Kathryn Bigelow Will Tell You What To Do

Or, WHY I LOVE K.BIG

The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathyrn Bigelow, has been nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture.

Point Break, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, hit theatres the long, hot summer I was fifteen. The film, about a bunch of surfers led by the philosophical Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) who fund their passion for riding waves by robbing banks (while wearing masks of former U.S. presidents), had a major impact on my teenage self.

I could see a life on the grid looming with all of its confines. I wanted the freedom the surfers enjoyed, a freedom taken at a high risk and the point of a gun. Robbing banks may have been more the surfers’ day job than their passion, but it still looked like a kick.

more at the jump…

Bodhi and his gang of surfers didn’t compromise. They lived by their own rules. They made the life they wanted for themselves. What they loved was pursuing the big waves. And so they spent their days—not in an office, dreaming about the weekend–but in the saltwater and sun. Nights they passed on the beach drinking around a bonfire. They kept things simple and fierce.

Thelma & Louise came out that same summer of 1991. Another movie focused on characters trying to escape the confines of a limiting culture. But unliked Bodhi and his surfers, the limits Thelma & Louise faced had–in some part–to do with being women. Unlike the surfers, the two women’s crime was unplanned. But like Bodhi and Co., Thelma & Louise’s offense pushed them outside the parameters of the law and of society. Their crime set them free.

That summer I went to see Point Break and Thelma & Louise seven or eight times each. And then I climbed out my bedroom window in the middle of the night and ran away from home. I left behind an inflammatory note, which ended with a quote from John Irving. “Life is serious, but Art is fun.” I made it as far as Matamoros, Mexico.

That attempt at running away only lasted a few days. And luckily it didn’t result in my having to chose between 1) being judged by a criminal justice system that didn’t understand me, or 2) Death, which was the final choice shared by Bodhi, Thelma and Louise.

But six years later, I “ran off” again, this time to fight fire on a nearly all male elite, type 1 “Hotshot” crew of forest firefighters. In the years that followed, I wrote a novel based on the experience. Novel writing and publication is an equal opportunity profession as far as gender goes. (Now which gender is more likely to win awards and end up on Best of Lists–a different matter).

But when my unsold novel was optioned for film last year and the producer asked me to write the screenplay, I entered a profession as dominated by men as forest firefighting. Ironically, the percentage of female screenwriters of top grossing films is comparable to that of female elite forest firefighters. About 15%.

At first the slim percentage of women screenwriters seemed daunting, but then I remembered I feel best when I’m trying to do something that typically remains in the purview of men. And then again, writing to me is like surfing to Bodhi. Just something I’ve got to do. The only trick being finding a way to support the habit.

To be reductive, Point Break—like The Hurt Locker—is a movie about men doing manly things.

And Kathyrn Bigelow intrigues me exactly because she is a woman doing a very manly thing—directing films.

Women are underrepresented in film as actors, producers and screenwriters. But they are most underrepresented as directors. *

I’ve discussed this reality with a female producer friend, who says she thinks women are more highly represented as producers than as directors, because producing is a bit of a “mommy role.” Producers encourage writers, and drum up money and make lots of lists—of potential directors and actors and studios. They sheperd things along and make things happen behind the scenes.

Directors, on the other hand, tell people what to do. And while many women likely aren’t given the opportunity to direct, many more perhaps simply aren’t comfortable with the what the job entails.

Kathryn Bigelow is clearly not only very comfortable directing, but stunningly talented at it as well, as evidenced by The Hurt Locker.

She was the first woman to win the BAFTA award for Best Director. And she may very well become the first woman to win Best Director at the Oscars this Sunday.

Which would be proof that sometimes it’s better to pursue your dreams by pushing against–and working within– the realities of the world as it is, than by merely running away.

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*Of the 100 top grossing films of 2007, only 3 were directed by women.

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