Kathryn Bigelow: Interviews

Happy New Millennium

105 Happy New Millennium Roald Rynning / 1996 From Film Review (London), April 1996, 22–24. Reprinted by permission of International Feature Agency, Amsterdam. Tall, dark, and beautiful, Kathryn Bigelow looks more like a Hollywood actress than a film director. And she looks nothing like the other creators of the action movie genre—all Hollywood tough guys. Nor is the forty-three-year-old painter-turned-director known for doing the expected. What other woman ever made films about bikers (The Loveless), vampires (Near Dark), surfers (Point Break) and cops (Blue Steel)? And in March Bigelow is serving up a controversial blend of violent sci-fi in Strange Days, a film starring Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, and Juliette Lewis. In America, this shocking vision of pre-apocalyptic Los Angeles at the turn of the century has already been met by both enthusiastic acclaim , boos, and much talk for a need for censorship. “The movie isn’t only about violence. It’s a love story and it emphasizes characters,” defends Bigelow of her often intensely overwhelming film. Bigelow makes genre pictures, she says, because they offer her the opportunity to explore the visceral dynamic she loves. It also offers accessibility. It gives the audience a familiarity to draw them in. “What I intend is to transform the action genre and ultimately speak on character.” Set at New Year’s Eve 1999, Strange Days deals with the illegal trafficking of a virtual reality technology that replicates any and all sensation. “The streets are a war zone and sex can kill you, so the hunger for vicarious experience is very great,” tells Bigelow of her vision of the L.A. future. “Complications arise when a voyeuristic sadist uses the new technology to record himself raping and strangling a prostitute. He then delights in showing this clip.” 106 kathryn bigelow: inter views There is a lengthy, detailed, and very disturbing account of a rape and strangulation that has caused women to criticize the director for being anti-women. “It should be uncomfortable to watch,” argues Bigelow. “And aren’t women lucky that these voyeuristic fantasies are not usually fantasies shared by women? I find this particular scene important because it shows how the darker nature of the cinematic process can seduce you and pull you into the abyss. Like the brilliant Peeping Tom [the 1960 film featuring the killer cameraman’s point of view]. Strange Days utilizes the medium to comment on the medium.” The Los Angeles Police’s killing of the film’s rapper-activist has also been seen as an exploitation of the Rodney King beating. “The storyline was presented to me during the King incident. As I developed it further, I realized that the incident would in the year 2000 have become L.A. cultural history. So I decided to honor that event. “But I wasn’t interested in tearing an institution apart. The two loosecannon cops act outside any authority and misuse their power. And ultimately justice prevails. Art does imitate life and any kind of reexamination of the King beating is positive.” The original script of Strange Days was written by James Cameron, the writer director of the Terminator films and Bigelow’s former husband (they divorced in 1991 after a two-year marriage). Cameron’s company, Lightstorm, produced the film. “I loved the script, which I developed with James and writer Jay Cocks, and I brought it to the screen with a conscience,” insists Bigelow, who cast Ralph Fiennes as Lenny Nero, a black market dealer in “playback,” the technology that lets one have another person’s experiences. “I wanted a male lead that wasn’t glib,” she says of the British actor. “I had seen him in Schindler’s List and watched a couple of scenes from Quiz Show, then in postproduction. I needed an actor of his caliber to bring off the emotional complexity of Lenny. “Also, I could not have actors or a crew who were not passionate about the movie. We had seventy-seven nights filming and that is too demanding for people who aren’t passionate about their work.” As for Fiennes’s British accent, the no-nonsense Bigelow insists, “The accent works or I wouldn’t have had it there. Anyway, it’s irrelevant where he comes from.” Lewis plays a Courtney Love type of singer and performs her own songs in the film. “I cast Juliette with the intention of dubbing her, but she insisted she could sing and that she’d...