HARDEY SPEIGHT
Writer x Director
"To find the magic in meaning and the meaning in magic, that's the pursuit of the purest creative mode, to explain everything and nothing at once".
SCREENPLAYS
When All The Lights Went Out.
The Last Hoorah.
Love Me, Hold Me, Always.
Invitation to an Execution.
I am unapologetically intense, overwhelmed with a sense of my own importance most of the time, it's in my nature. I'm compelled to debate with a furious and implacable force, seeking what is useful, meaningful, mighty, that renders beauty, and clears the ground of the debris of intellectual futility so there is a place, a platform, to launch from, what you ask are we launching - something morally divine, something transformative, something miraculous. My writing tends towards a kind of poetic realism, or metaphysical realism. I'm fascinated with the meaning in magic and the magic in meaning.
When All The Lights Went Out.
Logline
When the steelworks close, Michael's failed suicide shatters his family.
As Penny finds love again, their sons wrestle with both a sense of abandonment and the burden of their father's unfinished story.
Directors Statement - taster
When All the Lights Went Out is an emotionally weighty British drama Inspired by films such as Manchester by the Sea, My Left Foot, and The Deer Hunter.
The storytelling is raw, intimate, and emotionally devastating. Set against the brutal beauty of South Wales, it explores the masculine pursuit of a heroic role, lost purpose, and the psychic cost of collapse —industrial, familial, and emotional.
The film lives at the intersection of grief and love, violence and care, realism and transcendence. It is not just a tragedy but a meditation on what survives, and can even flourish, when the lights go out.
Screenplay (Taster)
Film Treatment
If you're interested in reading the full screenplay please contact me.