Leading Director Provides Perspective In The Midst Of Award Season
By Robert Goldrich
It’s been a whirlwind stretch on the awards show and publicity circuit for director Kathryn Bigelow as her acclaimed feature, The Hurt Locker, has gained major momentum in film industry competition. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle recently honored The Hurt Locker with awards for best picture, with Bigelow earning best director distinction from both organizations as well.
The National Society of Film Critics bestowed upon the Iraq war drama its awards for best picture, director and actor (Jeremy Renner as a daredevil U.S. soldier/bomb squad technician).
And just last week Bigelow was nominated for the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award for outstanding directorial achievement in feature film. She becomes only the seventh female director to ever be nominated for the coveted feature honor in the 62 years of the DGA Awards. And based on The Hurt Locker‘s strong showing thus far she would appear to have a chance to make history as the first woman to ever win the Guild’s marquee feature film award.
The Hurt Locker centers on three members of the U.S. Army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad whose responsibility is to search for and disarm a wave of roadside bombs on the streets of Baghdad. Their courage under fire in an impossible situation sheds light on the profound effects of combat and danger on the human psyche. The insights are all too real as they are based on the first-hand observations of journalist and screenwriter Mark Boal, who was embedded with a special bomb unit in Iraq. (Boal recently received a best screenplay nomination for The Hurt Locker from the Writers Guild of America.)
SHOOT caught up with Bigelow who reflected on the success of The Hurt Locker, how she wound up directing the movie, and her upcoming filmmaking endeavors.
SHOOT: What does the DGA nomination mean to you?
Bigelow: Praise from your peers is probably the highest honor one could imagine. It’s doubly gratifying that this is recognition for a film that’s putting the magnifying glass on a really difficult situation in Iraq and the heroism of those who serve there.
SHOOT: Does the history of being only the seventh woman to be nominated for the DGA Award in features and the possibility of being the first woman to ever win the honor figure prominently in your thinking relative to the nomination’s significance?
Bigelow: What’s important to me in that regard is that hopefully by doing what I do, perhaps it can translate into someone thinking that something seemingly impossible is possible. In that respect, I’m thrilled to be in a position to provide some inspiration to other woman filmmakers or woman who aspire to be filmmakers. To me that’s very important.
SHOOT: A war drama typically has a male director or auteur. Did being a female director lend a different perspective or dimension to the film?
Bigelow: I don’t think of filmmaking as gender specific. At the same time it’s not that you don’t bring your life experience to the table when you’re on set or location. But this film certainly like all films has many authors. It’s a truly collaborative process. The genesis came from an extraordinary writer in Mark Boal who reimagined, fictionalized and created an incredibly innovative narrative structure to provide a lens on a very challenging and seemingly futile situation in Iraq–which you can extrapolate to Afghanistan. This work touches a nerve because it’s timely and I say sadly that I think it will remain timely. I consider myself the beneficiary of combined forces–including a beautifully imagined screenplay and a profoundly talented cast.
SHOOT: How did you wind up getting the opportunity to direct the film?
Bigelow: Mark [Boal] is a journalist whose work I’ve respected for a long time. Before he went to Iraq, I had developed one of his articles, titled “Jailbait,” into a TV series for Fox and Imagine back in 2003 or ’04. The article was in Playboy and it was quite compelling–it was about a young female DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] agent. It turned out to be a short-lived series that translated into a pilot and a few episodes.
Later Mark came back from Iraq and immediately saw his experience there as a movie and began writing it on spec. I was more than intrigued. Then when I saw the finished screenplay, I was determined to make it. I thought it was really brilliant work and deserved to be realized. I also knew that it had to be made on our terms, without compromise.
SHOOT: You’re in the throes of the awards season with The Hurt Locker getting so much recognition. How has its success affected your life?
Bigelow: That might be a better question to ask a couple of months from now. It’s a little early to have perspective. I can say that the film’s success has been extraordinarily gratifying, thrilling and overwhelming.
SHOOT: What’s next for you on the feature filmmaking front?
Bigelow: Mark is writing another script that we have set up at Paramount. That may be the next project. It’s a pretty extraordinary piece that takes place in South America. But it’s in an embryonic stage so I don’t feel comfortable talking about it in detail.
SHOOT: Not too long ago, you signed with RSA Films for commercials. Do you have anything upcoming in terms of ad assignments?
Bigelow: I’m working on a couple of projects right now but it would be premature for me to talk about them. I like the situation there. RSA is a phenomenal company, the entire group of people there is inspiring and we’re off to an auspicious start.
I very much like commercials and other branded content opportunities. You gain both ways. Your commercial work helps you in features and vice versa. Anytime you exercise the directorial muscle, it’s a win-win scenario. You learn by doing and challenging yourself.
SHOOT: You have directed commercials and branded content–I recall a short web film for Pirelli–in the past. Can you cite a tangible benefit that your commercial experience brought to your direction of The Hurt Locker?
Bigelow: You become fast on your feet from a production standpoint, able to create a really nimble production. That came from commercials and from the work I did for the TV series Homicide: Life On The Street. We had a smaller TV crew, a somewhat financially restructured shoot, our schedules were insane but we made it work somehow.
Working in TV and commercials brought me a nimble, dexterous production model for feature films. Especially for The Hurt Locker where we shot in and around the city of Amman, Jordan. That sleeker production model was what we deployed moving around the Middle East for the movie. We didn’t want to have a gigantic footprint.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More