Kathryn Bigelow Goes to War

The "Point Break" director on Iraq, "The Hurt Locker" and pushing the limits.

MB: And there are female bomb techs, by the way. Not in our movie, but in real life.

KB: They have this extraordinary task with this extraordinary job. And what is that psychology? What does it take? Is it courage? It’s an opportunity to look at that psychology under a magnifying glass and say, “What is it?” In the case of James, there’s a definite allure of combat. In the case of [Mackie's character] Sanborn, it’s something different. In the case of [Geraghty's character] Eldridge, it’s something different. We took the time to look, distilling it into three separate individuated profiles, but all pivoting on the idea they’re volunteering. It all comes from the characters. When [Mark] came back from Baghdad, he was telling me about these guys, [and] I immediately saw it as great material for a film.

In terms of casting, you have three relative unknowns in the leads and some of the more familiar faces in roles that you might not expect. How did that come about?

KB: We financed it independent, independent, independent — to the power of ten — and it allowed us to have not only full creative control, but also final cut. Part of that creative control was to have the leading men be emerging talent for a number of reasons. One is I just happen to think they’re extraordinary talents, and they deserve a lot more screen time, but also the idea that you’re not coming to them with a kind of screen baggage. You don’t know about their survivability. That’s not implicit in their star wattage. I think that intensifies the suspense and the tension. You don’t know. Their relative worth and weight is original and unique to this film.

Was it difficult to raise funding? And from the start, did you always want to raise it yourself and independently?

KB: Yeah. We never actually debated going down another road. I mean, we wanted to shoot in the Middle East. Right there, that… [laughs] Game over, just from an insurance standpoint. On the other hand, it was an incredibly safe, hospitable environment in which to shoot.

MB: It was really also just Kathryn saying, “What if we made a movie where the director really had final cut and really could decide what it was going to be like, without any interference?”

KB: None.

MB: How would you do that? The answer is: I hope you have a pretty good credit limit on your Visa card. [laughs] But that’s what we decided to do. Thankfully, she has the body of work behind her where people would bank on her.

Even before its release, people have speculated how commercial this film would be with mainstream audiences, though it’s already been embraced by the art-house crowd. What do you think makes it able to bridge those two worlds, which can often be mutually exclusive?

MB: Chris, my brother, who did the EPK for the movie, calls it an “art-house rock ‘n’ roll cowboy war movie.” [laughs] It’s a hard one to fit in a category. But that’s also the bad news, in terms of classifying it. We think it can be both because it works on a couple of different levels.

KB: Yeah, it can. It can, I think, travel well between many worlds.

Kathryn, would you say that there’s a theme to your work as a whole?

KB: So much of what I do is instinctual, so it’s hard to look at it from a more conscious perspective. But I guess– I think of film as having an opportunity to be transporting, and taking you to a place that you’ve never been and can’t imagine being — truly having that experience, so you really feel like you’ve traveled.

I think that’s the only medium that [can do that]. Literature can do it, too, but it’s much more reflected. This is very experiential. You feel like that’s real heat, real sweat, real tears that you’re looking at on the screen. That’s something that’s been fascinating to me, to keep trying to work that idea and make it more and more visceral and raw and immediate. I’m drawn to material that enables me to push that.

“The Hurt Locker” opens in New York and Los Angeles on June 26th, before expanding on July 10th.

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