Kathryn Bigelow: Interviews

Kathryn Bigelow to Movieline: “I Thrive on Production. I Don’t Know if I Thrive in Normal Life.”

159 Kathryn Bigelow to Movieline: “I Thrive on Production. I Don’t Know if I Thrive in Normal Life.” Kyle Buchanan / 2009 From Movieline, June 25, 2009. Reprinted by permission of Movieline and Kyle Buchanan. It’s long been taken for granted that Kathryn Bigelow is Hollywood’s best female action director—and that’s a reputation she firmed up before tomorrow’s release of The Hurt Locker, her best film so far. The Iraq War bomb squad thriller is a shot of adrenaline for not just the audience, but Bigelow’s career, which includes classics like Near Dark, Point Break, and Strange Days. The whip-smart director recently sat down with Movieline to talk all things Hurt Locker, though the conversation soon veered to Point Break parodies, wooing the King of Jordan, and a certain vampire franchise she’d been heavily touted for. Q: Jeremy Renner’s character in The Hurt Locker thrives on the theater of war, and outside it, he feels like an incomplete person. That’s a personality type I could apply to a lot of directors: Only when they’re on set do they feel most themselves. Does that describe you at all? KB: Oh, good question. [long pause] I don’t think production comes anywhere close to the theater of war of course, but Chris Hedges writes about that particular psychology so beautifully in War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. You should check it out—you probably already have— but he talks about the kind of sense of purpose and meaning that peak experience can give you that can never be replicated outside that peak experience . I suppose, personally, from my frame of reference, production 160 kathryn bigelow: inter views is very intense and nothing else comes quite close to that. And yet, as a kind of more meta version of myself at that time . . . I don’t know. I’d probably have to be far more self-aware than I am to answer that accurately . I thrive on production. It feels very much like a natural environment for me. Q: Do you have to re-acclimate after you’re done shooting? KB: Well, I think I do just because of the stamina that’s required. The hours are punishing, there’s a kind of sleep deprivation and exhaustion that forces you to kind of reframe your existence. When that abruptly stops and you have to be a different type of human being, you kind of redefine yourself all over again, with a less rigorous approach to your life, I suppose. I don’t know, that’s a very interesting question. I thrive on production. I don’t know if I thrive in normal life. [Laughs] Q: I understand why you don’t want to compare a production to war, because there aren’t those life-or-death stakes—although some directors may beg to differ on that point. But there are some parallels: you’re mobilizing a battalion . . . KB: Right. Q: . . . and moving it into this other country like an invading force. And as the director, you’re commanding people to take position and execute certain operations. Did you ever feel like you could use that feeling in your film? KB: Especially in this particular film, I’m really conscious of this being a conflict that’s ongoing, and being painfully responsible with respect to that. So I never kind of felt the sort of hubris of entering a completely foreign culture with a few hundred people and making it your own. Because it’s an ongoing conflict, it’s kind of unique in that sense. Q: You shot this film in Jordan, and even though that’s a relatively liberal country in the Middle East, was it a somewhat culturally dissonant thing for you—as a woman, wearing no burqa—to be in charge of such a major production full of men? KB: You know, I kind of wondered if that aspect was going to meet with any resistance, and there wasn’t any at all. First of all, it’s a very sophisticated , very secular, very generous, hospitable environment. And very film-friendly. I had met with the King, and he was extraordinary. A brilliant man, and very supportive of this production going to his country. I kyle buchanan / 2009 161 can’t look at it in any other hypothetical way, because I didn’t experience anything...