Eastern Promises: Steve Knight interview

Steve Knight, the writer of Eastern Promises, talks about working with David Cronenberg and treading carefully in the Russian underworld.

With Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises, Steve Knight has written scripts which explore the margins of London society. While Dirty Pretty Things looked at the 'invisible' people who do the work the rest of the capital prefers to ignore, Eastern Promises is a gripping portrayal of the Russian criminal underworld. Viggo Mortensen, Armin Mueller-Stahl and Vincent Cassel star as members of a gang whose nefarious antics are uncovered by Naomi Watts' midwife, while David Cronenberg leaves his native Canada for the first time as a filmmaker to explore London's East End.

The co-creator of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, Steve talks here about hitting the jackpot by working with David Cronenberg, being attracted to the underbelly of urban life, and an already legendary fight sequence in a turkish bath...

You received Oscar and BAFTA nominations for Dirty Pretty Things, but have subsequently written for the stage as well as the screen. So would it be fair to say that movies aren't the be-all-and-end-all for you?

Steve Knight I like to think of myself as a writer and as such I do like to try other things. So theatre was great and I want to do that again, and I've written a book which should be out next spring. But I've also been writing screenplays - I did Amazing Grace and this. I do enjoy screenplays though. Even though it can take a hell of a long time, there's actually something very instant about it in a way. It's collaborative, which is great, but I think that I'll probably do this for another four or five years and then go back to writing novels.

Eastern Promises has been around for quite a long time. Tell us about the roots of the project...

It was originally going to be two one-hour television plays, but the script found its way to BBC Films and they thought it would make a good feature film. The process begins where you're waiting for lots of different elements to come together - director, stars, etc. Lots of very good actors and actresses were in the frame for it, because the script was well received, but in the end I'm glad we waited and got David [Cronenberg] and he got the cast he got.

When you heard that David Cronenberg was going to make the movie, what was your reaction?

I was astounded. It's weird the way that scripts get around. It goes out there and you have no idea how a particular director gets to read it. But when I got the call that he was interested, it suddenly seemed natural that he would do it and it seemed like his territory. We got on well and he liked the material, and once we had him I knew that we would get a very strong cast.

Everyone has an idea of what a David Cronenberg is. What kind of notes was he giving you when he came onboard?

His notes were the best sort of notes, because it wasn't "Don't do that, do this", it was "Look again at that...", and they weren't extensive at all. It was about finding the moments when we could ease off a little bit. He's got a great instinct for what's going to work on the day. As for the Cronenberg signature, I think that is all over the film. I know that people concentrate on the violence but, for example, when we have a Russian singer at a birthday party, David lets him sing the whole song and we see all of it. It's not just in the background, it's as if something catches his eye and he goes for it. Like when Semyon [Armin Mueller-Stahl] plays the violin for the little girls - David allows him to play it for quite a long time, and in terms of screen time it's an age, and it gives the audience time to think 'Who is this person? Why is this happening?', and I think that is very much David's signature.

I was interested to read that it was during Viggo Mortensen's six-month research for the role of Nikolai that he found out about the significance of tattoos in the Russian underworld...

In the original script the character had tattoos, but there was no explanation of what those tattoos were or how they looked. He was just identified as probably a criminal by the fact that he has a lot of tattoos, which in terms of the Russian underworld are your life history on your body. When Viggo went to Russia he learned the language of tattoos, and so in the film those tattoos on Viggo are the genuine tattoos you would see on a Russian grunt.

What's it like for you as the writer to have the lead actor unearthing all of this research?

It's fantastic, because he does all of it unbidden. He's not instructed to go and do this, he just goes off and does it. For an actor to bring that to the table is just a dream.

So it never got to the stage when you were dreading a call from him after his latest round of research?

No, it didn't work like that. He didn't deal with the script or the dialogue at all. What he did was look at the actual physical process of the tattoos and what they looked like, and that's how he helped build his own character.

The character of Semyon was based on a restaurant owner and Anna on a midwife at the Whittington Hospital. Tell us how you find your characters...

I'll have to be careful what I say about the Semyon character, but what I thought about the real person I met is that here was a person who was quite well read, who did readings of Pushkin to other Russians, and at the same time was involved in this other life. And what that meant to me is that it gave me permission in fiction to create a head of a criminal factory who was also charming, welcoming and very intelligent, it wasn't pushing the bounds of possibility.

Sounds like potentially dangerous research...

I didn't take any risks, but it's just about knowing when you've met someone who is potentially useful to you. It's like if you get into a minicab and you choose to chat to the driver, you might hear the most incredible story about how he managed to escape Sierra Leone. In London or New York or any big city, if you choose to have that dialogue I think you find all sorts of other worlds.

So if you weren't going to criminals flashing your WGA card, what research did you do into the world of Russian gangsters?

I spent time with the Russian Desk at Scotland Yard and with the police who police Chinatown, where there is a similar problem with trafficking. Through them I got into that world without having to actually experience it. I also did some research in New York into how a Russian crime family/organisation works, and the most important thing that came out of that was just the... ordinariness of what they do, so that any suburban house in London right now could have people inside it who are actually slaves, which is the most astonishing thing.

And you obviously got to understand how the Vory V Zakone [a Russian criminal brotherhood] worked...

They're a really interesting organisation, because they do have rules which are quite strictly adhered to. For example, they make a pledge never to work, and never to make any money from anything legitimate! It began with the tsars, when you were either collaborating with the system or against the system, and these people were obviously against the system. There is a definite structure to the gangs, but what I wanted to do was to look at the family and see how it worked.

The lead character, Nikolai, is interesting because he's a man of few words...

I wanted someone - and this is again where the tattooes come in - who doesn't externalise anything but whose life story is tattooed on his skin. But for someone with so many secrets, it's probably a good idea to limit the amount of things you say. Sometimes he's quite funny, and I hope that people will laugh with him and sometimes laugh at him, which is good because in the end, in spite of everything, he is a sympathetic character.

Talking of comedy, you started out writing for the likes of Frankie Howerd, Ken Dodd and Jasper Carrott. How come you've never written a comedy feature?

Comedy's difficult, it's the most difficult thing to write. I love to watch feature-length comedies, but that would be an area, I think, where it would be difficult to relinquish control. You can write a line that you think is funny, but if it's delivered even slightly differently, then it isn't going to work. Anybody who's told a joke and got a word wrong knows that it has to be perfect, so it is a brutal thing.

What I like to do, when dealing with serious issues, is put comedy in there because it's a real short cut to sympathy and really gets an audience on your side. When a film is shown in a public place, laughter unites an audience, it's almost like using a trick. My history in comedy, especially in writing stand-up, taught me that if you want to get that laugh, you have to get the line dead right. I've recently written a screenplay which is a dark comedy, so we'll see how that goes.

Your research into human trafficking had to be toned down for the film, but presumably you want this film to raise awareness of the problem...

Absolutely. I've been in touch with an organisation called Anti-Slavery International - this was initially after Amazing Grace - and I was just astounded by the figures that there are more people living in slavery now than in the 18th century. What they're trying to do is wake people up to the fact that is a very prevalent problem in London. If this film can have an effect on people - even if it's only visiting the Anti-Slavery website and signing their petition - then it'll have been worthwhile.

In this and Dirty Pretty Things you shine a light on parts of London we don't normally see. As a man from Birmingham I'm sure you're happy to show London in a poor way, but tell us about these themes you like to explore...

I see London the same as New York or Birmingham... any big city is lots of different cities; it depends which city you visit. With Dirty Pretty Things I spent some time looking at sweatshops, and I'd walk through doors in London and find myself in the Third World. I think if you're a writer and you live in a city, you would be mad not to include all of those other worlds in your territory. If you only want to write about one particular sort of person in London, I think it's a mistake. It's not particularly a crusade for me, it's just that that's where the stories are. If Charles Dickens were around now, he'd be telling their stories, he wouldn't necessarily be telling the stories of middle-class native Londoners.

The scene that everybody is talking about in Eastern Promises is the naked fight sequence in the turkish baths between Nikolai and two assailants. A copy of your script that I read described that in four paragraphs and wasn't actually a fight to the death. Tell us about what you wrote and what David eventually shot...

[SPOILER] It's such a fantastic set-piece! In the script there were a couple of different versions. To begin with he killed them, then he didn't, and then he did, and what I wanted from that was proof that this person, Nikolai, is super-efficient at violence, that's his job. And I think the way David has executed it is just phenomenal, and people quite rightly talk about it because it's brutal, but it doesn't cheapen the violence, it doesn't treat it casually. The camera doesn't look away at certain key moments, and I think it shows how disgusting violence really is.

Your script describes specific actions rather than just 'A FIGHT ENSUES'...

Well, doing any fight scene or action scene is incredibly difficult to write, because you know for a fact that when it comes to it, it's going to be choreographed by someone who does that for a living. Other than deciding the outcome, setting the tone and choosing the weapons... I think if you tried to write every move, it would be like trying to describe a dance, so you just have to say "This is what happened" and then it has to be executed.

You've worked with three directors on your scripts now - Stephen Frears on Dirty Pretty Things, Michael Apted for Amazing Grace, and now David for Eastern Promises. How do they differ?

It was obviously an honour and a pleasure to work with all three of them, but they all work in very different ways. The energy they bring to the process is totally different. With Stephen it's quite tempestuous, with Michael it's very controlled, and with David there's a lot of things going on under the surface and I think he does trust the actors to bring a lot to their performances. All of them as people have been very easy to work with.

At the moment you're working on an adaptation of the book Curveball - about the man who sold the fake documents which triggered the war in Iraq - for Focus Features. Do you notice a big difference when you work for an American studio?

I really love the American way of doing things, because it's much more structured than it is here. There's a system in place and although you hear all types of horror stories about Hollywood, the people I meet there are really genuinely keen to do good work. I'm sure there are people there just for the money, but in my experience they've got a lot of integrity and they do respect the writer.

Most of your writing - both novels and for the screen - is in the thriller genre. What's the attraction for you?

What I've tried to do, where possible, is take what I think is a serious, profound issue, and then make it as interesting a story as possible. With Dirty Pretty Things, in the early days there were people saying "You shouldn't have the plot, it's just about these people and isn't it awful for them?", which I think is patronising to the audience and to the people that you're dealing with. I think you have to have that story, and I think a thriller keeps people guessing and keeps them interested. And at the same time they'll come out of it more aware of some problem or something maybe they didn't think about before. I try not to take the issue first and then look for the story; I try to get the story or a world, and see how that reflects upon the worlds around it. What I tend to do is just start writing and let the dialogue create the plot.

Eastern Promises is released in UK cinemas on Friday 26th October 2007.

Adrian Hennigan | Published 25 October 07