Kathryn Bigelow's Punk Roots

Today Kathryn Bigelow is basking in the glow of her Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for Hurt Locker, but before ascending to the heights of Hollywood celebrity she was a member in good standing of the downtown punk scene of the late '70s and early' 80s. Living on Water Street, she shared a loft with filmmaker and costume designer Karin Luner in a building that also housed artist Robert Longo and rocker Hal Ludacer. Dressed in cowboy boots and jeans, she was a regular at The Mudd Club, a hub of downtown nightlife where art, music, film, media and fashion people intersected. Her student film from Columbia University -- where she took classes with Susan Sontag and Vito Acconci -- The Set-Up (1978), portrays two men (including Gary Busey) fighting each other in split-screen as semiotic provocateur Sylvère Lotringer deconstructs the images in voice over. Luner told me that she remembers Bigelow as "totally driven. She really knew what she wanted to do. One time she was working on a script of a Bataille story and she must have rewritten it 150 times; she was so determined to get it right." Her first full-length feature was The Loveless (1982), a biker movie which she co-directed with Monty Montgomery that in addition to Willem Dafoe included downtown scenesters Robert Gordon, Danny Rosen and Tina L'Hotsky with costume design by Luner.