Dear Katheryn Bigelow:

You don’t know me and you won’t read this, but I’d like to give you a hearty congratulations on your Best Director/Best Picture coup at the Oscars. I haven’t seen The Hurt Locker because I rarely go to the movies anymore and I noticed the late 70s soft-core skin flick Laura was re-released the same week as The Hurt Locker on DVD, and although it’s probably a bad thing, I opted for the French nudie-flick over what is now 2009’s best pic. Regardless, you directed two of the most enjoyable in-theater popcorn movies I’ve ever seen: Point Break and Strange Days.

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I’m not sure how a woman gets into directing action films, and it’s a shame you don’t make more of them. It’s been laughed at by some (at least some I know), but Point Break is a kind of action template; it’s not Die Hard, nor is it Dirty Harry. Perhaps it’s the notion that only a woman could apply certain sensual elements to what is clearly a man’s world, and taking the late Patrick Swayze and grouping him with, among others, Keanu Reeves (he who Dutch-Ovens blockbusters while sleeping), Gary Busey, Tom Sizemore, Lori Petty, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, well, that was genius. Maybe your casting guru deserves some credit, but still. Point Break was the little brother to The Last Boy Scout in the early 1990s, and considering that TLBS was one of the Best Dude Films ever, directed by the Best Dude Movie Director Ever (Tony Scott) is saying something.

I’ve argued with friends and foes for years about Point Break, but I think I’ve won the argument because two decades later, no one has been able to improve on it. Yes, there have been movies where surfing plays a vital role (Blue Crush being the most photogenic), and yes, there have been great bank heist movies (Heat comes to mind), and yes, there have been Keanu Reeves films that have come since that ignite the TNT (The Matrix, of course), but it was you who managed to bring all of these scattered entities, these … things … together, and perfectly.

I rarely say this about any movies, especially the action kind, but there are literally no threads left untied in Point Break.

I don’t “love” actors in the sense that many do, but I do appreciate the ones who do work that I don’t like yet am struck by how well they do it. Patrick Swayze has been in movies I liked (PB, Outsiders, Road House) and movies I either haven’t seen or would not like (Ghost, Dirty Dancing), and then, the inexplicable films I knew I would hate but loved (To Wong Fu…). You coaxed a performance out of him in Point Break that was pitch-perfect Swayze: he was the roguish fella the women wanted, but the multi-disciplined Alpha-Gamma Male men can respect, equal parts bank-robber, surfer, Buddhist (Bodhi as a name is priceless) and, to top it all off, college football fan. I don’t say this with sarcasm: in Point Break, Patrick Swayze in one regard gave the performance he was born to give, and yet, in another, it is sadly among his least-remembered. Seriously, who does ballet while sky-diving? Better yet – who does it better than Patrick Swayze?

Moving onto Keanu Reeves, where, exactly, do we start? I’ll start right here: I don’t know how much control you had over the script, but that you could take Keanu Reeves playing a character named “Johnny Utah” and keep the entire production from not only becoming a farce is impressive in and of itself; that you could take this same script – its Buddhism, Johnny Utahs, surfing bank-robbers, Gary Busey etc. – and actually make the kind of Dude Film that lives on perpetually on TNT, this takes talent most directors would kill for. And, for a change, Keanu Reeves is believable playing the character written for him. This isn’t a knock against the actor – he’s probably been in more movies I’ve watched multiple times than any working actor – yet he tends to find himself in roles that aren’t only unbelievable to his character, they’re unbelievable to the audience. And yet, Keanu Reeves was Johnny Utah. He was the guy that played at Ohio State, he was the guy that had the great day at the Rose Bowl.

Few directors give me more than one unexpected gift, yet a few years later, you gave me a second.

That film was Strange Days, and it was epic.

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Strange Days suffered because of a high cost and low revenue, and that is pretty much a fact. However, it was still a wonderful film. It tried to kill your career, and damn-near succeeded.

I saw it in the theater with my girlfriend at the time, Amy. We were fresh off having watched the steamer that was Showgirls, and we entered the theater hoping to be cleansed of that mess. We weren’t disappointed.

The film is, what’s the smarty-pants term? Kafka-esque.

You have Ralph Fiennes, fresh off playing Amon Goethe in Schindler’s List as this kind of digital hustler in a script penned by your then-husband, James Cameron. I’ve always been wax-on, wax-off with your ex, but I enjoyed his story for Strange Days, to say nothing of what he did in T2. Strange Days was a good story, although it gets a bit too ‘we shall overcome’ at the end (heavy foreshadowing to the lazy storytelling in the last third of Avatar). Yet you have Fiennes, you have Juliette Lewis, you have Angela Bassett, you have – again – Tom Sizemore (quoting his great line: “It’s not whether you’re paranoid, it’s whether you’re paranoid enough”), you have – why not? – Vincent D’Onofrio. Lots of future-tech – Strange Days was the first film I remember featuring nothing but widescreen Hi-Def televisions, among other things – and then there were the fabulous setpieces, culminating on the wild Y2K ring-in that reflects the racial paranoia that followed the Rodney King beating.

However, at the box office, it fell flat. I, for one, loved the film. Loved it.

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I didn’t watch the Oscars last night, but after hearing you won Best Director and your film won Best Picture, I had to IMDB it, because after Point Break and Strange Days, I became a fan, and then you disappeared.

According to IMDB, you did a few episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, the forerunner to The Wire. You did a film released in France, then you did K-19 (unseen by me) and then you did an episode of “Karen Frisco,” and then you did Mission Zero, a short film starring Uma Thurman and a yellow Lamborghini, a film I’ve not seen but plan to ASAP.

Then you did The Hurt Locker.

And this is why I love America, why I love Hollywood, and why I couldn’t be happier for you.

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Technically, it’s been 13 years since you were at the helm of a big-budget Hollywood movie. Point Break was spectacular, so you tackled Strange Days. It was big-budget, it tanked, and for 15 years – beginning with the production of Strange Days and ending in last night’s THL triumph - you were relegated to TV episodes, straight-to-videos, and exotic shorts – good work, of course – before finally getting a big break.

What’d you do with it?

You became the first woman to win Best Director.

Your film won Best Picture.

I don’t know about how things are with you and your ex, but I heard him say recently you saw five different cuts of Avatar, so either he was lying or he was pointing out that you guys still bounce ideas off each other. With James Cameron – who knows? He’s the king of the movie world, and I may not like much of his work, but he’s earned it. He can say what he damn-well pleases creating wealth like that.

Either way, who cares? That The Hurt Locker won Best Picture and you Best Director for it is quite an accomplishment; that it beat the biggest film evah while doing so, a film directed by your ex, all the more wild.

You make movies for dudes who like movies – they’re suspenseful, action-packed, good stories, great F/X, great all around. Please don’t waste what you’ve been given. Fifteen years in the wilderness probably taught you a lot, but know this – among guys who like movies, yours is a revered name. Now that you have multiple Oscars, build on it.

Dirty Harry could sure use a remake.

Sincerely – King Kurtz