SHANE BLACK IS BACK.

Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer aren't the only Hollywood bad boys trying to rehabilitate their images with ``Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,'' the acclaimed noir comedy.

Writer-director Shane Black hopes that his lovingly crafted tribute to the hard-boiled literature of Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and the like will earn critical forgiveness for the extravagant paydays of his action-movie scripts. His credits include ``Lethal Weapon,'' ``The Last Boy Scout'' and ``The Long Kiss Goodnight.''

``It is kind of the anti-action movie,'' Black, 43, says of his maiden directing effort. ``I tried to put all of the tough-guy stuff on its ear. The violence in it is very awkward, people are stumbling, the wrong person shoots the bad guy. And actually, the guy who is tough, knows how to kick down the door and rescue everybody, happens to be gay.

``It's interesting to me to take everything I love about tough-guy movies and play with those elements. And I can only do that because I have such a genuine love for the material in the first place. I hope the fondness shows through.''

Though he claims to dislike the kind of witless modern action movies he helped initiate, Black understands why some would be skeptical about him generating a self-satirizing, character-based thriller with oodles of snappy dialogue.

``Because I made so much money on those spec scripts I sold,'' says Black (``Boy Scout'' earned him a precedent-setting $1.75 million; ``Kiss Goodnight'' broke that record when it went for $2 mil), ``I think there's an image. And I fall into it myself. If I read about some young guy making a ton of money directing action pictures, I think, 'What a jerk, probably some playboy laughing all the way to the bank.' The truth is, I was sort of a recluse.''

Indeed, Black grew up a loner, voraciously reading trashy novels in Pittsburgh before he wrote his way out of UCLA's theater department. It's been almost a decade since a script he's generated has been produced. Most of that time was spent trying to write a romantic comedy, many elements of which made their way into ``Kiss Kiss.''

As for directing, Black says that once he learned to function on only a few hours' sleep per night, it came pretty naturally.

``It's because I study what I like,'' says Black, who cites '70s detective films such as ``Dirty Harry'' and ``Night Moves'' as primary inspirations. ``I don't remember the day it was, exactly, when I realized that I could do this. The film was proceeding, and I realized that the choices I was making were functioning correctly. They were looking well in dailies and I knew they would cut together, and I was working with the actors and we were all chummy.

``It was a big sigh of relief.''

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