What's the best way to go about disarming one of these things?
>> The way you don't die, sir.
>> (Laugh) That's a good one.
That's spoken like a wild man.
>> Award season continues and
that inspired us to take a closer look at another one of the big Oscar movies of
recent history for this week's episode, no more setup.
>> Let's do it.
>> Here are seven things you didn't know about the Hurt Locker.
Probably.
(Inaudible) >> Get out of the way!
>> Drop your phone!
>> Put it down!
Go get them!
>> We're coming in hot today and opening with a thing about this explosion.
(Sound) In movies, we're used to seeing gigantic
orange plumes of fire when things explode, mostly thanks to Michael Bay.
But those types of explosions are created by using a ton of gas.
The explosion they created for this scene in the Hurt Locker was more grey and
black, and it's more like what the real IED explosions were like in this type
of environment.
They used a phantom camera to capture the moving mass of air
replicating a real bomb's over pressure.
Over pressure is just a wave of air moving so
quickly that it not only lifts everything in the area, but
also will cause anything that has air in it to expand.
You know, like your lungs.
So, getting their lungs blown up is a major concern for troops to say the least.
(Sound) On the other hand the explosion here is
a lot more like the ones we're used to seeing in the movies, because it's a car.
Cars have gas tanks and gas equals (Sound).
By the way Jeremy Renner really did have to put out that car fire himself in
this scene.
Good thing they didn't give him the fire extinguisher that was full of
spring snakes.
Also boom, bonus thing you didn't know.
(Sound) Jeremy Renner putting out that fire may have been real, but
you know what wasn't real?
All of this garbage.
The street where they shot the scene was pretty clean, so
the production team actually had to bring in garbage and scatter it in the street.
They were trying to replicate the wartime conditions in Baghdad as accurately as
they could, and in Baghdad, the sanitation services weren't running.
People would burn their trash to get rid of it, so there were garbage fires
everywhere, and the trash that didn't get burned was just piled up on the streets.
So if you always thought making movies was nothing but glitz and glamour,
jokes on you asshole.
Sometimes you're literally directing garbage.
We talked explosions and garbage fires, so let's talk guns, or a gun at least.
Specifically the pistol that Sergent James is holding in this scene,
because it's not a prop gun.
(Sound) The gun that they had gotten for
the scene didn't make it through customs in time for the day they were filming.
So the producers was running around trying to find one the day before the shoot
on occasion in Jordan.
Writer and producer Mark Baldwin as far as trying to buy a pistol off of someone
in a bar.
Ultimately an army general felt bad for them, and
loaned them a broken pistol to use, and saved their shoot.
No pun intended, or was it?
Moving on.
(Music)
Speaking of real weapons, weapons sort of came with the territory.
The Hurt Locker filmed in Jordan, and
that meant there was no film equipment available to the crew.
The only thing production didn't have to ship in were trucks.
All the gear, guns, and special effects explosives had to be brought in.
There were plenty of weapons and explosives in Jordan, but
they were all real guns and real C-4.
In fact, the smoke bomb in this part is also real.
Production was able to get it from the Jordanian military.
Since the smoke bomb was real,
there was a good deal of concern over letting Jeremy Renner handle it.
For the unfamiliar, there's a chance of burning yourself pulling the pin.
Renner was able to assuage the producers' fears because he let them know that he
knew what he was doing.
Thing was, that was total crap.
He had never actually handled a smoke bomb before, and frankly, why would he have?
Luckily he didn't wind up burning his fingers off, so
his lie round up creating a funny story instead of a horrifying one.
>> He's a rowdy boy.
>> He's reckless.
>> You know what else it created?
A bonus thing you didn't know.
(Music)
Katherine Bigelow and The Hurt Locker team were able to film in Amman, Jordan, and
it really helped create a more believable Baghdad than Morocco,
which is what Hollywood usually uses to fake the Middle East.
What you may not have known is they were only able to shoot in the Middle East
because they produced The Hurt Locker independently.
No studio would have ever let them do it.
Furthermore, no studio would have greenlit the movie without a marking name like
Matt Damon or, I don't know, John Malkovich, maybe.
The point is studios cast for bankability over performance.
Not to say Malkovich won't perform.
He always delivers.
>> Malkovich.
Malkovich, Malkovich.
>> But, even with going rogue and doing it on their own,
the production had a hard time shooting in Jordan.
Mainly because Jordan was pretty reluctant to let a film crew shoot there.
Obviously, Bigelow got her way in the end, but
that wasn't the end of the challenges of filming in Jordan.
Segue.
>> (Inaudible) See you on the other side man.
>> All right, let's get out of this (Bleep) desert.
>> Route principal photography, the average temperature was 115 degrees
fahrenheit, which made heat stroke and dehydration constant concerns.
They had to have an ambulance on standby at all times.
So when you see Guy Pierce sweating here it's basically method acting.
>> Nice and hot in here.
>> Triple-digit temperatures plus an 80-pound Kevlar suit are pretty
much guaranteed to get a shvitz going.
Like a really good, please help me, I need to go to a hospital type of shvitz.
(Music)
>> Specialist, bring up the Humvee.
>> What's going on? >> I'm going to break out the suit.
>> Speaking of that 80-pound suit and having to wear it in oppressive heat,
Jeremy Renner had it worse than Guy Pierce since he wears it so
much more in the film.
Typically they would have swapped in an extra or a body double for Renner for
the long shots or any shots where you don't see his face.
You know, to spare their principal actor from, well, dying.
>> You got two?
>> Got two. >> All right, let's rock and roll man.
>> Problem was, they went through some 15 doubles trying to replicate
Jeremy Renner's walk and mannerisms in the suit and no one could do it.
So even in the widest shots, it really is Jeremy Renner in the suit every time we
see Sergeant James wearing it.
Renner's walk was just too unique and Kathryn Bigelow knew it would be obvious
if someone else was inside, at least that's what she says.
It may have also been payback for Renner mouthing off on set, but
sure, we'll stick with the so special walk story.
(Noise) That's it for today, but let us know if watching this episode inspired you
to revisit The Hurt Locker, or its lesser known sequel the Pleasure Trunk.
Okay, it's not so
much a sequel as it is some slash fiction I wrote on my live journal.
Either way thanks for watching, and
subscribe to Cinefix for more true-ish things about movies, and
sometimes really, really good shvitzes right here on Things You Didn't Know.
>> We're done.