I feel like I’ve been name-dropping (film-dropping?) Zero Dark Thirty all week. I know I’ve mentioned it in like half a dozen posts already. In my defense, I just saw it over the weekend I think it’s a really, really good film. I don’t really understand the “generation-defining film” or “Best film of the decade” labels being given to ZDT, but it was a well-made, thought-provoking, bold, interesting film with great performances. I don’t think it’s the definitive “killing Bin Laden” movie (at least, I hope not), but I took it as more “This is what the CIA is like now, this is how CIA officers had to change and respond to the changing intelligence landscape, this is a microcosm of the successes and failures of modern intelligence work.”

So it’s sad to me, having seen ZDT, that the conversation about the film is dominated by the continuously nonsensical debate about torture and what constitutes torture and how we do and do not torture people. Once you see the film… I don’t know, I didn’t come out of it thinking “OMG, torture is awesome, torture always brings such great leads!” The point that’s made in ZDT is cold, cynical and brief: torture dehumanizes not just the tortured, but the torturers. No one “wins” and torture is either zero-sum gain or it causes more problems than it solves. As Jason Clarke’s character tells Maya (Jessica Chastain’s character), “Politics are changing and you don’t want to be the last one holding the dog collar when the oversight committee comes.”

But still, people are freaking out and they will continue to freak out and blame Kathryn Bigelow for daring to portray methods of “enhanced interrogation” which were debated on the floor of the Senate and publicly and legally pushed by President Bush, VP Dick Cheney and their team of revenge-seeking Washington sadists (see: John Yoo, John Bybee, David Addington). I believe that Kathryn Bigelow’s snub for a Best Director Oscar nomination was about this controversy in particular. So, at long last, Bigelow has written a defense of her film and her portrayal of torture. Here you go:

For a long time, measuring more years than I care to count, I thought the movie that became “Zero Dark Thirty” would never happen. The goal, to make a modern, rigorous film about counter-terrorism, centered on one of the most important and classified missions in American history, was exciting and worthy enough, or so it seemed. But there were too many obstacles, too many secrets, and politicians standing in the way of an easy path.

Somehow, though, thanks to the great persistence of my filmmaking team and an enormous dose of luck, we got the movie made and found studio partners with the courage to release it.

Then came the controversy.

Now that “Zero Dark Thirty” has appeared in cinemas nationwide, many people have asked me if I was surprised by the brouhaha that surrounded the film while it was still in limited release, when many thoughtful people were characterizing it in wildly contradictory ways.

The Times asked me to elaborate on recent statements I’ve made in response to these issues. I’m not sure I have anything new to add, but I can try to be concise and clear.

First of all: I support every American’s 1st Amendment right to create works of art and speak their conscience without government interference or harassment. As a lifelong pacifist, I support all protests against the use of torture, and, quite simply, inhumane treatment of any kind.

But I do wonder if some of the sentiments alternately expressed about the film might be more appropriately directed at those who instituted and ordered these U.S. policies, as opposed to a motion picture that brings the story to the screen.

Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement. If it was, no artist would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them, and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time.

This is an important principle to stand up for, and it bears repeating. For confusing depiction with endorsement is the first step toward chilling any American artist’s ability and right to shine a light on dark deeds, especially when those deeds are cloaked in layers of secrecy and government obfuscation.

Indeed, I’m very proud to be part of a Hollywood community that has made searing war films part of its cinematic tradition. Clearly, none of those films would have been possible if directors from other eras had shied away from depicting the harsh realities of combat.

On a practical and political level, it does seem illogical to me to make a case against torture by ignoring or denying the role it played in U.S. counter-terrorism policy and practices.

Experts disagree sharply on the facts and particulars of the intelligence hunt, and doubtlessly that debate will continue. As for what I personally believe, which has been the subject of inquiries, accusations and speculation, I think Osama bin Laden was found due to ingenious detective work. Torture was, however, as we all know, employed in the early years of the hunt. That doesn’t mean it was the key to finding Bin Laden. It means it is a part of the story we couldn’t ignore. War, obviously, isn’t pretty, and we were not interested in portraying this military action as free of moral consequences.

In that vein, we should never discount and never forget the thousands of innocent lives lost on 9/11 and subsequent terrorist attacks. We should never forget the brave work of those professionals in the military and intelligence communities who paid the ultimate price in the effort to combat a grave threat to this nation’s safety and security.

Bin Laden wasn’t defeated by superheroes zooming down from the sky; he was defeated by ordinary Americans who fought bravely even as they sometimes crossed moral lines, who labored greatly and intently, who gave all of themselves in both victory and defeat, in life and in death, for the defense of this nation.

[From the LA Times]

Yeah. Cosign. I completely agree that if you want to be angry about the portrayal of torture in a film, you should probably direct your anger at the men who wrote The Torture Memos and opened the door for “enhanced interrogations” rather than the artist who is struggling to accurately DEPICT NOT ENDORSE those methods. #TeamBigelow

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Here is a photo of director Kathryn Bigelow at the Los Angeles premiere of her latest film, Zero Dark Thirty. She’s such a confident-looking woman who also just happens to be really damn good at her job too, right? After all, she won the Best Director Oscar in 2009 for The Hurt Locker (famously beating her ex-husband, James Cameron, who was also nominated for his work on Avatar), and she might very well win this year for Zero Dark Thirty as well. That’s the buzz anyway.

If Bret Easton Ellis has anything to do with it, however, (and thankfully, he won’t have anything to do with it at all) Kathryn will not win any major awards for her latest effort because the world will realize the unerring truth of his opinion that Kathryn has only risen to the top of her game because she’s a beautiful woman. In fact, Bret further postulates that if Kathryn were a dude, people would have barely taken any notice of her films at all. Even Point Break? Them’s fighting words.

If you’re not familiar with the works of Bret Easton Ellis, he’s the once prolific author of novels like Less Than Zero and American Psycho that were deliciously filled with all manner of biting social satire. To be honest though, Bret hasn’t done much lately except tweet borderline-offensive statements and write The Canyons (Lindsay Lohan’s latest movie). Dude also digs shades. A lot.

Here’s what happened to spark this latest controversy — about a week ago, Bret started tweeting (and he admits now that he was drunk off his ass while doing so) crap like, “Kathryn Bigelow would be considered a mildly interesting filmmaker if she was a man but since she’s a very hot woman she’s really overrated.” And then it kind of snowballed from there. Here are the relevant tweets:

Now Bret has admitted that he was “beyond douchiness” to tweet the things he did about Kathryn’s work, but not really. He still pretty much stands by everything he’s said except for the word “junk,” and he attempts to explain everything in a former apology letter posted to Kathryn on the Daily Beast. God, this sucker is long, but here are the relevant excerpts:

This was my Twitter-casual response to both the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle awarding Bigelow best director of the year, and awarding her new movie Zero Dark Thirty, about the 10-year hunt for Osama bin Laden, Best Picture. I hadn’t seen Zero Dark Thirty but thought, in the Twitter-moment, can it really be that good? Marc Boal and Kathryn Bigelow and another war film?

Everything about their previous effort, The Hurt Locker, seemed to me not bad, exactly, but tepid, simplistic, crude, TV-movie-ish–except for the extended sniper set-piece, ending with a whirlwind of sand blowing across the desert, a haunting visual grace note to a scary, tense scene. The Hurt Locker also felt like it was directed by a man. Its testosterone level was palpable, whereas in Sofia Coppola’s work you’re aware of a much softer presence behind the camera. In 2009, after The Hurt Locker had dominated the Oscars, I had tweeted something along the lines of: the main aspect of The Hurt Locker that interests me most is that it was directed by a “beautiful woman” rather than a man (or something like that). No one really said anything; there was very little favoriting or retweeting or unfollowing then.

The only thing that bothers me about [my tweets] is the use of the word “junk.” No, the movies listed above aren’t junk. Their level of craftsmanship is often quite high. They might be just OK as movies, but they’re certainly not junk in terms of execution. “Junk” is the writer’s exclamation point. It’s the writer’s Twitter flourish to a kind of dead sentence, filled with a list, and an echo of what bothered me about The Hurt Locker–because she was again being sold as the front-runner for perhaps her second directing Oscar with what looked like a very similar film. And what point was I trying to make exactly? I mean, what “visionary” filmmaker ever wins an Oscar? So what if competent technicians usually win it? That’s why the Oscars exist. So: I don’t really like any of the above films–and except for the use of the word “junk” I’m fine with that tweet (it’s not gender specific–it’s specifically about Bigelow’s work).

Twitter seems like a writer’s funhouse to me, not something I’d use “seriously” to “hurt” someone. I don’t want to hurt anybody. And I’m not even saying that Kathryn Bigelow was hurt or even noticed the tweets or even cared. I imagine her balls are bigger than that. I thought that in the Bigelow tweets people might find a certain truth (Yes, Bret! Tell us the truth! You’d know!) about the hypocrisy of the world, of the Hollywood mindset, beautiful women in the movie biz, reverse sexism, etc. But they ultimately revealed a much more layered sexism that, I guess I thought as a gay man, I could get away with since my supposed vitriol about Bigelow was coming from another “oppressed” class. But in 140 characters it didn’t land that way.

I’ve taken a lot of hits in my career–they bounce off. The armor was built so long ago that I now assume everyone else in the public eye can handle it when they’re shot at. But the outcry over the Bigelow tweets was eye-opening to me in a way that nothing else has ever been. I got it. I heard it. I looked back at what I was doing with those tweets (quickly, unconsciously, hurriedly, drunkenly) and I have to admit they simply back-fired. Which is why I’m writing this. No one asked me to write this. I simply write something like this when I’m in pain. And I’ve been slowly feeling a painfulness when reading all of the articles reacting to those tweets.

The American press’s reaction to the Bigelow tweets was swift and overwhelming. Without reading the news I could still feel it swirling in the air because everyone around me was talking about it. It was by far the most sustained attack on anything I had tweeted about. What was odd about the collective anger was that the tweets were solely about daunting, glamorous Kathryn Bigelow–they were not directed at women everywhere, yet women united and seemed to bond over what they perceived as both a much broader and more personal “attack” (a word used often in the articles in the days that followed). What started bothering me was: what does my thinking Bigelow is physically hot have to do with anything? What point was I trying to make with that? That her success is due to her physicality? Was there anyway to get my real thoughts and feelings through in 140 characters and in a coherent and intelligent manner? Or do 140 characters (or less) determine that what you’re trying to say is sometimes going to come off as shallow, or mean-spirited, or wrong?

[From Daily Beast]

Okay, one decent thing I can say about Bret Easton Ellis in this situation is that at least he didn’t pull a Chris Brown and delete his Twitter account in a fit of childish anger after the controversy hit. Still, Bret appears to be blaming the medium instead of the message that his tweets sent. Somehow, he feels like the fact that he was confined to a series of 140 character tweets is an excuse for the fact that he explicitly said that Kathryn is only considered a great director because she’s a hot chick. Also, the fact that Bret is a gay male is supposed to have some effect on how we interpret his sexist words, I guess. Whatever.

Ultimately, Bret might admit to being “in pain” over the reaction to his words, but he still doesn’t get why his statements were offensive, and in a column that spans over 2000 words, he’s still failed explain his point more fully. As for Bret’s excuse that alcohol was to blame for his tweets, he may just be one of those people whose true personality is merely revealed by the hard stuff. As in, he’s probably always a bit of a douche, and the hard douche comes out with the hard liquor. Who knows? Honestly, it never ceases to amaze me how celebrities act out on Twitter (i.e., Eli Roth and his tissue evidence) and then are somehow surprised when people notice and make a big deal out of it. With 365,489 followers, you’d think that Bret Easton Ellis would realize that at least a few of his followers are reading and retweeting everything that he tweets.

Photos courtesy of Bret Easton Ellis on Facebook, Twitter, and WENN

Sigourney Weaver came off a little “sour grapes” in a recent press conference promoting “Avatar” in Brazil this weekend. Weaver has a long history of working with the blockbuster movie’s director, James Cameron, and she thinks his snub at this year’s Academy Awards was intentional on the part of the Academy. Weaver hinted that the Oscar voters were intent on making Kathryn Bigelow, Cameron’s ex-wife and director of “The Hurt Locker,” the feel-good story of the awards season by making her the first female director to take home a trophy.

While promoting ‘Avatar’ in Brazil over the weekend, Sigourney Weaver slammed the Academy for voting for ‘The Hurt Locker’ and Kathryn Bigelow. She said Jim Cameron lost to his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow, because she’s a woman–who became the first ever to take home the Best Director Oscar.

“Jim didn’t have breasts, and I think that was the reason,” she told told Folha Online, a Brazilian news site. “He should have taken home that Oscar.”

Weaver also voiced her disapproval of the Best Picture choice, suggesting it should have gone to ‘Avatar.’

“In the past, ‘Avatar’ would have won because they [Oscar voters] loved to hand out awards to big productions, like ‘Ben-Hur.’ Today it’s fashionable to give the Oscar to a small movie that nobody saw,” Weaver said.

‘The Hurt Locker’ has taken in a total of $40 million worldwide ($16 million in the US), while ‘Avatar’ has grossed a whopping $2.7 billion worldwide ($743.7 million in the US).

[From Huffington Post]

Let’s hope Sigourney was just kidding around, otherwise she comes off as kind of a bitch here. I mean, it is pretty obvious that “Avatar” is a huge commercial success over “The Hurt Locker,” so what if it didn’t take home any Oscars? I also think it’s quite presumptuous of Weaver to say that if James Cameron were a woman, or it Kathryn Bigelow were not, the voting results would be different. Maybe the Academy didn’t vote for James because they didn’t think his movie was all that great, visual effects aside. Or maybe it’s because James Cameron has a reputation for being an egomaniac and an asshole, and voters didn’t want to make his head any bigger. Who knows?

What a beautiful historic moment! Kathryn Bigelow, director of The Hurt Locker, became the first women in the history of the Oscars to receive the Best Director Oscar. Not only that, but The Hurt Locker won Best Picture, the small, tiny, independent war film on a shoestring budget slayed the enormous Avatar juggernaut. Bigelow seemed overwhelmed, but gracious, acknowledging “The moment of the lifetime.” Bigelow thanked the screenwriter first, then the cast. She thanked everyone involved with producing and distributing the film, then she dedicated the award to the men and women serving overseas in the military. She reiterated the same thing when she and her team won Best Picture.

I thought Bigelow was very classy during her speech, and I think The Hurt Locker was a very worthy film. It blew me away when I saw it, and you could tell – just by the work of the “cameo” talent, including Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pierce, amongst others – that this was a project people really believed in. I honestly thought the Academy would end up splitting the vote between Bigelow and Avatar, but I was wrong! I’m not sorry either.

Congratulations to Bigelow and the Hurt Locker team!

‘The Hurt Locker’ promotional images courtesy of WENN.

The Oscars are coming soon, and I can’t wait. As the campaigns reach a fever pitch, certain categories are being solidified, and other categories are still up for grabs. It’s pretty much a shoo-in that Jeff Bridges is going to take Best Actor, and although Sandra Bullock is the easy choice for Best Actress, I could conceivably see Meryl Streep as the “underdog” winner. Christoph Waltz is definitely going home with Best Supporting Actor, and Mo’Nique is probably going to win Supporting Actress, although that one isn’t as established as many think.

One of the biggest contests of the year will be for Best Director and Best Picture. James Cameron and Avatar seem like the easy favorites – Avatar, after all, has made a bajillion dollars, and Cameron and his team pretty much invented a new way to make movies. So you’d think Cameron and Avatar would be the established winners by now, right? Not so much. Because Hollywood loves to shatter a glass ceiling, and this year that glass ceiling might be for the first woman to ever win Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow, director of The Hurt Locker. She also happens to be Cameron’s ex-wife. And she also happens to be a director Cameron has long-championed.

When Cameron was being interviewed by Charlie Rose yesterday, he claimed that his “fantasy” was for Bigelow to win Best Director, and for Avatar to win Best Picture. Which is honestly how I think it’s going to go down, but it’s still nice to hear Cameron be so magnanimous with a fellow director, not to mention his ex-wife. HuffPo has the video, but here’s the transcript of the exchange with Charlie Rose:

Charlie Rose:
What do you make of this competition between you and Kathryn Bigelow? Two very different people who married. But more than that, two people who share this sense of wanting to be good filmmakers.
James Cameron:
Yeah, I think we’re really not that different in so many ways, and we know that about each other, that we’re both dedicated to the craft. And for both of us, it’s very much about the work and about a total, consuming passion for filmmaking. And you know, I think that’s what drew us together, is each respected the other’s passion and craft and so on, plus she was gorgeous.
Charlie Rose:
Is gorgeous.
James Cameron:
Yeah. You know, but in our minds, it’s not a competition. That’s a narrative that’s imposed by others, because it’s, you know, it makes a good story. We’re so celebratory of each other’s work, and we’ve remained — you know, I produced two of her films, one of which I produced — wrote and produced — wrote it with Jay Cocks — after we were divorced. So, we’ve worked together, and we’ve been supportive colleagues. She saw “Avatar” five times at different stages of its development, from very crude –

Charlie Rose:
You mean you would go show it to her and say tell me what you think.
James Cameron:
Yeah. She’s come over — and tirelessly come over, watch the film. This is over a period of six or eight months and give me notes and even Mark Boal, who wrote “The Hurt Locker,” came and gave me very good notes, very helpful notes. And they had shared Hurt Locker with me earlier on.

Charlie Rose:
Right.
James Cameron:
And my note was very simple. Don’t change a damn thing. You know, because they showed it to me fairly late in the process because I had been shooting. And I said, don’t change a damn thing. This thing is great. And they were, of course, very nervous –

Charlie Rose:
Why is it so great, do you think?
James Cameron:
I think just because it’s consummately good filmmaking — excuse me, consummately good filmmaking. I mean, you are in those guys’ shoes, and you’re there. I mean, I have been at screenings and watched people literally sit on the edge of their seat, literally. I mean, you hear that expression all the time. Literally sit forward for the entire movie, hand clinched like this. It’s that tight. It’s that taught, you know. And for her to — I mean, she’s outgunned the guys, you know, definitely. And of course, her –

Charlie Rose:
You’re not surprised by that.
James Cameron:
Not at all, not at all because she’s always done that. But it’s the recognition, you know, finally the recognition catching up with the scope of her talent.

Charlie Rose:
So if someone sitting there says, look, I’m going to give it to Cameron, best picture but Bigelow best director –
James Cameron:
That would be a fantasy. That would be my fantasy outcome, absolutely.

Charlie Rose:
That would be what you’d like to see?
James Cameron:
That’s the best possible outcome because it’s — because I know how hard my team worked and how much they would — how proud they would be of that accolade, you know what I mean? And look, for myself, I have already got an Oscar. I’ve got a couple of them, you know. And I respect the whole institution of the Academy Awards because it’s so — it’s the pinnacle of achievement in my chosen profession. But I don’t really need another one. But to be honored — you know, to have the team honored and for their accomplishment, that would mean so much to them. And I think that would be the fantasy outcome in all of this.

Charlie Rose:
So you’re saying to the voters, please take a look at my team and go for us as best picture. But –
James Cameron:
Yeah, and I –
Charlie Rose:
– go for Kathryn Bigelow for best director.
James Cameron:
I mean, all I can say is that that would make me very happy if that — you know, I don’t want to try to get –

Charlie Rose:
Happier than if it was best director for James Cameron?
James Cameron:
Honestly, yes.
Charlie Rose:
I believe you.
James Cameron:
Absolutely. I mean, I just think she’s worked so hard for so long. And there’s something very irresistible about the idea of a woman finally being anointed in that role. It’s ridiculously long overdue. And she, of course, would reject that being a woman should have anything to do with it.

[Transcript from ‘The Charlie Rose Show’ via HuffPo]

So at least we know Cameron gets along with at least one of his ex-wives… although bat-sh-t crazy Linda Hamiliton thinks they still get along too. Just sayin’. I do think it’s high time a woman won Best Director, but I fear the backlash against Bigelow if she wins, especially because it’s such a small film. I tend to think Cameron worries about a backlash against her too, and that’s why he’s coming out ahead of the Oscars to tell the industry that he’ll support her victory if it happens. Which is extremely classy, I think.

James Cameron at the Santa Barbara Film Festival on February 6, 2010. Bigelow on Valentine’s Day in Beverly Hills. Credit: WENN.