By Jay A. Fernandez

If you’re looking for more juicy background on “The Hurt Locker,” screenwriter Mark Boal will be speaking at WGA headquarters next month as part of the Writers Guild Foundation’s great “Writers on Writing” speaker series.

The event is Wednesday, January 13 at 7:30 pm and non-WGA members can get in for $20. Film writer and critic F.X. Feeney is moderating, as usual.

Boal has been a journalist for a dozen years. As most people know by now, the germ for “Locker” came from an assignment he took on to embed with a bomb defusal unit in Baghdad. The limits of the single article provoked him to expand his experiences into the screenplay for “Locker.” His script has since been recognized by several critics groups as one of the best of the year, and it received a Golden Globe nomination Tuesday.

Boal’s reporting also provided the basis for Paul Haggis‘ “In the Valley of Elah,” an unjustly overlooked film that takes a Stateside angle on the effects that surviving danger and death in the field have on soldiers.

The WGF event seems like a great opportunity to ask Boal about his research methods and how to write films invested with real-world experience and real-world resonance. Boal also took on a producing role with “Locker” and maintained an unusual amount of control over the independent project.

Here’s a short video interview with Boal from THR’s recent round table in which he discusses the opening scene of “Locker” and what he was trying to achieve.