Kathryn Bigelow
Kathryn Bigelow makes movies like the big boys. And we think she’d consider that a compliment.
She’s come to be known as the woman who makes guy films. Among her credits are the creepy vampire/western flick Near Dark, the sex-and-violence-fueled virtual reality thriller Strange Days (co-written by Bigelow’s ex-husband, James Cameron) , the stylish cop saga Blue Steel, the surfer heist actioner Point Break; the Harrison Ford submarine drama K-19: The Widowmaker; and the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker, an intense study of soldiers in the EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) squad in Baghdad.
Bigelow’s latest is Zero Dark Thirty, an unflinching look at the ten-year struggle to track down Osama Bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks. Jessica Chastain plays Maya, the CIA operative in charge of the mission. The film—mired in controversy because of its torture sequences and the accusation the filmmakers used classified government information to research it—has been nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress (for Chastain). Bigelow, however, has, surprisingly, been overlooked as a nominee for Best Director after winning the trophy for the Hurt Locker.
MovieFanFare had an opportunity to talk to Bigelow and Mark Boal, the award-winning writer of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, in July of 2009, when they stopped in Philadelphia to discuss the former.
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The Hurt Locker is based on Boal’s own embedded reporting. The movie stars Jeremy Renner as the tough-as-nails staff sergeant, newly arrived as the unit head after the death of the previous leader (Guy Pearce), and Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty as his unit compadres.
The men in this group deal with explosives that can be attached to cars, or humans—or anything, for that matter. They’re not sure who their enemies are. They can be in a crowd, or brandishing a sniper’s rifle in a tower, or they could just be a kid trying to sell bootleg DVDs on the rubble-strewn streets. The explosives specialists wake up every day knowing it could be the last of their lives.
While the box-office track record for films dealing with the war in Iraq like Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah (based on a story by Boal), Gavin Hood’s Rendition, Irwin Winkler’s Home of the Brave, or Kimberly Peirce’s Stop-Loss was, frankly, lousy, The Hurt Locker stood a chance to break the trend, but registered $40 million at the box-office—decent but no blockbuster, especially for a film with nine Oscar nominations and six Academy Awards to its credit.
Filmed in the Jordanian desert over a 44-day period by British cinematographer Barry Aykroyd (United 93), The Hurt Locker looks and feels like it must have been a difficult shoot. According to Bigelow, it was, although it could have been even tougher.
Kathryn Bigelow Filming The Hurt Locker (2009)
“We shot a million feet of film at a 200-1 ratio, so we came back with a lot of footage,” said Bigelow, dressed in black with a crucifix dangling from her neck, during a recent stop at Philadelphia. “We storyboarded the film out, but it’s the geography of the place that is really key to a lot of things—understanding the audience, understanding the conflict, where you are to the bomb and realizing the objective of how to humanize those soldiers.
“So there are all these factors, and you begin to go off the boards and find a style that is very reportorial. That’s because it is based on actual reporting from Mark’s embed in 2004 with the bomb squad. You want to protect that reportorial nature, geography and humanize the soldier. So it’s kind of dogmatic, you know, where you say we are going to be here to here to here, it’s sort of fluid and instinctual.”
Bigelow had originally chosen to make the film in Kuwait, but the steady 135-degree heat there put a kibosh on those plans. “You could only shoot at night. The only restriction there was elemental. We took it to Jordan where the low desert heat was 110 degrees. It was like a blow dryer in your face, and you kept sucking in hot air. “
“We were shooting in the summer in Jordan, and the bomb suit is not an art department creation,” added the filmmaker, who began her career as a painter and then attended the graduate film program at Columbia University. “It was a real bomb suit, not an art department creation, made of Kevlar and ceramic plates. It weighs about 100 pounds. My real concern was for Jeremy, making sure he was comfortable and conscious.”
Added Boal: “It was like ‘Forget it, just forget it.’ There is a reason why no one shoots movies in the middle of the desert.”
But filming in Jordan also had some plusses, according to Bigelow. “In Amman at the time we were shooting, about 750,000 refugees from the war, many of whom were actors, were released. So utilizing them in a shoot, as speaking parts as well as background extras, kind of offset some of the arduous aspects (of making the film.)”
Unlike some of the other Iraqi War films, The Hurt Locker is more of a combat film than a cinematic political tract. Boal, who slaved over 17 treatments of the script, says it wasn’t his or Bigelow’s intentions to politicize the character or situations depicted in The Hurt Locker.
“I think the main group we made the film for were moviegoers, for anyone who wants a good movie,” said the writer, who has contributed to Village Voice, Rolling Stone and Playboy, and based the characters and situations in the film on people and scenarios he’s seen. “We encourage them to buy tickets. In other words, it was not like, ‘We made it, so now let’s take it to Capitol Hill and see what they think in the House.’
“But I’m sure if Barack Obama wanted to see it…”
Many EODs, however, saw The Hurt Locker, and, according to Bigelow, their response was “phenomenal.” During recent screenings for families of EOD casualties and EODs, audiences told Bigelow that “every sector of the military had their own movie—the Navy SEALS, the Air Force pilots, you name it. (The EODs) do what they do with a fair amount of anonymity. Many EOD techs come up to me after screenings and they say, ‘I’ve been telling people for years what I do and nobody understands, nobody has a clue.’
“There is now a filmic translation that people can understand, up close and personal what a day in the life of a bomb tech might be.”
Did the experience of making The Hurt Locker impact on Bigelow’s view of America’s involvement in the Middle East conflict?
“I probably entered the project thinking war is hell and certainly am leaving it thinking war is hell,” explained Bigelow. “It gave me an appreciation and admiration that there are men and women out there risking their lives. We are looking at incredibly heroic individuals, but also thinking about the price of heroism. So (the experience) was pretty moving, just getting up close and personal with this particular conflict from the standpoint of the soldiers, who are kind of at the epicenter of it, being the bomb techs.”
Jeremy Renner (2009)
Like the characters in her previous films—Jamie Lee Curtis’ policewoman in Blue Steel, cop-turned-street hustler Ralph Fiennes in Strange Days, the gang in Point Break—one wonders if Bigelow is an adrenaline junkie herself, searching for the next cinematic thrill?
“No, she stated bluntly. “I think film can be so experiential that I don’t know…”
Bigelow’s voice trailed off.
“I don’t shoot movies because of that. You know there are extreme moments in people’s lives, and I don’t think making a movie out of somebody sitting still is all that interesting.”
“Empire,” interjected Boal, referring to Andy Warhol’s 1964 experimental eight-hour film about the Empire State Building.
“Empire, exactly,” said Bigelow. “So I don’t know, it just depends on maximizing the potential of the medium.”
“She likes to knit,” joked Boal.