Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/877064
DGA QUARTERLY 27 mately 120 miles per hour. That is the speed of free-fall descent. Hurt Locker was challenging predomi- nantly because of the heat and those EOD [Explosive Ordinance Disposal] suits are filled with ceramic plates. And Jeremy [Renner] is wearing something that weighs close to 100 pounds in well over 110-degree weather. I wanted so badly to put a double in that suit, for the distant shots of his walking. But I'm sure for every fi lmmaker, it's in the details. And Jeremy, gratefully, realized that it had to be him. But that was one of the greatest challenges, to make sure that he was comfortable and drinking a lot of water to bring his core body temperature down. If you think a challenge through rationally, clearly, patiently, not im- pulsively, you will fi nd a solution. For example, you can fi nd a way to shoot night-vision footage in the Middle East [as in Zero Dark Thirty]. And that was challenging because if you're wearing night-vision goggles, you can't have real light on the set, it'll hurt your eyes. Sort of like star- ing into the eclipse, because light is so profoundly magnifi ed. However, the set can have virtually no light whatsoever. The terrain is very rocky, an undulating surface that you're traversing with a lot of equipment. So that was challenging, making sure that nobody was hurt. Q: So the compound where bin Laden is killed, where was that constructed? A: Just adjacent to the Dead Sea in Jordan. And this village had this valley that was virtually identical to the topography of that area in Pakistan. Jeremy [Hindle] basically built the compound from the ground up. That began when I fi rst started shooting. And so every weekend, I would go visit him. And it was astonishing. Just seeing it appear, everything, down to the tile and the size of the hallways. He even planted the fi eld opposite. It was an extraordinary feat of art department prowess. Q: The detail of your films is uncanny, whether it's Keanu Reeves' football helmet alarm clock in Point Break or the scene in Zero Dark Thirty just before the CIA analyst played by Jennifer Ehle gets killed— the car with the explosives is entering the military compound and you see a black cat cross the road. A: That really happened. There are cats all over Jordan, and this was a real military base that today is probably housing Syrian refugees but at the time of shooting was virtually empty. And when we were shooting a car coming down the alley, and this cat crosses, and it's a black cat… those are the kind of moments where you think, 'I guess it was meant to be.' Q: Let's talk about your formative years as an art student. A: I went to the San Francisco Art Institute to study abstract expres- sionist painting [with a] phenomenal teacher, Sam Tchakalian, who was a great painter. He had photographed my paintings and submitted Above, Kathryn Bigelow fi lms in Jordan, where temperatures reached north of 110 degrees, for The Hurt Locker, which earned her the DGA and Academy awards for directing—a fi rst for a woman in both instances. Opposite, Bigelow returned to the Middle East to direct her follow-up fi lm, Zero Dark Thirty, which chronicled the hunt for Osama bin Laden. " If you think a challenge through rationally, clearly, patiently, not impulsively, you will fi nd a solution. "