Why Kathryn Bigelow’s eighth movie was “the first time” she had creative control
It can take a long time for a filmmaker to make a movie where they truly feel like they’re in control. Studios love to interfere because, at the end of the day, it’s a money game, and decisions need to be made to generate the most profit.
Creative control is made even more difficult if you’re a female filmmaker, because sadly, the opportunities are few and far between. It’s only been in recent years that women have been able to more easily pick up a camera from back in the days of Old Hollywood, where there were many years in which there were no active female directors at all, but things really started to change when Kathryn Bigelow won a ‘Best Director’ Oscar.
Since the Academy Awards’ inception in the 1920s, it wouldn’t be until 2010 that a woman would earn the prize, which is one of the most coveted in all of the film industry. It was for The Hurt Locker, Bigelow’s eighth outing as a director, and it was also a filming experience she noted as being “the first time” she truly had creative control.
Never before had the director worked independently, but she decided that if she was going to make The Hurt Locker work exactly how she wanted, it was going to have to be made outside of the studio system, which made it not an easy one to shoot, but Bigelow was dedicated to making a war film that felt as authentic as possible.
Hence, rather than emulating the treacherous conditions on a sound stage, she took her cast and crew right into the sweltering heat of Jordan, not far from the Iraqi border, where temperatures soared to 135 degrees, to satisfactory but difficult results.
Talking to AV Club, she explained, “We never approached any other financing avenue. I wanted to keep it as independent as humanly possible, and I wanted to shoot in the Middle East. That alone probably would have been a non-starter. And then I anticipated that and didn’t pursue.”
She admitted that, “To be honest, I’ve never made a non-independent movie. No matter what scale it’s been, it’s always been independent. So I wanted to retain complete creative control, I wanted final cut, I wanted the opportunity to cast breakout, emerging talent, and as I said, shoot in the Middle East.”
With these conditions non-negotiable for Bigelow, she financed the film herself, using a budget of $15million, which proved to be a smart idea, because The Hurt Locker grossed almost $50m, and earned widespread acclaim. Besides ‘Best Director’, it was even crowned ‘Best Picture’ at the Oscars, while it scooped up four other accolades, including ‘Best Sound Editing’ and ‘Best Original Screenplay’.
Amazingly, this was a new experience for her in terms of having the final cut. “I’ve never had it contractually. This is the first time, contractually,” she revealed. While she admitted that “I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve worked with very little to no compromise”, in the past, it was still a whole new experience to work independently and not have a studio breathing down her neck.
