By Neil Smith BBC News entertainment reporter

Black was one of the highest-paid screenwriters of the 1990s

There was a time, not so long ago, when everything Shane Black touched turned to box office gold.

The Pittsburgh-born writer rocked Hollywood in 1987 when his script for Lethal Weapon was snapped up by producer Joel Silver and turned into a Mel Gibson action blockbuster.

His next screenplay, The Last Boy Scout, fetched a then-unheard of $1.75m (�986,000) - topped a few years later when his Long Kiss Goodnight script sold for more than $2m (�1.1m).

In the screenwriting business, only Joe Eszterhas - whose Basic Instinct script fetched $3m (�1.6m) in 1990 - earned more.

But being the toast of Tinseltown was not all it was cracked up to be, as the burly 43-year-old told the BBC News website during a recent visit to London Film Festival.

I was getting attention for all the wrong reasons Shane Black

"People would act like Joe Eszterhas and I were duking it out [battling] for this king-of-the-hill cash prize," he said.

"I was getting attention for all the wrong reasons, and it left a very bad taste in my mouth.

"It didn't feel like fun anymore. And when it stops being fun, it's time to take a step back."

'Humbling'

And that is what Black did by taking a self-imposed, eight-year hiatus from the movie industry.

"I went out of my way to get out of the spotlight and find a place where I was a little more invisible."

Downey Jr (r) plays a crook turned detective in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

Hollywood, though, can be a fickle beast, as he discovered when he tried to find backing for his new film, the comedy thriller Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.

To his horror, he realised his name did not carry the same cachet that it used to.

"It was very humbling," he explained. "I was used to getting scripts read the same day I turned them in.

"Now weeks would go by and people still hadn't got round to reading it."

It did not help that Black was determined to direct the film himself, or that the script - a film noir pastiche starring Robert Downey Jr as a reluctant gumshoe - featured a gay character (played by Val Kilmer) in a leading role.

"Everyone was very reluctant," he told the BBC News website. "I'll go further: everyone hated it.

"I was getting doors slammed in my face all across town."

'Character-driven'

Fortunately Black had an ally powerful enough to get this unconventional project made - producer Joel Silver.

"I knew he would like the script and he did. He got the money, shepherded the project and stuck with it to the very end."

Made in 1987, the original Lethal Weapon spawned three sequels

A hit with audiences at Cannes, Toronto and London, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang could mark a new beginning for both Black and Downey Jr.

But though its director has moved on from the action-packed crowd-pleasers that made his name, he does not dismiss the genre out of hand.

"I don't think people are finished seeing action movies; I just think they're fed up with action movies that are devoid of character and narrative.

"Hopefully it will drift back to the realm of the thriller movie, which is something I feel more comfortable with and which America will ultimately be more satisfied by.

"If anything, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is a commercial for that old-style kind of film-making," he continued.