'Hurt Locker' screenwriter discusses Academy Award-winning movie

Six years before he won an Oscar, Mark Boal was shadowing a bomb control squad as an embedded journalist with American troops in Iraq.

Last week, he shared the details of his journey from war to Academy Award stage in a candid discussion with 30 Harper College honors students, touching on everything from the "ceaseless anxiety" of the war zone to the coveted statuette he says he now keeps on a table at home.

Boal, the screenwriter behind "The Hurt Locker," was sent to Iraq in 2004 as a Playboy reporter. The two weeks he spent following a bomb control squad in Baghdad proved so eye-opening, he told Harper students, that he decided the experience "warranted a fictional telling."

His fact-and-fiction approach drew on the anxious emotion and activity he saw overseas: He told students the three-man team he was with diffused eight to 10 bombs every 24 to 48 hours.

"I tried to make it watchable," he said of "Hurt Locker," "and to have it be honest while still being respectful of the people who are still in harm's way."

It worked for Harper student and "Hurt Locker" fan Dan Patoli of Mount Prospect.

"It was produced and written so amazingly that I wanted to meet and know the man behind it," Patoli said after the discussion with Boal. "I saw the movie last year, and I still remember being kept on the edge of my seat. I haven't seen a movie that made me feel like that in a long time."

"Mr. Boal was a journalist first," Harper Professor and Honors Society Advisor Andrew Wilson said. "I hope our students leave here with an understanding of how the world's best journalists are committed not to biases and prejudices but, instead, unpolluted truth."

Boal's chat with students preceded his Wednesday, Sept. 15, public lecture on Harper's campus - his first time on a stage, he said, since winning the Oscar. The public appearance was sponsored by the College's Campus Activities Board; the honors chat was coordinated by the Student Activities Office in an effort to give those students who produce a "Challenger" newsletter, which has explored the impact of the Iraq war, special access to Boal.

Students questioned him about the anxious realities of war, the media's portrayal of combat in Iraq, the challenges he faced making the film - he told them he "constantly hit roadblocks" and, many times, thought the movie would never happen - and general movie-industry topics, like piracy and the effects of critics' reviews.

Student Maggie Wanner of Schaumburg chatted with fellow club members afterward about the highlights of Boal's conversation, and the pieces that most intrigued her. Among them: Boal's explanation of the film's title; he told students a "hurt locker" is a terrible place of pain.

"It was almost cooler than seeing one of the actors," Wanner said. "He actually came up with the idea for the movie."

"The Hurt Locker" took home six Oscars this year, including Best Picture. The film also scored another 73 wins and 47 nominations related to other film awards and festivals across the world.