Meet the Charmingly Nerdy Oscar-Winning...
Vulture: What’s it like working as a married couple?
Chris: We understand what the other does. When Bob’s on a movie and I’m on a different one, and he’s coming home at 2 a.m. in the morning, I’m not worried where he is. I know he’s stuck in a cutting room, which is his other love.
Vulture: Not out with someone else.
Chris: Exactly. We met on Sam Raimi’s television show American Gothic; he introduced us.
Bob: That was about fifteen years ago, but we actually only got married after The Hurt Locker. We knew if that didn’t break us up, nothing would.
Vulture: How so?
Chris: It was a painful movie to make; it was really hard. The conditions, the artistic personalities behind the scenes, it was low-budget, it was in the Middle East. I had post-traumatic stress disorder after that movie.
Bob: Yeah, it was miserable, that movie.
Vulture: What was the process of working together like?
Chris: We both cut different segments, then traded them back and forth so it looked like one vision. We wanted to approach it from the standpoint of the characters and the tension, foreshadowing things, and then tricking the audience and foreshadowing things when they weren’t going to happen. We wanted the audience to expect that there was always going to be a bomb going off.
Vulture: Back to the Oscar speech: It’s lucky that you were up there together, so that you couldn’t forget the other, right?
Chris: It’s funny: When someone's standing right next to you, that’s when it’s easiest to forget them. Your mind and your mouth just disconnect at that moment. It feels like centuries are passing.
Mar 9th