?’ At the end, to me – and we don’t really get into the town that much in the movie – she’s saving Whoville from this explosion that’s going to destroy it. In the script, when there was the big explosion at the end, we had a Christmas parade and one of the decorations was Santa on a sleigh, which gets flung in the air by the explosion, and the kids see it flying across the sky with dead Santa. That was, I think, a little too whimsical.”
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Black’s directorial debut, and the film that set Robert Downey Jr. on the road to becoming Jon Favreau’s first choice to play Tony Stark, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is another LA Christmas movie – and while the season isn’t integral to the plot, it does kick off with Downey’s Harry Lockhart trying to steal the year’s hottest Christmas toy. And, along the way, gives us a debauched Christmas party, and Michelle Monaghan becoming instantly iconic in a Santa outfit.
“I really wanted to set it at Christmas. At the time, I wasn’t even thinking about it. It seemed natural, because I hadn’t done a film at that time for quite some years. And there was no hesitation because I went with Joel Silver, and we’d already done a Christmas movie together with Lethal Weapon. Even Last Action Hero was a Christmas movie. So it was, why not? And Christmas helped a lot. The idea of this lonely guy in a brand new city at Christmas, wandering. It’s a bizarre, ironic take on Christmas in LA. It’s not Christmassy at all, except it’s, ‘There are miracles to find if you look closely enough for them’. Harry even says, ‘Last Christmas, we kind of changed the world’, meaning ‘We actually did something at Christmas that a) mattered and b) was impossible.’ It was one of my favourite things to work on.”
Iron Man 3
By now very aware of his reputation and the expectation that ‘A Shane Black Movie’ also means ‘A Christmas Movie’, Black at first had no intention of making his MCU movie (and reunion with Robert Downey Jr.) jingle all the way. Luckily, he had a Claus in his contract. No, only kidding — he relented after co-writer Drew Pearce lobbied hard to turn Iron Man 3 into a Christmas movie. The result is one of the finest, and funniest, Marvel movies, with Tony Stark eventually giving into the spirit of Christmas by killing a bunch of henchmen with improvised weapons including an exploding bauble. Merry Starkmas, everyone.
“I didn’t want Christmas to feel like a gimmick, or something that was predictable, or ostentatious on my part. It started out as fun, and as soon as people noticed it, it stopped being fun. But I acquiesced largely because of the Christmas Carol aspect of it. Tony loses his support, loses his base, he’s adrift in Mid-America. And he’s not going to be visited by ghosts, but he’s certainly going to be in the middle of a reckoning, or a reconciliation, where he has to take stock, figure out what’s troubling him, and how he’s going to continue. It worked out well for the ending. The coda is basically him at Christmas, giving a gift to his fiancee, and giving a gift to a little kid who helped him. And there’s a Christmas miracle when Jon Favreau’s character comes out of a coma. There’s something about it, where you can get dark and dark and dark, as harsh as you want, and then summon up a little Christmas, and it gives you that pleasant out that you’re looking for.”
The Nice Guys
Okay, The Nice Guys isn’t a Christmas movie at all, with Black finally moving away from the mistletoe millstone around his neck. (The Predator isn’t set at Christmas either.) Until it is, when in a brief coda at the end, we see Holland March (Ryan Gosling) and Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) reunite at Christmas. And we know it’s Christmas thanks to the trees and decorations all around. Otherwise, it isn’t dwelt upon.
“There’s an element of time having gone by – that something happens, and time passes, and we pick them up again at Christmas, four months or five months on, and see what the celebration looks like. And the celebration is particularly sour in that case, but they still manage to be happy at the end and have a drink together. So it’ll be a good Christmas despite all that.”