The Road to Oscar Paved With Vamps and Action Movies: A Tribute to Kathryn Bigelow
In celebration of Women in Horror Month we will be running a series of articles focused on the women of horror from guest contributors. Articles will run the gamut from spotlighting women authors, women filmmakers, female characters in horror films, scream queens, horrific artists and more and will run every week in February!
This week we have blogger Lizzie “Horror Fatale” Borden from HorrorFatale.com who has written a tribute to the first female director awarded an Oscar, Kathryn Bigelow. Check it out below!
By Lizzie “Horror Fatale” Borden of Horrorfatale.com
It was the match-up of the 2010 Oscars – the battle of the formally married directors, Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron. The breakout indie hit, Bigelow’s, The Hurt Locker versus the big budget Hollywood blockbuster Avatar, directed by Cameron. And like something out of a Hollywood script, Bigelow was victorious, becoming the first female director to take home the Oscar for best director.
The California born Bigelow had an early passion for art. The daughter of a paint storeowner, Bigelow received an undergraduate degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1972. She later received her master’s degree from Columbia University in their film program. While still enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute Bigelow was accepted into the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study scholarship program. In 2010 she donated her paper archive, which includes both process and creative documentation such as script filming schedules, storyboards, location scouting reports and casting notes to The Museum of Modern Art.
Bigelow’s first foray into the film world was during her time at Columbia where in 1978 she filmed a 20-minute short called, The Set-Up. After graduating she did some modeling work, turning back to film Bigelow directed her first feature in 1981, The Loveless. The film starred then unknown actor Willem Dafoe. Bigelow later moving to Los Angles, where she, with the help director and writer Walter Hill (48 Hrs., Alien, The Driver), was able to get a production deal, mostly because of the attention generated from The Loveless.
Bigelow then brought us one the most acclaimed, stylishly shot, suspenseful films of all time. No, not The Hurt Locker, but rather the 1987 vampire classic, Near Dark. Although Bigelow would claim the Oscar for the masterful Hurt Locker, one of her early-unsung gems is Near Dark. This film earned her a legion of horror fans long before Keanu would help make her work a household name (more on that later).
Near Dark, just to refresh your memory, is the vampire movie that starred future Heroes star Adrian Pasdar as Caleb Colten, a small town guy who falls quickly for Mae (Jenny Wright) when she comes to his dusty farm town. We soon learn that Mae, who looks to be doing her best ‘80s Madonna impression, is a vampire. After spending their first night together, Mae takes a bite out of Caleb. Caleb then leaves his small town behind as he joins Mae’s “family”, including a young Bill Paxton, creepy child vamp (Joshua Miller) and horror icon Lance Henriksen as they drive a sun-proof Winnebago across the desert landscape.
Near Dark faced some heavy competition at the box office upon its release in the summer of ’87 as another famous teen vamp movie hit the theater at the same time – The Lost Boys. Although both movies had relatively small budgets as certainly compared to today’s standards, Lost Boys more than tripled its original 8.5 million dollar budget. Near Dark underperformed making only 3.3 million dollars, not even making back its 5 million dollar budget.
As many true vampire film connoisseurs can tell you regarding plot, visuals and certainly violence, Near Dark is as good and in some respects better than Lost Boys. But, Lost Boys had the two Coreys (at the height of that whole mania), Kiefer Sutherland and Jason Patric at its advantage. Patric oddly enough is Joshua Miller’s half-brother. How’s that for irony? Let’s just say Near Dark was the edgier Lost Boys. Where as Lost Boys was an ode to MTV, Near Dark was a grittier version.
Not only did Bigelow take the director’s helm on Near Dark, she actually co-wrote the film as well. Bigelow mixes classic vampire folklore with a Western setting, throwing in a small town love story in for good measure. Sorry, Twi-hards, this love story was hot and sexy and no vamps glowed or sparkled in any way. Although Near Dark was under appreciated at the time of its release, it has gone on to gain a strong following. In fact, the film is ranked number 34 on Rotten Tomatoes’ Top 50 Horror Movies.
Bigelow followed the vampire film by jumping into the action thriller venue with 1990’s Blue Steel, which starred scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis and Clancy Brown. This film pitted a female lead Curtis against a murderous sociopath played most brilliantly by the late Ron Silver.
Then there was Bigelow’s claim to fame up until Hurt Locker — Point Break. If you’re like me and were a teen in 1991, stand up right now and applaud Ms. Bigelow for bringing us a sopping wet Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. Bravo! Personally, I think she should have received an Oscar for bringing us that on-screen hotness alone.
Point Break was an action movie that involved Keanu Reeves as an undercover police that infiltrates a group of bank-robbing surfers. Although it was certainly not a cinematic classic rivaling Citizen Kane, it was quite the hit with the teen/young adult set and made Keanu Reeves a bona fide movie star. In fact, Reeves recently told Digital Spy Bigelow had to work hard to get him the part of Johnny Utah. For this Reeves says he will always owe Bigelow for the career-changing role.
With her wins of the BAFTA and Oscar for the Hurt Locker Bigelow became the first female to win awards as Best Director. Time magazine named Ms. Bigelow one of its 2010 100 Most Influential People in the World.
Bigelow said during a 1999 Hollywood Reporter Director Roundtable that she used The Hurt Locker, to bring light to a bad situation that is the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She said:
“I always want to make films. I think of it as a great opportunity to comment on the world in which we live. Perhaps just because I just came off The Hurt Locker and I’m thinking of the war and I think it’s a deplorable situation. It’s a great medium in which to speak about that. This is a war that cannot be won, why are we sending troops over there? Well, the only medium I have, the only opportunity I have, is to use film. There will always be issues I care about.”
Bigelow believes there should be more women directors, although there seems to be a resistance to female filmmakers. In 1990 during the press junket for Blue Steel she said:
“If there’s specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can’t change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies. It’s irrelevant who or what directed a movie, the important thing is that you either respond to it or you don’t. There should be more women directing; I think there’s just not the awareness that it’s really possible. It is.”
Who knows? Ladies, you might be directing a zombie movie (corn syrup make-up and all) starring your friends in your back-yard today, but through Bigelow’s continued work across genres (action, thriller, or horror) one day you could stand on stage at the Kodak Theater holding a little gold man. Like Reeves, we as female viewers are also grateful to you Kathryn. We are thankful to you for bringing us Near Dark, Point Break and Hurt Locker.
Monday, February 28th, 2011 at 10:03 am | Filed under News.
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