19. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from Point Break? That Kathryn Bigelow is a badass behind the camera.
Hollywood not exactly overrun at the time with women making action movies, an interviewer asked Reeves in 1991 what it was like, or if there was anything different about, being directed by a woman. Reeves said that he totally dug how Bigelow rolled. “I’ve worked with women directors,” he said, “it’s just human, you know, just humankind.”
In another behind-the-scenes interview, he described her as “almost like a female Utah in a sense, motivated and willful and wants it to happen.”
Reflecting on the experience in It’s Make or Break, Swayze observed, “Women often times do macho guy movies a lot better than guys do ’cause they have the ability to stand back. And when they don’t pass judgment and bring a deeper level of truth to it, wonderful things can happen.” So agreed Gary Busey, Utah’s partner Angelo Pappas, who said, “They’re better with details, women are, they just have that over men. That’s just the way it is.”
Guy after guy sang her praises. Petty, too, “had a blast, from the beginning to the end of movie.” But, she also said, “People think [the movie’s] softer because of Kathryn because she’s a female, and that’s not the truth at all. She was so in love with action. There was a scene with me and Keanu, we were just supposed to be kissing on the beach, she was like, ‘Oh god, whatever, just get on with it!’…She loves action a lot more than just being still.”
Bigelow made it “infinitely more interesting,” John C. McGinley, who played FBI boss Harp, recalled. “She made a foot chase as exciting as a car chase.”
