YouSaid · the spoken record

Steve McQueen

lines on the record: 35
first: 2025-06-05
most recent: 2025-06-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“What we yearn for in one way and often is what we don't recognize but is familiar but unrecognizable or unrecognizable and familiar Immediately you have it, you bring it inside of you. It's visceral.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This language, isn't it? It's language. It's language and creating language or inventing language and visual language. And the people responding to that language is like music and hearing a note or putting 12 notes and putting one note, elongating one and shortening the other and manipulating something else can actually break through someone's armor and enter. intellectually, physically, emotionally and have them in a state of transition, wherever that is. I mean, I think that's that and that could get you on your feet and that could get you marching. It's what the power of what things can do. Again, and you recognize it and you smell it, and you hear it, and you taste it, these other things which are going on, I'm going on a bit, but it is what...”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's it, it's to imagine, is to make. It's possible to find and to discover and not to be afraid of making mistakes or not being popular or not being liked or don't get me wrong it's not easy don't get me wrong but I just thought again when I think of myself in that school And this kid right at the front of the fucking blackboard with a fucking patch of his NHS glasses and dyslexic. And I think, you know, obviously I was out of my fucking mind to think, oh, I want to be an artist or I want to do this. But again, one has to fucking dream. So my mamma would not be swearing. But yeah, you have to. Otherwise, you just stay exactly where you are. And hey, hey, I might not have done it. But again, I would have got somewhere.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's beautiful what you just said fighting for a world they can't see And it's easy to not get out of your bed. It's easy. And everything's said, oh, everything's holding us back gravity's holding us back. Literally, but it's that situation where you just make that effort. And it's beautiful what you said. Beautiful, not knowing what will come out of it. But you're doing it for the right reasons.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Linked together with any kind of resistance. I thought that was very powerful. It's just a single group, but at 21 years old to hear that was very important for me. And that's when, of course, your world is opening up when you're in university and you're listening to all kinds of arguments and opinions and views. And it's about that camaraderie and us, us and all we.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I never forgot. When I was a kid, I think I was old, was I then, I was young, slammed. It was a Paul Gilroy told me something like, I remember him saying to me, Well, I should be able, I should be able. As a collective should be with any group to support them because that's what it's about, marching with disabled people, marching with whoever group you're with. And it was very early, I think it was 23. Some reason that was a spark in my head. Well, I should be able to talk about them as much as they should talk about me. I was very powerful. That was very powerful. Well, it was like 21, 20. 21, 20, 21. It was just weird because it's obvious, but the fact that we should be”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Surprising. I just think the early environmental stuff was pretty amazing. It was pretty surprising. The early environmental stuff was pretty... I was really kind of touching. I was like, wow, when people sort of put in those bottles in front of buildings and knowing how we had to recycle, that was very impressive. I think what the environment, how that relates to what's going on now within our environment, that people were talking about that very, very, very early. So I think that was one of the most surprising things for me.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the matter nonsense that went on the school, the amount of horrid racism and ridiculous, but somehow we just made, I mean, you know, laughter. I mean, it's like, you know, even when, you know, again, our parents, what they had to go through on a daily basis going to work and being constantly humiliated and coming back. I remember, you know, there was a lot of black children were beaten. I was beaten with a belt. I was beaten. Everyone was beaten. But the next day we used to laugh about it. It's nothing to laugh about. We got physically abused with a belt and bamboo and shit. Some heavy shit, man. Some heavy shit. I'm laughing now, but it's a very, you know, yeah, we're fucked up. Fucked up.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but I remember going to school and then the people doing Chicken George. Oh, yeah. I mean, to get through a day, to get through any kind of situation of traumatic situations, laughter was, oh my God, school was so funny, but it don't work. But I mean, how we got through was just laughing.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember that was the biggest TV show ever. The streets were cleared. It was a bit traumatic for me as a child, I think. I watched everything. It was just a bit heavy.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My mother, she went to the material hospital and she would go out and then my father would go out and I'd put a telephone detective. People were humping and stuff and weird stuff with skin and flesh and all kind of crazy shit. Yeah, so that was good. But also things like play for the day. And I remember going to the tape for the first time on the buses and the coaches and they go to school and you get off and you go. I thought, oh shit, art. I thought I was so art could be important as in they put it in a frame and they put it behind glass and not plimpth and that was exciting. So those kind of things, seeing things, weird things, seeing weird things that I didn't understand was really cool. I mean, yeah, yeah, Dennis Potter.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I don't know, really shape me, but I like the singing detective. I like that. I was told, I was a 12 hours, I was a singing detective when that come out. 84, 85, 86? I think it must have been 80. No, 87, 87 single detective who's got a phone. I think 87. The singer detective 17, but a lot of other things did before that, but I never forget to sing a detective. I thought, wow, what the hell? It was a bit raunchy as well.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Children how to read secretly, you know, and then they found out that he was poisoned the father. And she had never said that before in public. And that helps her to just see the trailer on what we were going to do. No one knew what 12 years a slave was like that. There was a black press association in Atlanta. That was just after Travo Martin was murdered. Anything that could stir the part that can allow people to sort of feel themselves or be themselves or recognize themselves, I think is important”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember very well when we did 12 years a slave, and it was Trevor Martin had just been murdered. And we were the black journalist association conference, where was it? Where were we in Atlanta? And I remember, we showed the trailer because we couldn't see the film. And in this audience, and this woman stood up and she talked about her father, who she's never said this before, but just by seeing the trailer gave a license to talk about because she would just sat there in silence, but somehow she... She was allowed. I remember sitting there with the petition for the first time, not knowing what would happen to her. This woman stood up and said that her father...”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think because it had to be said. Had to be said, and I think these things would expect that the hunger, don't forget that time it was swept beneath the carpet, these men who died, 11 men died through starvation in British prison cell. And they were swept beneath the carpet. And for me, it needed to be revealed. It needed to be exposed. And the biggest way of exposing it wasn't on film. 35mm. That was it”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know, he's got back to me in my own head, and I don't know what, maybe I took it out of context, but I just remembered as a child, the only power I ever had as a child. At what time you'd go to bed, what clothes you wear, etc., is controlled by your parents. But the only time... You could resist is refraining from eating. And everyone has similar knowledge, memories of that. This only power you ever had to refrain from eating and then you were sent upstairs to bed without any food. And somehow that was my in to Bobby Sands and being a film. It needed to be a film. I don't know. That was it.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The subject demands for me, the subject demands the form. The subject has always demanded what it wants or needs to be. And a good example, I suppose, is hunger, the first film I made, and it just told me it needed to be a feature film. It needed to be a feature film. And I remember I was doing some research on it, and it was appalling. Pauline Kale had this interview with Goddard. Is it 72 or something in the Museum Modern Art? They did the interview. And then things just turned me on in a way that was interviewed with Goddard and pulling Keel and Goddard said that, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It was later on. It must have been like, anyway, he said that it must have been the 80s. We're childish. I can't remember this. And I was like, what was, and I just...”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In what one is looking at? That's all. I just wanted information and form and wait. Again, sometimes with color, it takes away that it makes things more lighter than they actually are. Hence, that's why black and white was so, and people stuck with black and white for a number of years. I mean, can you imagine some like it hot in color? It'd be too busy. Too busy, too busy.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it was about context and the whole idea of again, I think there's this kind of focus. I wanted to focus on the form. and the immediacy. Again, I think that's what we wanted to do, really. It was about form and the immediacy. And I think sometimes with color, again, now we're all used to these sort of things on our phones and we're doing this and everyone's a photographer and yeah, yeah, yeah. But it just wanted that kind of broadsheet, that kind of news journalistic kind of quality of information. I think that's what we wanted to focus on, the information. And through information, there's a certain kind of what you do with it. And I think the color, it was for me, it was just a bit too, it was too defocused. It was a bit confetti. I don't know because in the context of this, it had been jarring. And again, that is another, obviously there was a cutural choice of how you present something and how do you get the viewer to focus.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It goes to Occupy City, too. We can talk about that later as well. The film, I did a documentary about the occupation of the Netherlands, the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Oh, yes.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because not really, no. That just happened because I was, again, I think sometimes you become a magnet and you want something so badly, it comes to you. The image of the child was... And maybe because of year three, again, beforehand, children. So again, it's about, for me, it's about real life. I'm not interested necessarily in art, about art. I think that's the most boring thing in the world. Art about art is shoot me. Shoot me in the face twice or a film about a film. I mean, it's more real life. Life is way more fascinating. And having a camera and having a boom to record something in real life or discover something which you don't know how it's going to develop, that's exciting because it's life.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Becky said, Fail, fail better. Yeah It's one of those things where, yeah, a so-called mistake is a discovery. I don't know what that is. Again, there's a certain sort of excitement when something happens in that way. Even if it's a failure, it's a discovery because that will lead on to that. Going from gelatine to this book cattle ranches in the Midwest. There you have it.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, whatever you're doing is about making. And so make one of the central things of your life, because you will discover things that you will have no aware of. If you don't open your mouth, you don't hear nothing. If you don't put one foot after the other, you don't go places. So to make, to find your path, you know?”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Amazing, amazing They're going to kill me for doing that, but I don't care. But no, that's it. Again, you have to find the rhythm or not even the rhythm or the reason. And sometimes you're surprised on what comes forward and what gets pushed out and how one image could say a lot more than two or three or add on to something else. Again, it's finding it. And that's the joy. That's the joy of curating. That's the joy of making. making making making is making is very important to make because you don't know what's going to come out so to make something you know you sometimes oh i want to do that but you have to experiment you have to fail you have to make and making is failing making is finding making is discovering that's exciting and then you bring you to place you'll never ever it would never ever ever ever occur through not making”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And finally, you get those pieces wrong there. And there's also a feeling. Again, it's interesting how as great writers of history are the best poets. The best lyricists are the best storytellers. curators, as selectors. And can you guys stand up, please? I mean, Depete Clary, you're standing up. You're standing up and you're standing up. I don't give a fuck. Stand up. You've got to stand up now.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was Clarry and the team over years of sort of debate and selection and discovering photographs, finding photographs. That again, it takes time. It just takes time. It's not something one could sort of, yeah, and you don't want to didactic nonsense of, you know, that's not the game. That's not the aim. There's a fluidity. There's a certain kind of journey. And I think over a period of time, things just fell into place. It's like a big jigsaw puzzle.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Could never, the aim no, but at the same time I'm happy. I just want to make the best Anka fucking make. I'm so into what I do that I just want to make the best crafted, surprising experimental thing I could possibly make. And if it hits, if it registers, then brilliant. That's a blessing, yeah. That's an add-on.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was the first form that ever projected in Scotland Yard, which I believe. I don't know who went, about four people. That's the truth.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Beyond and above. Trust me. I mean, like small acts. I mean, excuse me, who fucking you Again, I've been the can, I mean to Venice, Academy Wars, because of COVID and that being in people's homes. I mean, it was an explosion because people were talking generations of people talking to their grandparents or their parents about did that really happen? Was that really like that? And even Lover's Rot was explosion because people were sort of confined to the houses and couldn't go out. But the holiday, there was a party that they could see reflect, see themselves within the context of that was huge. In Cannes, two films were there, and in your film first, Open Film Festival, that's what art can do. It could actually put the context of the narrative. And people didn't know what was going on in the 80s with black people, 70s at that time, in the broader, wider world. Even in their own country. So the fact that people were talking about asking questions about it and, you know, even red, white, and blue was projected in the...”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what's important for me, and then seeing these photographers and what they did to frame a moment, to frame a moment, to correctly frame a moment, to engineer a moment, and then frame a moment within the context of the time and environment. That helps to speak and to teach the dialogue of what happened that time, A-R-T-A-T. That's the power of it.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You could be engaged and they could see it and they could talk about it and have these conversations about it. Oh, it was crazy. It was crazy. And I know we were only able to make that film because Obama was a president at that time because I knew at an inn. So I jumped quickly to do it. Oh sure, because that door locked up quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, qu So there was a possibility, and then we had the conversation. So when you talk about telling the art and the power of art, the power of film, the power of art can actually do that. I mean, it's like artifacts now. How do we engage with history through artifacts? So it's what we leave behind.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“in Northern Ireland Ireland. And it was saying, yes, we could talk about this now. I remember, I mean, hunger in Ireland, that was huge. It was huge for a lot of generations of people to talk about that. And again, even the immediate situation of people working on that film who were Protestant or Catholic, I didn't even know who was who, but the fact that their ears have been bled. People talking about it to them, but actually finally they could physically do something, they could actually work on a movie. And it was amazing. And again, that changed a certain kind of history because what happened was then people started to engage in it because it was art, they could see it, they go to cinema, it's weird art. It's almost like if you show it, if you show it, then it happened. Say my 12 years a slave. Before that, there wasn't in the States.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's why art is so important. That's why art is so powerful, be it film, be it art, be it an exhibition, photography, that's because art Actually, it reunites or engages, it actually makes it real. Again, with film, I remember what Hunger came out. We did hunger and it was being shown in Belfast and bodyguards and all this and people hiding behind sofas and under tables and whatnot and the premier obviously can and then we went to Belfast and it was dangerous. And then the thing you know the thing we found out what happened after that after the premiere? Nothing happened because Film acted as a physical thing, it became the film was like a barometer to test the temperature of the climate.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely, yeah. I didn't know at the time. You know, again, it was, I suppose it was. I didn't know at the time. I think... Sort of beginning as such maybe was hunger in a way absolutely. You could say that there's no two ways about it. And it was just a journey. Again, and I think Blitz is the bookend of that. I think it's come to an ending in a way. Talking in circles because I could just say yes and the next question. Yes, it was an investigation order to look at history. I'm not interested in retelling history, I'm interested in reevaluating history because there's a huge chunk that has been missing from the narrative and the dialogue that can actually help to actually have an idea of the history that has been written. And because large parts of people have been left out of that narrative and they had a huge part in shaping it.”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, the Chicago, your town. I just curious. I just want to push it. What does it mean? What does it feel like? What is it? What can you explore? Where would you come out? Again, I think the risk is if there's a risk or resistance, is the subject matter and then investigate it thoroughly. I mean, I got down the road to gelity and Kodak first making cameras and I was like, I went all the way cattle, the massive cattle ranchers and thought, okay, let's wheel back from there. Interesting again, and who knows that might plant somewhere else, but I think it's just the risk to sort of research and push and to find out everything you can and then possibly something will come out of it. I don't know about resistance. I don't know about that, but curious and again wanting to sort of”
2025-06-05 · Intelligence Squared · How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT