“In a conversation with François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock explained the difference between surprise and suspense, using the illustration of a bomb underneath a table. To paraphrase the master himself, if two people are having a conversation and a bomb suddenly goes off, then we as the filmic audience are clearly surprised. But if we first see the bomb — and its rapidly decreasing countdown timer — but the characters are oblivious to its existence, then we suddenly become intensely engaged in whatever innocuous conversation is going on: our keen awareness of the impending explosion generates suspense. For ‘Bombshell,’ we decided to play up that concept for comedic effect, both by having just one character aware of the bomb’s placement and by heightening the underlying absurdity of the premise. Hitchcock, of course, had one caveat to his explanation — that whatever happens, the bomb can never go off — but an answer as to whether or not we adhere to that mandate will require a viewing of the film itself.”