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At the heart of The Hurt Locker are its characters, the men who risk their lives daily in one of the most dangerous places on Earth, fighting the odds to stop bombs from detonating in a city overrun with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and insurgent snipers.
{sidebar id=1}Staff Sergeant William James, played by Jeremy Renner, is an expert bomb technician with a masterfully controlled skill-set, who shocks his team members with his enthusiastic disregard for established procedures. Brought to the attention of director Kathryn Bigelow through his work as the title character in the independent film Dahmer, Renner had to undergo both gun and suit training, to prepare himself for the realistic portrayal of one of the worlds most dangerous occupations.
At the films press day, Jeremy Renner spoke about working with his co-stars Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty, and learning to rely on each other, in order to get The Hurt Locker made.
Q: How much gun training did you go through, for this film?
Jeremy: I got to where I have a favorite rifle, which I never thought I would have. I can pick out an M4. Thats what they use on all the movies. Thats as close to the military as I want to get. But, it was fun. Its good to play and it is fantasy for me.
Q: What sort or training did you have to go through with the suit? Did you train with an actual unit?
Jeremy: Yes, and everything about it was difficult. Initially, it was just about understanding the military, which is a whole other ball game, with a good and bad side. Its so structured, and Im not good with that. And then, the actual bomb suit EOD training was this test that everyone in the military who wants to be an EOD has to take. Its a bomb suit that weighs about 80 to 100 pounds, depending on how much gear you have on you. They kept telling me about how awful the suit was, but I was like, Whatever. So, I put the thing on and was like, This is no problem. I can do jumping jacks in this thing! Then, they said, Okay, there is a stack of about 50 paper clips on the ground. Just bend down, pick one up, and then get up and go 10 feet over and put it in the ground. I essentially had to move the stack, which I thought would be very simple. But, just getting on the ground, I was like, Okay, this sucks. Do you really want me to move the whole stack?I was fogging up and dying. That was test one.
Then, I had to drag a pot that was 200 pounds about 300 meters, and then drag 75 pounds on my shoulders. It was the basic tasks that were arduous and physically draining in the heat. It was 106 that day. You do that for about 45 minutes, and then the last 15 minutes of the EOD test, you take off the helmet and all the gear and go to the chalkboard that had math equations on it, and all I could think was, I like cookies. My brain was like mush. I learned that your IQ drops about 25 to 40 points, with all of that. The guys I trained with did three or four tours, and some of them were not in great shape. Its unbelievable mental toughness. Its laser focus that gets you through the difficult part. Its not the physical strength, by any means.
Q: How long did you keep the suit on, at one time?
Jeremy: We all tried not to keep it on me for very long, but there were times that I just wanted to get the shot, so I could actually take it all the way off. I tried not to keep it on for more than 20 to 30 minutes because then I wanted to pass out. It was 125 degrees there, which is brutal. But, it was a massive part of the character, so I couldnt do it without it. It was very informative for me.
Q: What were you thinking of, when you were creating this rebellious character?
Jeremy: I didnt base it off anyone or anything. I based it off of circumstances and instinctual things. The bomb parts were such a throw-away, little thing, but it was a big, informing thing for me, for this character. Its so obvious that this guy could be a thrill junkie, but I did everything in my power not to play that. It was part of him, absolutely, but I just focused on all of the things other than the obvious, like focusing on the bomb part, the love of his craft, the respect of his job and the relationship with the child. That really was an important aspect to the character, and those things informed me. The bomb suit informed me on how this guy walks. All of those things just presented themselves to me, and I just went with it.
Q: Do you think this character is broken?
Jeremy: Yeah, I think hes damaged, in some ways. My first question to Kathryn was, How should the audience feel, at the end of this movie, when James goes back? Is he a martyr? Do you feel torn? Do you feel happy that he has to go do this? How should we feel? From that, I made discoveries that informed the character, approaching it from the inside.
Q: What do you think the title of this movie means?
Jeremy: For me, it was a thousand different things. When I first saw it, I thought, Thats just a really fucking cool title. And then, I thought of it as a casket or a hospital bed, not as a place. And, after shooting it, it was an emotional and spiritual place of pain, despair, loneliness and loss. We were all in the hurt locker. It was a lot of things for a lot of people. It doesnt matter what I think. Its how one interprets it. That is why I love the movie title. I love the characters because its so rich, and they are not one note. There is room for interpretation, and I love that.
Q: What kind of things did you learn about the Muslim tradition, being on this shoot?
Jeremy: Absolute awareness and respect for the Middle East, which I knew nothing about and didnt want to know anything about. I was so glad I was able to experience that. Its those things that we dont know, that scare us most. So, I can check that off the list. I am not afraid of it anymore because it is somewhere that I know.
Q: Once you had your eyes opened to that, did it make it hard to acclimate back to your normal life, when you got back home?
Jeremy: I had problems coming back just because of the conditions we were in, and what we became accustomed to while we were working. Everything about those 3 months was tough. I didnt leave the house when I first got back. It was hard getting adjusted to being back in the States.
Q: How was it to work with Kathryn Bigelow? What was her process like?
Jeremy: I was lucky enough to be with Kathryn a year before we started principal photography, even though months would go by and I did another movie. She had these story boards, one of which became the poster. I got chills when I saw it. I was like, Thats awesome. And then, she showed me part of the suit that I would be wearing. Now, the suit that they showed me was not the suit I was wearing in the film. It was a backpack thing that weighed about 10 pounds. They were like, This is part of the suit that you are wearing, but it was only a very small part. Then, I went to go do the training in Bakersfield.
Kathryn told me, early on, I hired you because you know what you are doing in your job, and that freed me because I felt like she trusted me, and I trusted her, which made it very collaborative, especially after all of the dialogue that we had, and knowing that we were on the same page with the character. She is a voyeur. She isnt going to come in and try to stir the pot. Some directors do that, but she wants to watch. So, shell hire the right people and it becomes a machine, at that point.
Q: Can you talk about how it was working with the other guys in the film?
Jeremy: We definitely needed each other. They were such smart actors, and so giving as human beings. We leaned on each other because of the circumstances that we were in. We knew we were not actually in war, but we were in 125-degree heat. We were dealing with the same conditions and experiences, and they were all new. We were in the Middle East. We needed each other to vent afterwards. We all became one unit, even though I was the lone wolf in the movie.
THE HURT LOCKER opens in theaters June 26.
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