Ever since Shane Black was young, he wanted to make a Parker movie. You can imagine that would be the introduction of the movie about Shane Black’s life, told in the heightened-noir style of the director behind Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys. But it really was his whole childhood, at least, according to Black.
“Donald Westlake was a fixture in my library. And I was a weird, stupid, nerdy kid. I read a book a week since I was 7 years old,” Black tells Inverse.
“There's a Parker per generation.”
For Black, Westlake, who went by the pseudonym of Richard Stark to write the series of Parker novels about the meticulous professional criminal, was “like going to school.”
“Certain directors will say, seeing Steven Spielberg is like going to school,” Black explains. “Same with Westlake. And that was it for me, the chance to work on something that's been such a part of my life since literally 12 years old.”
So getting to direct Play Dirty — the new crime thriller that Black co-writes with Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry — was like fulfilling a lifelong dream for the director. Starring Mark Wahlberg as Parker, Play Dirty is just the latest film to bring the seasoned criminal to the big screen: it’s part of a rich cinematic tradition stretching back to Lee Marvin in 1967’s Point Blank. Black acknowledges that there is pressure to adapt a “vintage” legacy character while modernizing him (“But not a lot because Parker's old-school,” Black assures.)
“Whether it's Lee Marvin in Point Blank or Robert Duvall in The Outfit, or Mel Gibson in Payback, or Jason Statham more recently... There's a Parker per generation,” Black notes wryly. “So this is our iteration of this perennially popular character.”
Inverse spoke with Black about the secret to staging a great Parker heist, why his movies are always set at Christmas, and whether he’ll ever make a Nice Guys 2.
This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.
When I think of Shane Black, I think buddy comedy, I think two-hander. But Play Dirty is obviously more of an ensemble piece. What's the difference between writing and directing for that versus more of a two-hander kind of piece?
Two-handers are fun and easier to control because there are less shots to get. You got five people in the room crossing, and it's like, "Aye yai yai." But that's also a great playground to get into rehearsal. When you get five people bouncing things back and forth, you get to do a sort of conversational reality that, if it works and you have magic people, which we do, magic actors, then they give you this fun world. Remember, they called Once Upon a Time in Hollywood a hang movie, which by the way, they act like that's a thing. “It's a hang movie.” No, no one said hang movie before that. It was not a thing.
You hang out with these people, and you get the benefit of feeling like you've taken a little two-hour ride with them. And when they separate and part at the end and go their separate ways, hopefully there's a feeling like, I hope we do that again soon.
With this cast, you got such a great ensemble of both actors who have worked in the action realm, but also comedic actors like Keegan-Michael Key. You talked about that rapport with the ensemble. Was there a lot of room that you allowed for improvising and just shooting the breeze?
When you get magic people who are just really good at this, you'd be criminal not to allow that sort of sandbox feel, to ignite little flashes of life or sparks that they bring, even in rehearsal before you shoot. So yes, we consult. We try to get as much interplay as we can. You get one by the book. Shoot one that's just what you wrote. That's the script. And then go. We got half an hour. Let's just play.
This movie's also full of really sleek and satisfying heists. To you, what's the secret of staging a great heist?
I'll call out Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry, my two co-writers on this. We're not heist movie fans per se. It's not like you go to our houses; there are posters of all the heist movies. We like thrillers. And so, the trick is to find a heist that's not just a procedural, but also plunges people in over their heads to the point where now you're doing a suspense thriller as well. And it's also the cat and mouse of it where they're not just stealing something. They're up against a nemesis. And Parker is sort of the little guy, right? He's the American entrepreneur doing his job [against] the new-school corporatized criminal. The syndicate thinks they can just flick him and swat him, that he's just one lone psycho, and he has to prove that he's actually a bit more than they bargained for.
“The Christmas thing, it's not like we really wanted it for this because once people start noticing... you say, ‘Oh, let's not do it anymore.’”
It's not a Shane Black movie without Christmas, although this is a New York Christmas rather than an LA one. Do you think that this changes the vibe? I feel like when it's Christmas in LA there's an ironic vibe of, it's a very wintry season, but obviously it's warm and sunny. But then in New York, you get both the wintry vibe as well as of actual Christmas. Is that something that you had fun changing up with?
We did. And by the way, the Christmas thing, it's not like we really wanted it for this because once people start noticing, like you just did, you say, "Oh, let's not do it anymore." But I wanted snow and winter in New York City, which she made happen because we shot in Australia in the summer. But I wanted to do New York winter. And so, OK, we'll do Christmas again. Movies have an obligation to be beautiful. And so, there's a beauty that I think exists in a snowy urban landscape that I had not previously done in any of the various films I've worked on. And we tried this one.
My favorite movie of yours is The Nice Guys, and I'm sure you get this question all the time. I feel like the movie has gotten such a huge following over Blu-ray, streaming, all that kind of thing. People are always asking, "Is there going to be a Nice Guys 2?" I feel like Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe would come back.
Well, look, we have to tick a number of boxes in order to make that happen. Because initially, the movie wasn't really a big hit. It's been discovered, and you're one of the boxes we have to tick. You have to get it out there. So yes, let's build that pressure, because the answer to your question is, I would love to do it. We just need to get someone to invest in a big-budget sequel to a movie that initially didn't perform, and trust, hopefully, that there's pressure out there that people want to see.
I also saw recently that you reunited with Robert Downey Jr. for a Q&A in promotion of this movie. Would you ever consider reuniting with him again in a project on camera?
Yes. That would be a privilege. I know he is busy. He's off doing some, I don't know, some little movie about a guy named Dr. Doom. But once he stops playing around with those little indies, maybe he'll come back, and we can do some work. I would love to work... Robert's one of the magic people we just talked about.
