The Vanishing

Black kept his insecurities to himself. He continued to open his home for his infamously bacchanalian annual Halloween parties, while dodging questions about what he was working on. ''I'd say to him, 'Shane, why aren't you writing?''' says Harlin. ''I could be completely wrong, but I suspect maybe he secretly did some rewrites during this period. I have no proof whatsoever, but I find it hard to believe he wasn't writing anything.''

When I ask Black about this rumor, he shakes his head, denying it. ''When I tried to write something, I was just afraid. I realized that now that you have this high profile, you're expected to live up to that standard. So if you come in with some s -- -ty little nothin' script, they're going to laugh at you and s -- - all over you. 'Mr. Big So-and-So makes all this money, now his scripts get rejected!' I think I was just scared that I wouldn't be able to think of something good enough. If it didn't get that kind of attention again, I'd be a loser.''

The intense pressure Black was putting on himself snowballed into total writer's block. No one in town could understand what had happened to him, especially the ones who had made so much money off of him in the past. When Black signed with Endeavor in 1995, the talent agency had every reason to believe that he would be a signature -- and productive -- client, steering fat percentage dollars into their wallets. However, as Silver says, ''they never got a penny because he never did anything.''

Silver says he called Black and asked him to write ''Lethal Weapon 3'' and ''Lethal Weapon 4,'' but he always passed. At one point he told Silver he had an idea of how to resurrect the Remo Williams movie franchise, but after several attempts Silver couldn't secure the rights. Black managed to write a ''Twilight Zone''-y short film for the American Film Institute called A.W.O.L., but few ever saw it.

As he had as a boy, Black buried his nose again in ghost stories and comic books like they were some sort of woolly, old security blanket. He even thought about picking up a pencil and drawing Super Pooper again. Knowing Black was blocked, his friend writer-director James L. Brooks (''As Good As It Gets'') urged him to try writing something like the detective novels he loved. Maybe he'd even want to direct it. And that's how Black began ''Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang'' -- an homage to everything he loves about hard-boiled crime fiction with a bitter twist of everything he hates about Hollywood. And for the first time in nearly a decade, Shane Black began to enjoy the thing he was exceptional at again.

''I just pictured that if I didn't get off my ass and write again, I could just slide away and be forgotten,'' Black says. ''Already, I think people think, 'Oh, that's that guy back in the '90s who had some success. What happened to him?'''

As Black finishes this thought, cracking up at how silly and self-involved it sounds, his assistant walks into his trailer and tells him they need him on the set. He takes another Red Bull out of the minifridge and says goodbye. When he gets to the set, he huddles with Robert Downey Jr. while the cameras are being set up. Then the crew settles into silence and Shane Black says the word that his friends have wanted to hear him say for the past eight years. The word that once defined him, then haunted and mocked him. Shane Black says ''Action.''