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How one director's determination overcame considerable obstacles and helped melt the ice between the United States and Russia.
by Ted Elrick
George Kraychyk photos: ©2002 Paramount Pictures/IMF Internationale Medien und Film GMBH & Co. 2 Produktion KG
In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was eager to display its ability to launch nuclear missiles within striking distance of the United States. With arms-race tensions at fever pitch, the Soviets believed it essential to demonstrate to American intelligence that they had the capability to strike back.
Their newest sub, the K-19, was rushed from the shipyard for sea trials and missile-test firing. Unfortunately for the crew, at depth in the North Atlantic, the atomic reactor's cooling system sprung a leak. The reactor core began to heat up, threatening a reactor meltdown — all with the potential of causing the sub's nuclear missile warheads to accidentally explode which in turn could destroy a nearby NATO base and set off World War III.
The dramatic details of this event remained secret for decades, and the captain and crew's heroism and sacrifices were not recognized by their own government until well after the fall of communism.
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Enter director/producer Kathryn Bigelow, who has always had a passion for history. More than five years ago, Ken Stovitz, her agent at Creative Artists Agency, suggested she meet with several organizations that were considering producing feature films on historical subjects — among them, National Geographic producer Hank Palmieri.
Palmieri and Bigelow discussed a number of stories, but the one that would grab and consume her for the next five years began with the viewing of a Russian documentary that National Geographic had reaired for Western audiences. The story touched on the bare bones of the Soviet atomic submarine K-19's ill-fated maiden voyage. Bigelow immediately saw the potential for a big-screen adaptation of the story, and became personally committed to telling the submariners' story.
"The documentary was rough and cursory, yet still a very fascinating story," Bigelow said. "What occurred to me, as Hank and I discussed this incident, was how little I knew about the Russian psychology during the Cold War or the Russian military mindset. Courage and heroism are, of course, universal. What was intriguing was that it was Russian heroism that had a profound impact upon American lives by preventing a possible nuclear confrontation. I thought the story was not only a vital slice of history, but also an opportunity to excavate the Russian military psyche at that time, which would give us an opportunity to look at ourselves through the eyes of the enemy. That is always valuable."
Despite the inherent drama in the piece, the principal obstacle and challenge to getting the film made was that the story was about the Russians, not Americans.
"In mainstream Hollywood, the Russians have not been treated as heroes," she said. "But I felt, if a member of the audience could begin to identify with these submariners and want them to survive, then you crossed the Rubicon, so to speak. That's what set me on my journey."
That journey began with developing a screenplay. Bigelow, whose screenwriting credits include The Loveless, Near Dark and Blue Steel, takes a very active role in developing a script. First working with writer Louis Nowra (story credit) then Christopher Kyle (screenwriter), whom she discovered through his work as a playwright, she began to fill in the details of the ill-fated voyage of the K-19.
The process became a journalistic enterprise, with Bigelow making several trips to Russia to interview survivors and gain access to accounts of an incident that, at one time, the Soviet Union considered a major embarrassment. She recognized an interesting parallel to the end of the Cold War with her attempts to discover the truth within the story.
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"There was bias and resistance, very reminiscent of the '60s, on this shore and in Russia," she explained. "I would go to Russia and speak with the survivors. First of all, I'm an American, and I don't know if being a woman played into the bias, but I also don't have a military background. I'm not a submariner; I'm a filmmaker, and I want to tell their story.
"So through an interpreter, because I don't speak Russian, I realized there was a lot of suspicion, a lot of skepticism. Hollywood mainstream films have not portrayed the Russians in a way that they felt was as respectful as it could be. That's putting it mildly. They've felt mocked and ridiculed. 'OK, yet another obstacle.' So I tried to talk them through and show them my commitment and my understanding of the story — how I would shape it, how it was meant to be a tribute, to honor these men and give that event as much meaning as I humanly could. It was a very long process."
Bigelow said that the first person to embrace both the idea of the film and her as the one who could tell the story was the widow of Captain Nikolai Zateyev who commanded the K-19. His fictional counterpart, Captain Vostrikov, is portrayed by Harrison Ford in the film.
"I spent hours and hours with her and I knew very well her suspicions," Bigelow said. "We looked at all of her old photographs, and I asked hundreds of questions. I think she finally realized that I was determined and that I had done my homework. At one point, she suddenly put her arms around me and, with her eyes filling with tears, said, 'You must tell the story. You must tell the story.'"
It is the memory of that emotional moment that still affects Bigelow many years later. Mrs. Zateyev then gave a photo of her husband to Bigelow. It is framed in her office and served as a source of inspiration during the production.
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Soon, the survivors themselves, many in their '80s and suffering for years with the after effects of radiation poisoning, began to trust Bigelow and rewarded her determination with a wealth of details about the incident.
"The screenplay was in a constant state of development," Bigelow explained. "It was connecting the dots. There is also a memoir the captain had written, capturing a beat-by-beat account of the moment when he was awoken at 4:30 a.m. and told the aft reactor was in a potentially catastrophic state. We married that account with the wonderful anecdotes that survivors and various submariners and captains from throughout the international submarine community told us. It was then that Chris Kyle and I decided upon, what we called, the primary reactor to the story."
For Bigelow, the primary reactor was the relationship between Vostrikov (Ford) and Polenin (Liam Neeson). "The survivors told us that Liam's character was the one you wanted to spend time with, you wanted to go drinking with, the one you treated like part of your family. Harrison's was a man you feared, yet, if you were in a life-or-death situation, he was the one you wanted making the decisions about your survival. We made Polenin the former captain of the boat who stood up for his men, warned the Soviet leadership that the K-19 wasn't ready, and was 'rewarded' by being demoted to executive officer under Vostrikov. That was the primary reactor. These two men ultimately were going to be on a collision course. Set that against the literal reactor having a catastrophic malfunction and you have a quantum relationship with those two dynamics.
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"So Chris and I are in Moscow, going through the script in copious detail, working every detail about the story, character, subject, the microcosm and macrocosm simultaneously. It was unfolding, like a flower blooming. It's not like everything was instantaneously declassified for us. 'OK, here's the plan for the Russian submarine. Here's how the nuclear reactor worked.' I didn't get the plans for the reactor until moments before we had to go into set fabrication. Little by little, sometimes through nefarious ways, I was able to get the information to make this story as accurate as possible. Each time we were fed with more information, we'd incorporate it into the script. Of course, then you realize, 'Oh, this element is going into sharp relief, but now this one is becoming obscure.' It's like a big jigsaw puzzle and balancing act."
Not only did the survivors begin to open up, but the Russian government did as well. So much so that Bigelow was finally able to achieve her ultimate goal: setting foot on the deck of the actual K-19 and becoming the first Western civilian to visit the Russian Northern Fleet Naval Base in the Kola Peninsula.
"I felt that I needed to actually meet and touch the K-19," Bigelow said. "I couldn't look into the eyes of the captain, he was deceased. I needed to touch the boat. Then I knew that I could make the movie. The government said, 'No Western civilian has been there.' This is just on the heels of the Kursk disaster [the Russian submarine that sunk in August 2000 trapping all its crew aboard]. It was a very sensitive time. But I was determined. I just don't take 'no' for an answer. I think your job, as director, is that for every door that closes, you've got to open two more."
On her final research trip, Bigelow brought along her 1st AD Steve Danton (with whom she'd worked on Strange Days) and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth (Fight Club).
"I involve my cinematographer and AD in everything," Bigelow said. "That would be ground zero to the extent that we can almost work as a single organism. It keeps everything so smooth and as organized as humanly possible. We're in communication constantly. During production I would start and end every day working with Steve, not only discussing what we'd do the next day, but also discussing four weeks down the road when we'd be shooting on water. Having that kind of preparation and organization sounds like it would be anathema to the creative process, but it isn't. If you have that level of organization, it enables you to have some freedom and spontaneity."
Her quest for accuracy also led Bigelow to a former Russian submarine captain of communications, Igor Kolosov, who conducts tours of and maintains the Scorpion, a Soviet diesel-electric sub now a tourist attraction moored next to the Queen Mary in Long Beach, Calif. Armed with her digital video camera, Bigelow made a film she calls, A Day in the Life of Igor. "I can easily block a scene with you and me eating lunch," she explained, "but I'm not a submariner. I didn't spend much time studying nuclear physics. I was an art major who also studied biology. I needed to know what the day-to-day life details would be like on a nuclear submarine.
"So I went down there, by myself, and asked Igor all kinds of questions. 'You get up in the morning, what do you do? Where do you brush your teeth? What is your day like?' and Igor walked me through every detail. These are the kinds of details I covet." One of the details that made it into the film is the use of cotton swabs dipped in alcohol. Water is very scarce on a submarine, and, in addition to personal uses, it's used to cool the reactor. With 129 men submerged for months, water is not something they're going to let the crew bathe in every day — thus the little swabs dipped in alcohol.
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This attention to detail is something Bigelow demanded of all members of the cast and crew. Before filming began, the bulk of the cast, attended a two-week boot camp at the Canadian Naval Training Center in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Originally, efforts were made to secure cooperation from the United States, but — aside from initial technical advice from Vice Admiral Harry Schrader, who was very helpful but unfortunately passed away — the production received little assistance from the U.S. because there was no American aspect to the story.
"The commitment was kind of the unspoken part of the script," Bigelow explained. "A lot of the younger actors had never even been in a film before. One actor left in the middle of his drama year at Juilliard to attend, and suddenly they were putting out 100-foot walls of fire where the heat level is staggering. They were also trained in what to do in the event of a hull rupture and various kinds of survival situations like search and rescue, oxygen deprivation, smoke and fire in a maze situation, you name it. They were trained, and they came through with flying colors.
"You can't really teach that stuff in drama school. You can't say, 'OK, today we're going to work on the first act of Hamlet, then we're going to put out a 100-foot wall of fire.' The pressure in those hoses is so great it requires several men to hold on. We had four hoses, and a 100-foot wall of fire. The challenge is to get the fire down quickly and, finally, out. You have to keep inching forward. This kind of training galvanized this crew.
"In the movie, Harrison says, 'I've taken this crew to the edge.' Basically what he's saying is 'I've made these 129 different men into a crew.' And that's what this boot camp did. These boys came from all over — Europe, Iceland, New York, Los Angeles, Canada — all descending on Halifax where the Canadian navy and admiral were kind enough to train my cast. By the end of boot camp, the actors were working as one body, one organism. That to me was the true rehearsal period. They would have killed for each other. Unlike production, where it's literally smoke and mirrors, they were put into legitimate situations. But they walked away friends for life and e-mail me constantly about how this experience has changed their lives."
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In addition, every member of the cast, as well as Bigelow, Danton and Cronenweth, underwent atomic physics training from technical advisers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who also were on set during the filming. For Bigelow, the MIT advisers were crucial because she couldn't imagine blocking, directing and talking with actors about a sequence she didn't thoroughly understand.
"If you're on a Russian nuclear submarine, everybody has training in atomic physics," she said. "You have all these different drills. Let's say the first eight compartments of a submarine are disabled. Well, there's so much redundancy that in most cases, from every single compartment, you can drive the entire boat. I don't care if you're the cook or the person in charge of cleaning the head, you know how to drive the boat.
"Also, I wanted everybody to know how to properly use the equipment when we're filming different drills. Even the extras had training so they're not just in the background turning knobs. They know exactly what they have to do whether the boat is diving, maintaining or surfacing. I see films where extras aren't trained this way and, subconsciously, I think the audience sees it as well. Give them credit. The audience knows something is wrong. They may not be able to point to the extras, but they notice it."
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To begin mapping out her visuals, Bigelow, who received art training at the San Francisco Art Institute, began her own storyboards, using stills and movies she had shot on location scouts with her production designer, Kalli Juliusson, at a Russian mining town on Spitzbergen, an island halfway between the northern most part of Norway and the North Pole. She fed these into Photoshop, then took photos from location shoots in Nova Scotia and overlaid the Spitzbergen material.
Bigelow, who drew her own storyboards on Near Dark, then began working with the storyboard artists and set designers so that she could get the kind of coverage she planned to convey the drama of the K-19.
Through discussions with Cronenweth, the set was planned to allow for camera platforms at strategic locations as well as a unique overhead truss system that allowed for the camera to be hung from a bungee cord trolley. "This we designed early on so that the camera could be moved 180 degrees and guide it down the bungee to allow for the changes in altitude within the submarine that we wanted. With a Steadicam, we had the gyro stabilization, so that now we could glide along while the crew is running the drills. It's like dance choreography, but to get that kind of freedom you have to have a tremendous amount of organization that had to be thought through before the set was even pencil on paper."
The only real concession Bigelow made between the interior of an actual submarine and her set was in the bulkhead door between compartments. The standard 31 inches circumference was widened to 35 inches to allow for the various camera rigs and to make it easier for the cast and crew — far less agile than hardcore submariners — to move from one compartment to the next.
The film was shot in Moscow, Canada's Lake Winnipeg standing-in for the Arctic Ocean ice pack, and in the snow-covered Halifax shipyards that also served as a base for shooting in the open North Atlantic.
Again, Bigelow feels that careful preparation helped her to shoot on water. "From working on Point Break, I learned that working on water is an area that even a director can't control," she says with a smile. "Once you relegate yourself to that, you realize that you've got to be painfully flexible. You've got to be ready to shoot anything. That means you've got to have multiple call sheets for any given hour of the day because it's all dependent on the weather. That kind of flexibility necessitates the need for improvisation, which is why part of the casting sessions involved improvisations.
"You've got to be flexible for an idea that might suddenly come up on the set. For instance, we could be in the process of a deep dive sequence and a technical adviser suddenly says, 'Wait a minute, this is inaccurate.' You say, 'Well, you read it in the script didn't you?' They say, 'Yes, I did, but seeing it, it just occurred to me ...' so there is this planned disorder and orderly chaos that is constantly being balanced while you work."
For Bigelow, the final part of juggling the story is in working with the editor, in this case Walter Murch. "He's a legend," Bigelow said. "He is someone with a tremendously strong intellect. So you initially begin with the writers, sifting through this massive amount of information, then the story is refracted through the filmmaker, then further refined working with the hands and eyes of an editor like Walter Murch. It is a life altering experience."
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Later this year, as her next film The Weight of Water — which made a strong showing at the 25th Toronto Film Festival — receives wide distribution, Bigelow is planning a screening of K-19: The Widowmaker for the survivors as well as one for Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin. Maestro Valery Gergiev of the Kirov Orchestra, who conducted the score for the film, spoke to Putin about the project.
"I think what's happened between our two countries is wonderful," Bigelow said when asked how she felt when watching news footage of President Bush and Putin in Texas last summer. "Myself, growing up in the sixties, I never would have imagined it. Russia is now, to a certain extent a part of NATO. The arms agreement has happened, and I've been able to involve the Nuclear Threat Initiative as part of the benefit associated with the film's premiere.
"I think what is important with this film, is that the younger Russian generations realize that the virtue of their culture and country are not only appreciated within the geographic confines of their own country," Bigelow said. "That, in fact, that appreciation is world wide. I also know there is a multitude of stories of heroism and bravery, and I hope this film will inspire the many extraordinary Russian filmmakers to get those stories made. That would be the greatest of all possible outcomes."
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When asked to define the directing process, Bigelow feels that it's a very elusive one. "It's different from person to person and from situation to situation. There's the director to actor, director to cameraman, director to writer. Each given event has its own set of dynamics that require completely distinct tools and sets of circumstances, calling on life experiences in one's past. It's like a traffic pattern over LAX. You're the person monitoring all those patterns. I think that's why I love it so much. There's the parallel processing of information and multi-tasking so that no doors are closed that you cannot open. You can never be in a period where there is ever any stagnation whatsoever of any kind. A department might have lost something. You can't stop. It's also like the space shuttle, or commanding a submarine. There are so many built in redundancies so you're always prepared for what you have not anticipated."
The Directing Team
K-19: The Widowmaker
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
- Unit Production Managers:
Brent O'Connor and Manny Danelon
- First Assistant Director: Steve Danton
- Second Assistant Directors:
Ken Wada and Kristie Sills
- Second Unit Director: Gary Capo
- Assistant Directors:
Alan Golubuff, Walter Gasparovic,
Bob Warmick, Patrick Murphy and
Armen Kazazian
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A FILM BY:
This is the only place where Kathryn Bigelow will receive a possessory credit for the film she made.
Bigelow, also a producer on K-19, wanted to combine her produced and directed by credits in the end titles. However, the Writers Guild contract calls for the writer's credit to be listed no later than the second credit in the end titles. An exception to this is when the director is the sole producer on the project. Bigelow sought a waiver from the WGA but was told it would not be granted unless she gave up her possessory credit onscreen and in paid advertising.
"I didn't realize that it was an either/or situation," Bigelow said. "When you're finishing a film, you're like a horse out of the starting gate with extreme blinders on. My focus was on making sure the film had a beginning, middle and end, and that it was as solid as it could be. The last thing I was thinking about, sadly, and perhaps erroneously, were my credits. I feel a possessory credit means that without a particular person's drive and commitment, the film probably would not have been made. So it's a bit of an inaccuracy for K-19 not to have a possessory credit. Of all the things I had planned for during production, this is the one I didn't anticipate. I do not want future filmmakers to share my experience. Knowing this now, I'll approach it differently the next time."
If you are unclear about your credit rights or have a credit problem, contact DGA Credits Administrator Jeffrey Heimer at (310) 289-2013.
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Webmaster's note: Kathryn Bigelow was recently elected to the DGA Western Directors Council as an alternate member.
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