Director Kathryn Bigelow attends the Los Angeles special screening of her Netflix film ‘A House of Dynamite’ at The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, California.
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Director Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite is a hit for Netflix and has got audiences talking, which is precisely what the filmmaker wanted. While some are frustrated by the nuclear drama’s ambiguous ending, others struggle with the fact that the villain of the piece remains unknown.
“It was something we talked about from the beginning,” the acclaimed filmmaker explains to a packed house at the film’s premiere at Netflix’s iconic Egyptian Theatre. The other part of the “we” the two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker is referring to is screenwriter Noah Oppenheim. “If we were to have a quote-unquote bad guy, you can point your finger, and then that absolves you of any responsibility. That ambiguity was really critical, because we need to take responsibility for this. It’s not just a sim, and it’s too easy to do that. Ultimately, ambiguity is a necessity. The movie is basically a question that is asked, and I hope that the audience that takes it and has some interest in answering it.”
A House of Dynamite’s premise is straightforward. When a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond. Directed by Bigelow, whose other films include Point Break, The Hurt Locker, and Zero Dark Thirty, the ensemble cast includes Idris Elba as the President of the United States, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, and Anthony Ramos. A House of Dynamite is now streaming on Netflix.
‘A House Of Dynamite’s Threat Feels Real For Kathryn Bigelow
The idea of the threat of a nuclear attack on the United States is a reality that Bigelow, like so many others, has lived with.
“I grew up at a time when we had to hide under their desks in case of atomic bomb, like that’s going to do any good, so it was ingrained in me a little bit,” she tells the audience during a Q&A. “Looking around now, the whole idea of a world in which there’s over 12,000 nuclear weapons, if the count is accurate, we’re in a really combustible world and it has become normalized. We’re not shocked by that, and I guess I asked myself, ‘Is that the world I want to live in?’ I thought, ‘Well, maybe I’ll make a movie about it.'”
“I did some digging, and I had this idea of asking what if a nuclear ICBM was launched toward the continental United States? I spoke to some people and they directed me to Noah, our screenwriter and a former journalist, an extraordinary writer, and we started talking about it.”
The film’s title reflects how the filmmaker, who also directed the Cold War submarine movie K-19: The Widowmaker, views the world today.
“We live in a house of dynamite. How do you remove the dynamite from the walls? I hope that this could encourage a conversation, or at least an awareness,” she says, hopefully. “I think there are generations who don’t know what it is that we grew up with, or certainly I grew up with, living in complete fear of this happening. Hopefully, this covers that a little bit, or at least makes them curious. Do we want to live in a world that’s so combustible? That’s my question.”
Anthony Ramos as Major Daniel Gonzalez in ‘A House of Dynamite.’
Eros Hoagland/Netflix
Here’s What It Took To Piece Kathryn Bigelow’s Opus Together
A House of Dynamite is composed of multiple perspectives during one potentially catastrophic event. The event occupies an excruciatingly tense 18-minute window, unfolding in real time, from the moment a nuclear missile is detected until its estimated impact. The timeframe reflects the realistic timeline for an intercontinental ballistic missile, also known as an ICBM, which can reach the US from across the world in about 30 minutes. That created a challenge for editor Kirk Baxter, whose previous work includes Mank, The Killer, and Gone Girl.
“It was complicated,” he recalls. “I guess in some ways, we cut it twice, because when we went through it the first time, we did it with our guts and our heart, and followed who you wanted to be with, what you wanted to see, and the adrenaline of it. It’s catapulting and a bit out of your hands, but it slows down for these human moments, because the whole thing is reactionary.”
“The second pass was a bit more data-driven and did things like picking out certain words we wanted the President to say. We repeated a lot more than we had planned in the script, because it was so enjoyable to watch it from different perspectives each time. It was unknown that the same information could be consumed three times and enjoyed because it’s coming from different perspectives.”
Putting this together made the editor think about something terrifying.
“I assumed we were safer. I assumed America had a better response to things,” he mused.
Near Dark’s Bigelow adds, “When you vote, you are voting for somebody who may be in that position. They have two minutes and the sole authority to decide what to do.”
Rebecca Ferguson as Captain Olivia Walker in ‘A House of Dynamite.’
Eros Hoagland/Netflix
Having Friends In High Places Enabled Kathryn Bigelow’s Vision To Become Real
A House of Dynamite reunites Bigelow with production designer Jeremy Hindle. They have previously worked together on Detroit and Zero Dark Thirty, and it was his job to recreate some of the most secretive military operation facilities.
“I don’t know any of these places and couldn’t think of anything other than the White House,” he reveals. “Way before we started just even budgeting this, Kathryn and Greg Shapiro, one of the other producers, and I pulled a bunch of reference material and started realizing, ‘My God, these are all so particular.’ Most of these places you can somehow get in a little bit, and they’re all secure facilities, and then we realized that everybody’s talking to each other on screens. They’re interacting with other people in other places. We just quickly realized we had to build all this on stage and be available to shoot it all simultaneously. There were 40 cameras. Many filmmakers would say, ‘Let’s just go to locations,’ but the only real location is FEMA; we built everything else. It had to be perfectly accurate because I think that would be such a dishonor otherwise.”
“We went to STRATCOM (United States Strategic Command), the White House, and the Situation Room, and they’re incredible. We got to see them all, but we were already building them. The nice thing is that we get all those little tidbits, but I was never allowed to take a camera. I didn’t have a pencil, so I had to memorize it. I think we had 12 minutes in STRATCOM and three minutes in the Situation Room. I was scanning the rooms, memorizing, and running out to call people and dictate it. This is such an important story. It’s essential that we discuss this. With Kathryn, everything is a 360. Two generals walked into that Situation Room on the soundstage, and we’re like, ‘Oh my god, we’re home.’ That was the point, and when we saw in their faces, it’s a service to them that we owe.”
Baxter adds, “The best thing for me is Kathryn can actually call people, and you get this person that you can’t believe you have access to, and you’re walking the halls with them. She does that all the time. It’s a gift. There were three star generals that Kathryn would text when we were in the cutting room.”
“We were really lucky,” Kathryn Bigelow concludes. “There was an interest on their part for it to be as accurate and authentic as possible. A House of Dynamite is their world, and if we’re going to share their world, it had better be correct, so we’re fortunate that they believed in the material.”