Steven Knight Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“No screenplay is possible, unless you get some attachment from somebody who's going to get it made.”
-- Steven Knight -
“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“[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 -
“True stories are always good because they're so odd, and so unlikely.”
-- Steven Knight -
“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“The story [of Allied] stayed with me, like a stray dog outside the office, waiting.”
-- Steven Knight -
“I was 21, when I heard the story that inspired this [thriller Allied], and I wasn't even a screenwriter then.”
-- Steven Knight -
“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 -
“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 -
“I relish the eight-hour format of a single season because it gives you time to do that.”
-- Steven Knight -
“[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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“[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
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