By Shanee Edwards

Burnt is about an American chef, Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper), who rose to fame in a Paris kitchen only to be undone by drugs, alcohol and womanizing. After a self-imposed exile in Louisiana, where he literally shucked a million oysters, bad-boy Adam Jones is now in England trying to revive his career and get the rare third Michelin Star.

Screenwriter Steven Knight is known for writing a wide variety of great films, including The Hundred Foot Journey, Eastern Promises and the remarkable Dirty Pretty Things, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. We asked Knight about the concept of so-called “rock star chefs” who’ve recently come into popularity. 

“It’s an interesting phenomenon. I wrote this quite a while ago, when it was just starting to happen. I think it began with Marco Pierre White. London wasn’t really known for its food, then suddenly, this generation of young chefs came along who were very uncompromising and, I think, brought the French kitchen temperament of dictatorship.  The chef was the emperor or the king, and they had absolute power,” says Knight.

Apparently, this kitchen hierarchy began in France two centuries ago with the Royal Court. “The story is, when the French Revolution happened, all the best chefs who used to serve the king and all the royal families were all scattered around the country and they brought their expertise to restaurants all over France. That’s why French cuisine rocketed. When that reached England and America, people really took notice that there was a discipline where one person, usually a man, was in absolute control and who demanded absolute perfection. That is repulsive and attractive in equal measure, and that’s what drew people. And then, of course, came the TV shows, and then, Gordon Ramsey. It was an evolution that happened quite rapidly.”

Though it might seem odd that an American chef would attempt to carve out a career in England, that was Knight’s plan from the very beginning. The original idea came out of a conversation he had with Keanu Reeves in a bar. “Reeves said he wanted to do something about an American chef in London – that was the basic idea and it developed from there. At that time, it was much more of a fish out of water story. But as time went by, the idea of an American chef in London became less unusual and I had already started to develop the character along with the basic story,” says Knight.

At first glance, it might seem that Burnt and Knight’s 2014 film The Hundred Foot Journey are similar thematically. But Knight says the two stories are actually quite different. “Burnt was developed a couple years before The Hundred Foot Journey, which was commissioned from an existing book. They are deliberately different. I wanted Burnt to be much more about an individual who sacrifices personal relationships and popularity for perfection.”

In fact, Burnt features a downright despicable protagonist, played masterfully by Bradley Cooper. As screenwriters, we’re often concerned with making our leading characters likeable, but Adam Jones really is the opposite. Knight knew he was taking a big risk.

“This is the important thing about the film: we wanted to be brave in having a central character who was not entirely sympathetic, and often not sympathetic at all. In the kitchen, chefs are not nice people and that’s really what I wanted to get at – to have my hero not be nice.”

A difficult balance, for sure, but that’s one of the areas of writing Knight finds most interesting. “How far and how long can you go with a character who does bad things for what you know is a good reason? That’s the balance. Is the reason good enough to justify the bad behavior? In this, it was deliberately skewed toward the most extreme version of not liking this person. I’d probably like the food he made, but not the person.”

Typically in a movie about an antihero, there’s a moment where we get to see the humanity underneath the character’s extreme behavior. But Knight says he’s wary of writing those moments. “With this one, I really wanted to take it to the limit, that there almost is no moment of redemption. I hoped that at the end of it, he would realize the third Michelin star is not important. That’s his redemption. It’s like asking, ‘Was Leonardo da Vinci a nice person?’ I don’t know, probably not, but it’s irrelevant to what he produced. That’s how I think about great chefs, great musicians, whatever. I did the Bobby Fisher film - he was loathed by lots of people but he left behind games of chess that are incredible. With a chef, people eat the food and experience something through one of their senses. If the chef wasn’t the way he was, the food wouldn’t be like that.”

When it comes to giving advice to writers, Knight says the key is to have a spec script that really stands out from the rest, even if that particular script doesn’t get made. “If you want to get noticed, do something really weird and different,” he says and to always keep the reader in mind. “If they read that one script that is really interesting and grabs them, they will probably think the writer is really talented and if you gave that writer a more conventional topic, they would do something different. You can present a script that can be made into a film and that’s great. But it’s more likely that you’ll present a script that will make someone see the potential of your writing and offer you something.”

Burnt was written on Final Draft and opens in theaters Oct. 30.