Steven Knight famous quotes

I like to create a character where you believe, deep down, that they don't really care if they live or die. That's very liberating for the character because, if the character is prepared to die, then they can do anything. It's impossible to stop them.
-- Steven Knight

#Believe #Character #Care

When you're watching, I find two things happen. You either watch a film and it's really good and then you think, "Why can't I do that?" Or you watch a film and it's not good, and you think, "Why am I doing this?" So either way, it feels like being at work.
-- Steven Knight

#Thinking #Two #Watches

You work, especially in the movie business more than in TV, but you have an environment where people feel obliged to have an input because that's what they do, and I think sometimes it can clutter things up and make things more problematic.
-- Steven Knight

#Thinking #People #Input

Sometimes you take something because it's an offer and it's big and it's good money and you have to absolutely respect that process, because it's not easier.
-- Steven Knight

#Sometimes #Easier #Process

No screenplay is possible, unless you get some attachment from somebody who's going to get it made.
-- Steven Knight

#Attachment #Made #Screenplays

There's more to come. Series 4 [of Peaky Blinders] is coming soon. But I'm proud of making my hometown, which is considered to be completely unfashionable, slightly fashionable. People actually know where it is now.
-- Steven Knight

#People #Proud #Hometown

I think people are drawn to characters that break the rules. I think there is something about a good person doing bad things for what they consider to be a good reason. Then the battle is on to almost prove to the audience that it's justified. How far can you go with that? How far can that character go before people won't accept it? Trying to walk to edge of that line is a challenge.
-- Steven Knight

#Character #Thinking #People

It's always good to have a world that people don't know about - a world that hasn't yet been done. It's like treading on fresh snow. You're the first one there.
-- Steven Knight

#People #Snow #Done

I've realized that the only thing I'm interested in is the performance. If the performance is right, then I'm happy. You offer up the dialogue and then the performance comes around.
-- Steven Knight

#Dialogue #Performances #Offers

There's lots of different ways of writing stuff and lots of different mindsets to have, but I think when it's your own creation, it's more pleasurable because you have total control.
-- Steven Knight

#Writing #Thinking #Different

I always thought it would never happen. And then, it became possible. In between commissions, I wrote it as an original screenplay [Allied].
-- Steven Knight

#Screenplays #Happens #Originals

[2015] it's a time that there's a clash of ideologies, similar to the Cold War. I think that a story like this has been waiting to be told, and I think it's a fresh look at the whole earth-shattering business of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
-- Steven Knight

#War #Thinking #Waiting

True stories are always good because they're so odd, and so unlikely.
-- Steven Knight

#Stories #Odd #Unlikely

I spoke to Tom's [Hardy] manager and said, "While we're talking about Taboo, do you mind if I also mention this film project that I've got, which is called Locke, and I need Tom to play the lead." And we spoke about both in that meeting and in the end the deal was that I would do Taboo if he did Locke and vice versa.
-- Steven Knight

#Talking #Play #Mind

Whenever I see a cut of a film and something is gone, I don't notice it unless it obviously should have been kept.
-- Steven Knight

#Cutting #Should Have #Gone

In terms of how [Allied] looks, it's fantastic and much better than I had hoped because it's so lush and so beautifully executed.
-- Steven Knight

#Looks #Fantastic #Term

I think that it's not a bad thing to not be too versed in the vocabulary of cinema, because you start to think that certain things are allowed and not allowed.
-- Steven Knight

#Thinking #Vocabulary #Cinema

The story [of Allied] stayed with me, like a stray dog outside the office, waiting.
-- Steven Knight

#Dog #Office #Waiting

I was 21, when I heard the story that inspired this [thriller Allied], and I wasn't even a screenwriter then.
-- Steven Knight

#Stories #Inspired #Thrillers

The story [of Allied ] itself is the story I wrote, and that's what's great about Bob [Zemeckis ]. You have meetings, but it's meetings for clarity, not to change what they're saying or doing. He takes what's on the page and executes it so brilliantly.
-- Steven Knight

#Pages #Stories #Bob

The plan is that there would be three seasons [in Taboo], and, as with Peaky Blinders, I have had a destination in mind from the beginning, because I think it helps as a writer. The destination in mind is that James Keziah Delaney sets foot on Nootka Sound. But that's a long way off.
-- Steven Knight

#Thinking #Feet #Long

I relish the eight-hour format of a single season because it gives you time to do that.
-- Steven Knight

#Eight #Giving #Hours

[The Girl in the Spider's Web] can't be anything other than a sequel, but a couple of books have been skipped, so it is different, in that sense. It's really taking a very strong central character and thinking, how do you execute this? It's quite different.
-- Steven Knight

#Girl #Strong #Couple

There [in Allied] were things that were written that were cut, and things that were shot that were cut, but if the film works, they are erased from memory.
-- Steven Knight

#Memories #Cutting #Film

There were three options [in Allied], which were for [Bred Pitt] to shoot [Marion Cotillard], for them to escape, or for her to pull the trigger, which is a heroic act to spare him. When I was thinking about how it would end, a long time ago, I think I tried each of them to see, but two of them did not work.
-- Steven Knight

#Thinking #Two #Long

I wouldn't put myself in that bracket, but it's one of those things. I think what helps is that we [with Tom Hardey] don't socialize, we don't really know each other, we purely work together.
-- Steven Knight

#Thinking #Working Together #Helping

I'm very, very excited because I'm just completing Episode 6 of Series 4 [of Peaky Blinders], which again I think is the best yet. And I'm loving it and it's not like work, it's not like a labor, I love doing it, and the boys are coming back and they're loving the scripts.
-- Steven Knight

#Boys #Thinking #Scripts

I wanted to take a damaged individual in a damaged society with damaged relationships between nations and take a look at how this individual survives amongst them, and that for me as a writer is the connection that you needed to get inside the skin of the main character and wonder how he's going to cope with all this.
-- Steven Knight

#Character #Skins #Connections

I don't think that jealousy and love and hate and anger and all those things have changed in the past 200 years - people just express themselves differently.
-- Steven Knight

#Hate #Past #Thinking

[Allied] meant to be a film that's a bit different. It's roots are in the '40s and '50s, and that sort of filmmaking style.
-- Steven Knight

#Roots #Style #Different

Just the idea that someone is married and they've got a kid, and he reports for work one morning and his boss says, "You're wife is a spy. Shoot her." In the real story, he just went back and did it, which would have been a short film. Therefore, I had to spend some time exploring what you would do.
-- Steven Knight

#Morning #Real #Kids

I love cooking and kitchens.It's just a great world, and I wanted to explore it. You see the façade, the outside, the public part, and then you just walk through one door marked "Staff Only" and you're in a different universe.
-- Steven Knight

#Different Universes #Doors #Cooking

When I was probably about 10 or 11, and I found it was simply something I could do. When you're at school and you do something and you get praised for it, you think, "Oh, right, well I'll do that." From then on, I always thought I'd be a writer. I thought novels at first, and then I sort of naturally drifted into TV.
-- Steven Knight

#School #Thinking #Firsts

I'm very bad at watching anything. I'm bad at going to theaters; I can't watch my own stuff; I watch a lot of sports.
-- Steven Knight

#Sports #Watches #Stuff

If you've read something brilliant, it's good. It's good to look out the window and see what's going on in the world.
-- Steven Knight

#Looks #World #Brilliant

Sometimes if you're a director, you want to believe that you're great and capable at all aspects - the technical side, the lights, everything - but I'm not.
-- Steven Knight

#Believe #Light #Directors

With any period piece I think the thing to do is forget that it's not contemporary when you're writing and to have the characters feel as much as possible like characters that you would know.
-- Steven Knight

#Writing #Character #Thinking

When Brad [Pitt] responded [to Allied], suddenly what was impossible became possible, which was great. But along the way, whenever I told the story, it had an affect on people. At its core, this was an effective story.
-- Steven Knight

#People #Way #Stories

[Allied] got the attention of (director) Bob Zemeckis and Marion Cotillard. I'm glad I waited. If it had been made 15 years before, who knows how it would have looked, but it's got the best possible cast, director and everything. It's been fantastic. It was worth waiting.
-- Steven Knight

#Years #Waiting #Attention

The time came where I was able to write an original screenplay [Allied], and it would be read and noticed. I had a meeting with Brad [Pitt], just around the time that he was making World War Z. I basically told him the story and said, "This is what I want to do," and he really responded, so that helped me put the thing together and write it.
-- Steven Knight

#War #Writing #Together

The story of James Delaney is also someone who very deliberately presents himself as an individual and plays nations against each other, plays the East India against the Crown, all of those sort of overwhelming concepts that ran the world at the time.
-- Steven Knight

#Play #India #East

A creative person can suddenly realize it's not 90 minutes. They haven't got to do three acts, they haven't got to do the arc, but they can do other things. I think just as novellas turned into novels, I think that television series can begin to have that depth.
-- Steven Knight

#Thinking #Creative #Depth

I think the East India Company represents what we would think of as a very modern approach to the world where everything was counted, every penny was counted.
-- Steven Knight

#Thinking #India #East

East India Company were a huge multinational that had the added impetus that they felt they were spreading Christian civilization around the world - so they were pretty free to do anything they wanted.
-- Steven Knight

#Christian #Civilization #India

There's something about the evolution of television where it evolved from to the things that we're now watching and loving. It evolved from film writers, film actors, and I think gradually people are easing themselves into the amount of time they have.
-- Steven Knight

#Thinking #People #Actors

East India Company weren't an evil organization that went around deliberately oppressing people, but they were driven by profit, and how familiar is that now?
-- Steven Knight

#Organization #People #Evil

James Delaney as an individual is sort of like a grain of sand in an oyster who is irritating all of them. But for me he's a creature of the time, like the industrialists who started the Industrial Revolution who extricated themselves from their class and their background
-- Steven Knight

#Oysters #Class #Revolution

I think once those friendships, if you use that as an analogy, the friendships between the audience and the character is established, then you can start to take liberties. I believe that as this unfolds people will find the time invested worthwhile.
-- Steven Knight

#Believe #Character #Thinking

I'm not suggesting that ours [series] is unique in that, but they can begin to have that depth, that gravity, they can spend some time, so it's a bit more like reading a good novel, if you like.
-- Steven Knight

#Reading #Unique #Depth

What happened was I was invited to meet Tom [Hardy] to discuss a project that he had in his mind about an adventurer who returns to England from Africa with secrets and with a history, and the original idea was set some 80 years later than it is now. But in the conversation I really took to the idea and I'd wanted for a while to set something in 1830 and 1840 in London, so it struck a chord.
-- Steven Knight

#Years #Ideas #Secret

I think that helps because there has been no formality of friendship, the politeness of friendship, so we can just work directly on the work that's ahead of us [with Tom Hardey].
-- Steven Knight

#Thinking #Helping #Politeness

I am someone who thinks that if you've got an actor like that who wants to perform your work, then you should do it, and hopefully Tom [Hardey] likes to do the work that I do, so long may it continue.
-- Steven Knight

#Thinking #Long #Actors

[Taboo] has been exactly the same as working with the BBC in that creatively they do that precious thing which is to only make a comment when a comment needs to be made.
-- Steven Knight

#Needs #Made #Precious Things

With FX in particular, they've been fantastic and were really hands off. I mean, it helps that you've got Ridley Scott on your side.
-- Steven Knight

#Mean #Hands #Your Side

In other words, when you have someone [like Ridley Scott] with that authority, then you tend to be left alone. But they were good and they're really good people, and I'm a big champion of the BBC and I think that like minds find each other and I think that FX and BBC is a perfect match.
-- Steven Knight

#Thinking #People #Perfect

I find the best way to make things real is to just put two characters into a space and let them talk to each other in the way that they would talk to each other, and then see what they would say. I know it sounds weird, but that leads the plot and takes you in another direction.
-- Steven Knight

#Real #Character #Two

I'm always interested in characters who are closed down, but who open up when they choose to, rather than when they're obliged to. I think that's a very appealing thing, for an audience and just in life. I like the idea that something will say nothing, and then get straight to the point. That feels like how your heroes should be.
-- Steven Knight

#Hero #Character #Thinking

There was an unbelievable amount of animosity in that war [for America Independence] which people have forgotten, which was still around 50 years later.
-- Steven Knight

#War #Years #America

I think certain periods of history don't get dealt with because I think historians, and it's their job, but they look back and look for patterns. They look for sequences and they look for reasons, and certain periods of history don't fit with the general pattern of 1500 to the 20th century, during which there's the creation of the United States. At this time of 1814, two nations who would eventually become close allies were at war with each other, so it doesn't quite fit.
-- Steven Knight

#Jobs #War #Thinking

I think it creates so many more opportunities and pitfalls in that you are treading on fresh snow, so you're in a new place.
-- Steven Knight

#Opportunity #Thinking #Snow

You know that when you suggest something on the page, it's going to be there, plus more. It's a great luxury to know that you don't have to push it. You just lay it out, and it will be there.
-- Steven Knight

#Luxury #Pages #Plus

It's such a gift when you know who you're writing for and you know that that actor is capable of so much that you can relax a bit.
-- Steven Knight

#Writing #Relax #Actors

Expect the unexpected, is what I'd say about Taboo. It's different. I don't think you've seen anything like it. It's getting incredible responses, so fingers crossed.
-- Steven Knight

#Thinking #Different #Unexpected

What I wanted to do [in Allied] was get two characters who fall in love for real, across the barricade, and then it transcends the war.
-- Steven Knight

#Falling In Love #Real #War

It has to be an actress like Marion Cotillard [in Allied] because there are so many levels to it. It's set in the Second World War, when lots of people were doing things that, outside of a war, you wouldn't do, like killing and dropping bombs. She's doing things that one wouldn't approve of, but it's war.
-- Steven Knight

#War #People #Bombs

It's great that the story [Allied] is set in the '40s because the '40s feel to it is completely appropriate.
-- Steven Knight

#Stories #Feels #Appropriate

It felt [at the Allied set] like, "At last, I'm in Hollywood," even though I was in West London. It was like, "This is how a film should be made." It was beautiful.
-- Steven Knight

#Beautiful #London #Lasts

I visited the set [of Allied] a few times, and it was a great set to visit. A lot of it was in West London, in an old Gillette factory. You'd go into the factory through the security, and then there were a lot of camels and goats. Most sets are really dull, but this was fantastic.
-- Steven Knight

#London #West #Camels

There [in Allied] was depicting London in the war, as well, and doing that in a way where you see something that you don't normally see, which is how hedonistic it was. In reality, that's what was going on. But, all of it worked.
-- Steven Knight

#War #Reality #London

I didn't direct [the Taboo episodes]. I wrote all of them.
-- Steven Knight

#Episodes #Taboo #Direct

I've been writing so much. And what happens with TV is that they split [Taboo] into two blocks, so you get a director that does four and another director that does another four. You commit yourself to seven days a week, for 12 or 13 hour days for a long time. I couldn't really do that.
-- Steven Knight

#Block #Writing #Two

A commission and an original are two different things, and both have their virtues and vices. A commission is a bit more collaborative, in that you outline the story that you think should be told, and then you write it.
-- Steven Knight

#Writing #Thinking #Two

Snoop [Dog] said [Peaky Blinders] reminded him of how he got involved with gang culture. It's always fantastically flattering when I see people dress like that and take on the look.
-- Steven Knight

#Dog #People #Dresses

I've spent three hours with Snoop Dogg, talking about how he loved [Peaky Blinders series]. And David Bowie loved it. The late Leonard Cohen was a fan. It struck a chord with various people that I didn't think it would.
-- Steven Knight

#Thinking #Talking #People

Suddenly, after years of television being the poor relation and film being everything, it now feels like film is a conjuring trick. It's like, "Oh, my god, how are you going to do that in 90 minutes, as opposed to eight hours?! I've got so little time to do this!" It becomes an art form, in itself. Doing both helps you do each one.
-- Steven Knight

#Art #Eight #Years

Obviously, television is a writer's medium, so you get a lot more power and authority. With a film, the discipline is having a beginning, middle and end, and having it work in a specific space of time.
-- Steven Knight

#Space #Discipline #Television

I read more and more and I came across this character, Caroline Weldon. Sometimes in history, you find these people that no one would dare create. They're too mad.
-- Steven Knight

#Character #People #Mad

I must have been about 11 when I read the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which I read, over and over again.
-- Steven Knight

#Book #Heart #Knees

[Woman Walks Ahead] is from me being a very bizarre child. From the age of about 8 to the age of about 15, I was obsessed with Native Americans.
-- Steven Knight

#Children #Native American #Age

[The film Woman Walks Ahead] is from a long time ago. I wrote that ages ago. It looks gorgeous and Jessica [Chastain] is so good that I've got high hopes.
-- Steven Knight

#Long #Age #Looks

It was great fun to do because of the central character. With The Girl in the Spider's Web, the girl is really the central character. She's the whole thing.
-- Steven Knight

#Girl #Fun #Character

The sandstorm, which I think is an absolute triumph, could have been awkward. It's sex in a car, so who knows. And I think the rooftops look fantastic [in Allied].
-- Steven Knight

#Sex #Thinking #Car