2.Main Content
We always knew Bigelow's Hurt Locker would do it!
Jeremy Renner as The Hurt Locker's Sgt James
Wed, 17 Mar 2010
We couldn't have been more thrilled to see Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s The Hurt Locker clean up at the Oscars on Sunday night as they did at the BAFTAs last month. As a result of some string-pulling from distributor’s Optimum, The Script Factory was delighted to stage a preview of the film late last summer together with on-stage conversation with Bigelow and Boal. As the film's awards collection threatens to burst at the seams, you can read extracts of our illuminating conversation here.
Screen On The Green, London, Tuesday 18 August 2009
Host: Script Factory director Briony Hanson
Briony Hanson
You’ve been away from our screens for a while now: it’s been seven years since you were last here with a film. In that time were you specifically looking to make a war film about this conflict or did this piece come up because of your professional relationship with Mark and your interest in the story that he told you?
Kathryn Bigelow
First of all, it’s kind of difficult to find material that is pretty extraordinary, and I’d say for me this certainly fits the bill. When I read that Mark was going on his journalistic trip to Baghdad in 2004 with a bomb squad, I was immediately intrigued. And when he came back and told me these extraordinary stories of these men who arguably have the most dangerous job in the world, I felt that this would be a pretty interesting character study. That’s how it began.
BH
Mark, tell us why you went to Iraq in the first place. What attracted you to take that assignment on?
Mark Boal
I don’t know really. It was one of the things that I did as a journalist in those days, and bombs at that time were very much in the news (as they are again today), and the bomb squad in particular had a very pivotal role in the war. So journalistically, it seemed like a worthwhile story to do – to tell their story as a way of making a larger piece about the logistical nature of the war. So I went to Baghdad and hung around with the soldiers for a couple of weeks and went on missions with them, and was able to observe what they did and came back and wrote this screenplay, after talking with Kathryn about it.
BH
When did you realise that it had the potential to be a screenplay rather than a series of articles and reportage? When did you realise that it had such cinematic potential?
MB
I don’t know if there was a specific point in time. I was also at the time working with Paul Haggis on a different movie [In the Valley of Elah], and so screenplays in general were on my mind. It was really to me just the continued importance of IEDs [improvised explosive device] and the bomb squad to the conflict. It seemed like it would still be worthwhile even though the timeframe for a movie is so long, so you have to project out. But it seemed that even a couple of years from when I came back, it would still be a worthwhile story to tell.
Explosive - The Hurt Locker
BH
I know that you worked closely on the script together; how much did you Kathryn have to mould Mark as a screenwriter, or had the hard job been done by Paul Haggis..? How different is the discipline of writing articles to writing a screenplay?
MB
I’m not sure Paul did much moulding, but it’s a good question to ask him! It was a very interesting transition to make, and obviously there’s some clear formal differences in the two mediums. But at the same time, I had made my living as a writer for 15 years before coming up to that, and I think that on a certain level storytelling is storytelling, and character is character, and dialogue is dialogue, and I had done a lot of non-fiction using fictional techniques over the years, so learning the structure of screenplays and reading great screenplays and learning about all that was a pretty steep learning curve, but it wasn’t like I was learning to be a plumber or something. I had some experience with it!
BH
And, given that [Mark] had such intimate knowledge of the situation, and the kind of characters that you were going to try to portray, did you find that you were able to take the lead as the director, as the person with the experience of the industry, as opposed to the person who knew what the real situation was. Did you find that a happy relationship?
KB
I would say that I looked at it as a real, true collaboration. We each brought to the table perhaps equally worthwhile and beneficial material for this piece. I could stand back and look at the shape, whereas he had a sort of granular, boots on the ground look at the subject matter, so I think that it was a good synthesis of the two.
BH
Given that the movie is relatively light on plot – ie this is not a big ‘plot-driven’ piece – did it look convincing on the page? Did you always think that you had enough to make a drama?
KB
Yes. Not only did I feel that we had enough, but I have to say the script was very powerful and compelling. And we were able to generate financing as a result of it as well as actor interest. It was a very compelling read.
BH
Given that some of the scenes rely on big action pieces, how are those on the page? What did they look like, and what did you have to bring as a director to those pieces? How descriptive are you on the page about those action pieces?
Guy Pearce takes a long walk - The Hurt Locker
MB
They were quite detailed descriptions because much of the movie is a very much nuts and bolts look at the moment-to-moment mechanics of being a bomb tech. So it’s really a very detail-oriented film. There are action elements to this movie, but it’s more suspense than actual action. There are moments where just small things are actually happening, as opposed to “the car drives off the bridge” or something. So that all had to be specific and written down.
BH
Did you feel the need to look at other war films as you were going along for inspiration about what to do, or what not to do perhaps?
KB
We looked at a few films, like perhaps The Best Years of Our Lives, and a few classics, like Saving Private Ryan and Full Metal Jacket. But more importantly I think what was interesting to both of us was to keep the reportorial underpinnings of it, and keep the movie very reportorial and true to Mark’s input and experiences over there. What I realised early on was that “a day in the life of a bomb tech” was so inherently dramatic that as a filmmaker, probably the most important thing I could do was to step aside and let the material present itself; cast it right, locate it right and that they were the two most important elements.
BH
Were you always conscious that you didn’t want this to be an “issue” piece in the way that a lot of war films, from whichever war, are? It’s almost as if you’ve taken a step back and haven concentrated on the minutiae of the task at hand rather than making a comment on the issue as a whole, which is probably in my view one of the strengths of the film. Was that always a deliberate thing for both of you?
KB
What was important to both of us was to present an accurate and authentic portrayal of this particular slice of life in this conflict. For me as a member of the general public, I feel like it’s a very abstract conflict – I didn’t really understand the process: what does it mean to stumble upon an IED other than if it explodes; what does an IED actually do?; how do the ground troops function?; where is the front and where is the rear?. It’s prototypical I think. What was important was to offer a window to that conflict and understand it more to perhaps make a more informed opinion. I don’t think it’s my opinion to judge it necessarily. We certainly have our personal opinions and politics, but nonetheless if you can provide a lens onto the conflict that provides maybe a more informed opinion it might be valuable.
BH
And you were keen to be authentic in terms of where you shot. You could have had many possibilities, from a Californian desert to wherever, but you chose to go to Jordan, literally a few miles away from where this kind of activity would have been taking place. Why did you feel that was so important?
KB
Well, if I went to the Californian desert I would have had to build a giant set, like an entire Arabic village. Mark brought back photographs and video from Baghdad so it was of interest to replicate that as closely as possible and since the movie takes place in the Middle East, the idea to shoot it in the Middle East seemed like a good idea. We found that in the city of Iman, especially east Iman, that the architecture of the scene was that we could turn the camera 360 degrees and it was just beautiful locations...
BH
And presumably there were some problems, not least the heat, being in such proximity...
KB
The heat was definitely a logistical issue, and also the bomb suit that Jeremy wears is a real bomb suit and weighs about 100lbs! But the great bonus of shooting there, in addition to the great architecture of the landscape were the extras who were refugees from the occupation in Iman at the time we were shooting, some of whom were actors in the pre-occupied Baghdad. One of them, who plays the suicide bomber at the end, is an actor, actually a well-known stage actor in Baghdad before the occupation. He fled to Iman probably thinking he would never act again, and then here comes this production. So it was a very serendipitous situation.
BH
Was there a kind of cultural sensitivity around shooting so close to the border? Were you at all anxious given that you presumably looked like a full-scale army by the time you all arrived with your trucks and your bomb suits and so forth?
MB
Was there a cultural sensitivity? Well of course – I mean it’s an American business and an American production in the Middle East, very close to the war. There was a sensitivity with Israel next door. There were a large number of Palestinian refugees so we were very sensitive to our position as Americans in the world at that time. But at the same time it’s important to know that Jordan is a very sophisticated place, and Iman is a very developed metropolitan city so it’s not like we were out in the bush or something. We were dealing with people who understood the difference between a movie and a real American army, so we didn’t have any real problems but we were certainly sensitive to the cultural differences.
Audience Member
Will your film change how the genre of war films are today and for the future?
MB
I’m not sure what you mean by “change the genre”, but the genre is always evolving and it was certainly important to me to write a story that would reflect this war and the political and philosophical facts that were swirling around at this particular conflict and not for example take some of the mentality of some other war genres and impose it onto this one. So the storyline is very specific to a volunteer army – this is the first major conflict fought since the Vietnam war where the US army is a volunteer army. In the Vietnam war, and in World War II and World War I, the central psychological fact of all these soldiers is that they didn’t choose to be there for the most part: they were drafted. So to me that’s a different type of war movie because you’re dealing with people who have chosen that as opposed to people who were forced to go there. There are certainly classic themes in every war movie that seem hard to avoid – camaraderie, courage under fire, those kind of things tend to come naturally in these kinds of movies.
KB
Perhaps because it’s reportorially-based and it’s representing a conflict that’s on-going, the desire to keep it as responsible as we can yet at the same time it is meant to be a movie and a piece of entertainment into which hopefully some substance has been added. I think the reportorial nature is a viable direction in which to take any subject matter. You know, keep it based in reality to a certain extent.
AM
You’ve created a cinematic ‘rush’, but in the process of doing that were you not afraid of creating in effect a very macho recruitment advert for the American army? It seems to be lacking any kind of nuance whatsoever.
MB
That’s an interesting point. You’re dealing with something where you know it’s going to be projected 50ft high by however wide the screen is. So anything in a way that’s portrayed cinematically becomes on a certain level, sensationalised, just by virtue of the technology. So that’s certainly something that I was aware of, but I don’t think I ever thought it would become a recruiting vehicle really. I don’t know, maybe someone will view it that way. 
Why Now? The Hurt LockerIt doesn’t bother me actually if it did incidentally because I think that different people will take different things from it and it’s okay to me if a work has different meanings to different people. I found it to be something of a shock and some people found it to be quite strongly discouraging from joining the army or getting involved with bombs or Baghdad or anything like that. But maybe other people will have a different reaction.
KB
Having gone from thinking that this conflict was very abstract to now having a little more specificity as we saw from the film. For me personally it would be unimaginable to walk toward what these individuals are walking towards. I could not imagine it, and I have heard many people share that sentiment. So I think it would be quite a deterrent, but everyone has their own opinion.
BH
Is there not an element in making the explosions and making some of the action so horrifyingly beautiful, are you not also making some sort of comment on the fact war is ‘fun’ for some people (with a volunteer army particularly)?
KB
Yes - it is a volunteer military so you have to take that into consideration.
BH
So your lead character, the Sgt James character, that he’s got a kind of Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now – you can imagine him smelling the napalm in the morning – joy about him.
KB
Which is the opposite of Sgt Sanborn...
AM
This is visually quite a bit different from your previous films and I’m wondering to what extent you pre-visualise in terms of camera moves and editing, and how much comes afterwards while you are editing it?
KB
Well I did start that while it was in script form, and that was before we had even located it in the Middle East, so it was bereft of specificity with respect to locations. But we didn’t do any digital previews or anything like that. We knew we wanted a very live and immediate kind of feel to the piece and we knew we wanted the camera to be very dextrous, and that geography was very important. We needed to have some sense of where you are in relation to the bomb – are you a hundred metres away, are you five metres away. You needed a context. And you also needed a connection with the individuals themselves: a kind of emotional connection; so you needed another kind of image which is obviously closer up. So it was really the reportorial nature that dictated the style of the piece and the wonderful cinematographer Barry Ackroyd that executed it exquisitely.
AM
I thought the writing was very powerful and I want to ask Mark about the Sanborn character who seemed to be exploring racial themes. I wanted to find out a bit more about what you were trying to do with these characterisations.
MB
I think you said it. I don’t think that there’s that much more to it than that. I thought it would be fun since we cast Anthony in that part to play with that a little bit. In terms of race, the military is a very interesting institution because despite being the object of a lot of ire from the left, it’s actually one of the more progressive institutions in America, at least when it comes to race and there’s a lot of high ranking military guys that are African American. And the way racism is treated is complicated – it’s treated very harshly there but then there’s a lot of it that continues despite the official prohibition against it. So to play with that a little bit I thought would be fun.
AM
The US Army reviewed your movie and they were pretty critical of it – have any of the guys that you were embedded with seen the film, and do you know what they thought of it?
MB
I think I know the article you’re referring to. Actually I know that the response from that community has been very positive largely because it’s not Top Gun, and that they do recognise that it’s an attempt to show the individual side of the war and what it’s like on a human level to do this work. So yes, some of the guys that I was embedded with in Baghdad have seen it and their response has been positive as well which was gratifying to me. I was a little worried because that could potentially be your harshest critic. We took some liberties with plotting and so forth, and not every technical detail was totally accurate, but by and large it’s pretty faithful and I think they appreciate that.
AM
As far as characterisations are concerned, are any of the characters based on real people or are they fictionalised? The same with events – have they been filtered through a narrative?
MB
Well, I love this intersection of truth and fiction. I think that it’s really interesting place to work, so on the one hand everything is fiction in the movie: they are fictionalised characters and they are in fictionalised situations, and on the other hand the characters are very much inspired by people that I met and as I said, the situations are very similar, the types of situations. In a few instances there’s a one to one, but mostly it’s types that are being recast and reshuffled to tell a story.
AM
There were some terrific and strong performances from the actors. I’d like to know how much rehearsal you did before you went to shoot and what that process was?
KB
I tend to cast very carefully so that I’m actually casting the person that may find his or herself in the character that is in the movie. So my rehearsals are critical, but in this case the rehearsal was a matter of learning about the protocol and procedure for bomb disarmament. It was actually more technical than performance driven until we got to the location but the emphasis was really on procedures so that just being comfortable with the bomb suit or being comfortable with the apparatus, being comfortable with the equipment and having it feel that they are fluid and authentic, that was what really was critical. If you cast it right, then your job is a lot easier, let’s put it that way.
BH
Are you the kind of director that focuses on specific performances and gives your opinion, or are you happy to sit back and let people do their thing once you cast them?
SF guest speaker Kathryn Bigelow, on set
KB
Kind of both, you know. You want to make sure that there’s an open-ness to ideas because that spirit of being able to interject and make something your own is very important I think certainly for an actor. But at the same time everyone recognised that the script is incredibly naturalistic and yet very specific at the same time and I think there was a great deal of respect paid to the writing and the actors really exhibited that.
AM
The scene towards the end with James and Sanborn in the vehicle, Sanborn wonders how he faced danger every day. The conventional approach would be to give James a pithy one line which explained his whole ethos – but he can’t do that. Why did you not do that?
MB
I saved that line for the video recruiting version! The real answer is that he does exhibit some self knowledge, but dramatically we want him to play that out on his son. So a couple of scenes later when he’s talking to his little kid and you get to see that despite coming off as really blustery and unaware of his own motivations, he does realise that there is a price to his own bravery and that is his inability to connect to other people. In the bad version of it, it is intimacy issues and rather than have him say there to Sanborn, we just pushed it back a little so it landed on somebody else.
AM
Paul Haggis very much wanted to make an anti-war film whereas Kathryn was saying that she didn’t want to judge. I was wondering if you could say something about how it was working with these two filmmakers?
MB
Well, I have to say that they are two very different directors with different styles. The movie with Paul was a home front drama and this is a combat film, but that said there are different approaches but I think the aims are quite similar between them on a philosophical level. It’s just a question of what’s dramatically right for the material. It would have been very easy for example to write a speech where somebody starts talking about the price of oil and the motivation about going into Iraq and all that, but if you did that in the middle of a combat sequence, it might feel a little forced and hokey. So in trying to make a gripping combat movie that gave the audience a sense of what it was like to be in that situation and hope that there was some socially redeeming value to that, which I don’t think there is, that sort of dictated the overall messaging. So in both cases you have directors working from a creative point of view primarily and then it’s that initial creative choice that dictates how overtly or implicitly put something is.
KB
Just to add briefly, I think that knowledge is power and in both films you’re given a tremendous amount of information, and whether it’s slightly more dictated to or you are given an opportunity to make your own decision, nonetheless you have left the theatre, let’s hope, with more information and an opportunity to evaluate for yourself. Again, I don’t think that it’s my position to do it for somebody else as much as I would like to!
BH
The film has had almost universal acclaim, which hasn’t been the case with all of your films. At what point in the process did you realise that you had made something special, and that this was going to get under people’s skin in the way that it has?
KB
Interesting question. You try to temper your expectations as a filmmaker. You want to realise to the best of your ability the material that you chose to realise and believe in strongly. So I think it’s actually been a fairly surreal experience and incredibly gratifying.
Of course Bigelow & Boal went on to triumph at both BAFTA and Oscar ceremonies this year. At the Oscars particularly, we loved the presentation of the Screenplay award - writers, you know your place! Here's how the screenplay award was announced by Robert Downey Jnr and Tina Fey.