“A House of Dynamite”: Battling a nuclear nightmare

This is a nightmare that we live with all our lives. “I grew up in an era where we had to hide under tables if an atomic bomb went off,” said director Kathryn Bigelow, “so I guess the prospect of nuclear war was kind of imprinted on me from the very beginning.”

In Bigelow's new film, House of Dynamite, the prospect of nuclear war suddenly becomes a crazy reality. It tells the story of a single rocket launched from an unknown location in the Pacific Ocean. At first glance it looks like a test, but it continues – on a trajectory estimated to be across the continental United States.

With 19 minutes left before the action begins, the President (played by Idris Elba) must make an impossible decision.

Noah Oppenheim, former president of NBC News, wrote the script, which dramatizes what he calls “the madness of expecting one person with limited training to decide in a matter of minutes the fate of all mankind.”

Bigelow, whose previous films include “Trauma Locker” (a too real look at the war in Iraq) and “Zero Dark Thirty” (about the hunt for Osama bin Laden) applied its trademark authenticity to the unthinkable. “It's my responsibility as a director: if I'm presenting a truly existing environment, it has to be as authentic as possible,” she said.

Bigelow says she didn't seek cooperation from the Pentagon to make the film: “I felt we needed to be more independent. But at the same time, we had several technical consultants who worked at the Pentagon. They were with me every day when we were filming.”

One of the military consultants was retired Lt. Gen. Dan Karbler. “Never in a million years would I have thought I would be in this position,” he said.

Karbler successfully auditioned when he began his first Zoom call with Bigelow with this: “This is the Pentagon DDO calling a strategy conference. This conference is top secret. Please invite the president to the conference.” And I stood there and clicked on the camera and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is how the worst day in American history will begin.”

I remarked, “It doesn’t look like you were improvising?”

“I didn’t improvise at all,” Karbler said. “This is the result of a lot of practice.”

He was on set, but Karbler took command of the actors just as he once did with real soldiers at Fort Greely, Alaska, on the front line of defense against an incoming missile. He called the scenes “super realistic.”

He said. “I have a son and a daughter, and they are both missile defenders. And all I can think about is my own children and how these actors totally rose to the occasion.”

In “House of Dynamite”, the missile is tracked towards the United States. [In such a scenario, the U.S. would have less than 10 minutes to make the decisions and get interceptors airborne.]

Two interceptors are launched – the classic “bullet hits bullet”.

“This combat vehicle will go and crash into an incoming missile,” Karbler said. “This closing speed can exceed 30,000 miles per hour. I think the movie puts it pretty accurately when it says there's a 61% chance of killing him.”

The duty officer in the White House Situation Room is played by Rebecca Ferguson. Larry Pfeiffer, who once ran the real White House situation room, said: “This film will give the American moviegoer a chance to experience what it's really like to work in such a space.

“There are going to be things that happen in the world that will require immediate attention and action from the President of the United States, and you need to be as committed as possible,” he said.

The President is in a motorcade when he encounters the one problem he thought he would never face: a missile headed for Chicago. “When I was sworn in, I had one briefing,” he says. “One! And they told me that this is the protocol!”

According to Dan Karbler, a real president would likely be equally unprepared.

Asked if he had ever conducted an exercise in which a real president participated, he replied: “No, no, sir.”

“So if it was real, he wouldn’t have had much practice?” I asked.

“I believe the last president to participate in one of the exercises was President Reagan,” Karbler said.

So what does screenwriter Noah Oppenheim want viewers to think when they catch their breath? “I want people to be reminded that although the Cold War is long over, the nuclear age has not yet arrived, and that we live, as the name suggests, in a house full of dynamite,” he said.

To which director Kathryn Bigelow added, “My question is: How do we get the dynamite out of the walls… without tearing the house down?”

To watch the House of Dynamite trailer, click on the video player below:

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The story was produced by Mary Walsh. Editor: Jason Schmidt.