like soldiers. GTFOH!

>Jesus H. Christ, you act like Mark Boal just took John
>McClane and transported him to Iraq, then had Kathryn Bigelow
>follow him around with a handheld camera.
>
>I mean, honestly.
>
>
>wga.com
>
>>Bombs Under Baghdad
>Written by Denis Faye
>
>Given Time recently described The Hurt Locker as “a near
>perfect war movie,” its adrenaline-addicted protagonist, bomb
>squad Army staff sergeant William James (played by Jeremy
>Renner) could go down as one of the silver screen’s great
>macho protagonists, right next to Rooster Cogburn, Snake
>Plisskin and Martin Riggs. The problem is, that’s not what
>screenwriter Mark Boal had in mind.
>
>“I don’t think any of it was Hollywood-inspired. It was
>inspired by real life,” claims Boal, a veteran Rolling Stone,
>Playboy and The Village Voice journalist who is responsible
>for the article upon which Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah
>was based. “It’s a composite of different people that I met.
>My source material was the reporting that I’ve done. I didn’t
>have a bunch of cinematic references.”
>
>True, it’s obvious that Boal’s time as an embedded reporter in
>Iraq shaped The Hurt Locker, directed by Katherine Bigelow,
>into something special, but James’ manly antics are, at times,
>one eye-patch short of John Wayne. It’s something the writer
>only figured out in retrospect.
>
>“Having talked to a bunch of people who know more about film
>than I do, I realize that, in fact, he does come from a long
>line of cinematic types,” he concedes. “But at the time it was
>just an attempt to be faithful to real life and actually
>present somebody that was a complicated character. Maybe on
>the surface, to be brimming with bravado and hubris, yet have
>an inner life that’s very complicated.”
>
>Boal talked with the Writers Guild of America, West Web site
>recently about the importance of these inner character lives
>in The Hurt Locker, how journalism intersects with
>screenwriting, and how Paul Haggis saved him from having to
>apply to film school.
>
>
>Does your journalism background affect the way you approach
>screenwriting?
>
>It does. Journalism is all about telling a story through
>detail, so I took that aspect with me to screenwriting. And as
>a journalist, my head is oriented toward stories that are
>topical and relevant.
>
>
>Another thing you pick up on as a journalist is capturing the
>dialogue, because sometimes you don’t have a tape recorder.
>I’ve interviewed all kinds of people and listened to different
>people talk from different walks of life. That professional
>listening you do as a journalist carries over into
>screenwriting when it comes time to invent characters.
>
>
>So you have an innate sense of dialogue after interviewing all
>those people?
>
>I don’t know. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I think in
>terms of similarities between the two forms. The type of
>journalism that I do, which is long-form feature writing, is
>very detail-oriented and dialogue is very important to telling
>the story.
>
>
>How did you feel about not being restrained by the facts as a
>screenwriter? Good or bad?
>
>It was good and bad. It was in some ways really liberating and
>exciting to be able to invent, but at the same time, as is the
>case with everything, sometimes it’s easier to have fewer
>possibilities than unlimited possibilities.
>
>
>The internal arcs of the characters seemed far more important
>than the outer arc of keeping bombs from exploding. Was that
>intentional?
>
>Yeah. It’s a character piece sort of masquerading as an action
>movie.
>
>
>It was inspired by your time as an embedded journalist. From
>all the stories you garnered from that, why was this the one
>you decided to tell?
>
>That goes back to the character. I was really struck by the
>personalities that I met over there. I just really wanted to
>tell a character story that took you past the headlines of
>what it means to be a hero, to look at somebody who has a lot
>of courage and bravado and pays a price for that. That was
>really the starting point – starting from character more than
>any particular plot line. Then it became about marrying that
>character, or those different characters, with a through
>line.
>
>
>Speaking of that through line, it’s not really the standard
>three-act structure. It felt episodic, yet you managed to tell
>a really compelling story without the standard conventions.
>
>It’s the not the first war movie to be told in chapters.
>Apocalypse Now is told in chapters, in sort of an episodic
>way. And I think that war is like that in the sense that war
>doesn’t have a neat, little through line. I didn’t want to
>write one of those movies where the whole story revolved
>around one particular mission because I was trying to capture
>the daily grind of the job. It would have felt like a
>distasteful imposition to make it seem like there was one
>master terrorist and all these guys had to do was diffuse this
>one masterful bomb and everything would be okay. It’s not like
>that. It’s a tidal wave of bombs. So the structure came about
>in an attempt to be faithful to the reality of the situation,
>more than any preconceived notion that it should be three acts
>or four acts or episodic or something else. I think there’s
>nothing wrong with those kinds of (three act) movies, but
>there are enough of them out there, so why not try something
>different?
>
>By the way, ironically, the character stuff does kind of break
>down into three acts. In some ways it’s hard to get around.
>
>
>How do you compare this experience with In the Valley of Elah
>with Paul Haggis?
>
>They were both great, but it’s apples and oranges. I worked
>closely with Paul. It was basically my screenwriting graduate
>seminar compressed into a short period of time. That was
>really his movie, but with The Hurt Locker, I wrote the
>script, I produced it with Katherine, and I’ve been involved
>with it every step of the creative process, from writing to
>set design to editing. I was enmeshed in the film.
>
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