There are a great many angles you could approach when discussing OPEN WINDOWS, the new film from Nacho Vigalondo (TIMECRIMES, EXTRATERRESTRIAL). You could focus on the technical achievement. The film is meant to feel like a real-time experience (and it sure as hell looks like it is) using non-conventional cameras, such as webcams, cell phones, and security camera. Or you could discuss its themes about celebrity self-overexposure, the public’s insatiable need for more and more visuals of their favorite celebrities, and the internet’s sickening ability to feed both of these needs.
OPEN WINDOWS is a smart, sharp, often brutal account of a fan’s unquenchable need to meet and eventually save the life of his favorite actress. Elijah Wood (who might be favorite actor playing creepy dudes on the regular these days) plays the fan; Sasha Grey (the former adult film star, who impressed me a great deal as a actor in Steven Soderbergh’s THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE) plays the actress; and there is an unseen online force that is pulling these two together in a tense and wonderfully realized way.
I sat down with Vigalondo, Wood and Grey in March at the SXSW Film Festival after the world premiere of OPEN WINDOWS, which was shot in and around Austin, Texas. The film is available on VOD beginning today (October 2) and comes out theatrically November 7. Please enjoy my chat with Nacho Vigalondo, Elijah Wood, and Sasha Grey…
Capone: What I imagined when I was watching this film is a wall-size dry-erase board with color-coded lines to make sure everything is meeting in the right place.
Elijah Wood: I don’t think you’re far off, actually.
Capone: Before you’re even shooting, before there’s even a script, how did you lay it out physically before you shot it? How did you make sure everything was timed right?
Nacho Vigalondo: We made a complete animatic of the whole movie. So not only to see how every window looked on the screen, and which part and everything. It was a way to distribute information and be specific about where and when did every window appear and disappear. But also, to be able to show someone how the movie will look, because the script wasn’t a blissful experience to read. Yeah. It wasn’t one of those scripts you love to read. It was so technical. I appreciate that they came into this boat, because the script wasn’t a tool to understand the movie.
Capone: So you really had to have it visually laid out to really have them appreciate what they were getting into.
NV: Yeah, because it’s not about every window appearing and disappearing. It’s about what part of the space is occupied, what is the meaning behind Elijah’s camera being down and right at the beginning, and up and left at the end.
Capone: In addition to the video elements, you’ve also got voices that you have to deal with on top of that and that complicates it. So what do you remember about seeing that animatic version of it?
EW: Well, it certainly made sense of the script. To a certain degree, it took a lot of effort, but you can definitely imagine what the film’s going to look like on some level when you read the script. It’s very technical, it’s hard to read, but you’re like, “Okay, I kind of get it.” But the animatic really answered a lot of those questions.
Sasha Grey: I didn’t watch the entire thing. When I first met Nacho, he actually showed it to me on his iPad, and I watched a few minutes of it. That’s all I really needed to see to understand it. But on the set, I think it was a constant challenge to remember what camera was watching us. It’s like, “Hey Nacho, what is this again? What camera is this?” Because obviously we weren’t shooting with a GoPro. So to remember where those cameras were coming from, that was definitely a challenge.
Capone: You talked a little bit last night during the Q&A about acting alone. Most of the time, you were acting by yourself, but you were also looking at the camera a lot, which is the most unnatural thing I think an actor can do. How do you get past that very self-conscious experience?
EW: It took me a day to really get comfortable. I remember that first day that we started working, because it was almost in sequence. The first bits that we shot were in the hotel room, and the first thing my character does, effectively, is record a message. So in a way, it was actually a great way to start because it’s a little bit stilted and a little strange. It’s supposed to be unnatural, so I was like, “Alright.” It echoed the way that I felt, in a way. But yeah, it took a little time just to get used to. Because when we talk to people online—if we’re doing a Skype call or Google Hangout or whatever it is—we typically don’t look at the camera. We look at the person’s face, which is just below the camera, and that doesn’t look natural. That doesn’t sell the idea.
NV: That doesn’t work.
SG: It’s like a lazy eye.
[Everybody laughs]
EW: “Who are you looking at?”
NV: Yeah. It happens all the time when you shoot a movie: You realize that the best way of being natural on the screen is not being natural at all on the set. That happens all the time.
Capone: Someone brought up last night the Mike Figgis film TIMECODE as an inspiration.
NV: I also mentioned CLOSER by Mike Nichols. Yeah, in fact the inspiration of all those movies with split screen is Brian De Palma. I love the way he uses split screen, obviously. I love when a filmmaker feels the freedom to cut the screen in the middle, like the Tony Curtis movie, THE BOSTON STRANGLER or the Michael Crichton movie [says the title in Spanish] Sorry, I only know the Spanish name [laughs].
EW: THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN.
NV: And I love that device. I love that tool. In this case, what we did was put the split-screen device inside the narrative of the movie. We were given a reason to use that tool, to use that language. So in a movie, every time you split a screen, it’s because the director wants to do it; there’s no other meaning behind it. In this case, it’s part of the story. It’s part of the reality we are creating.
Capone: By the way, Elijah, this is second film in a row I’ve seen you in in the last couple of months where you’re being controlled by a disembodied voice [as he is in GRAND PIANO]. It’s really weird. And you do it so well.
EW: [laughs] It’s strange. Totally coincidental.
Capone: But this whole movie is about you until the end when we find out it’s really about her character-- Which by the way, I love you character’s name [Jill Goddard]. I’m guessing that was your choice because I know you’re a fan of Goddard. But that shift is great, when we discover that the story is really about her finding out that the world would rather see her naked than see her alive.
NV: For me, the choice is being in front of camera or being hidden from camera. So it’s about that.
Capone: You Greta Garbo the thing. That’s what you do at the end. You just want to be alone.
NV: I love that you got that.
EW: It’s also about taking ownership of your own identity, which I think sometimes in that digital space it’s difficult to do that.
SG: In the digital space, in her case, in her reality, in her life she’s never had control over her self, her emotions, her career. So it’s the first time she’s accepting that nobody really cares for her and she’s standing up for herself and taking charge for once.
Capone: Even that scene early on when you’re trying to break free of a situation, they don’t take you seriously.
SG: Right. She’s being manipulated on so many levels.
NV: I’m so glad you’re bringing all this [laughs].
Capone: I’ll throw another one at you then. Is there an element here where it’s about fear of technology and how controlled and exposed we can be?
SG: For the audience, for sure.
Capone: I didn’t want to go back to my room and open my computer, without putting a piece of tape over the camera.
EW: Yeah. It definitely makes you think about it, for sure.
NV: I used the paranoia as a tool to keep the plot moving on, to keep the story moving on. I love to explore this paranoia, but I think the movie at the end of the day is about exploitation, and it’s about exposition. You’re right, it’s her story at the end. She doesn’t have a problem with technology. She has a problem with exploitation. She’s being exploited by humans. In fact, I think that people seem to be scared of being exposed. People seem to be scared of losing their privacy, but lately we have discovered that we have given our privacy for free to big companies who are putting candies in our hands—free stuff, free games. I’m sorry. I just lost the way to say this in English. When you give something...
SG: In return?
NV: In return! We are giving our privacy in return, and we don't care that much about that. If you see a dystopia in a movie in the ‘80s, the lack of privacy was one of the big fears of society and culture. We were so scared of loosing our privacy or intimacy, and now we realize that we don’t care about our privacy that much.
Capone: It’s really shocking.
EW: It is, but it’s so difficult I think for people to really get a grasp on as well. It’s in an etherial space, so in theory they’re giving their privacy away, but there’s nothing tangible about it. It’s not like we have a loud speaker that we can’t turn off and cameras looking at us. It’s way more insidious than that, and I think people would rather not think about it, because the reality is far scarier than we can even comprehend.
NV: I’m really scared about when I receive an email from a company, from a brand, or when I go into my Facebook profile—my Facebook profile is almost abandoned. I go there really rarely, but when I go there and I see an advert.
EW: Perfectly tailored to you.
NV: It’s talking to me.
Capone: Or a news story. That’s the new thing: tailoring news feeds to what you pay attention to.
SG: I think that should be illegal. I heard something a few weeks ago where they’re basically saying the internet is just going to be a conglomerate of different companies feeding you information, so you’re no longer going to have real news. It’s just going to be news that they think you’ll want.
EW: It’s very scary.
SG: We’re just going to be force fed information.
EW: Which lacks a sense of autonomy and freedom.
SG: Exactly.
EW: I think the movie deals with too is that idea of moral ambiguity online as well, where we’ll do things or say things that we would never do in life, but we’ll do them with that distance because there’s no accountability for it.
NV: Yeah. We have this scandal in Spain a few years ago when this woman, this politician, there was a video that got filtered into the internet, where she was naked. She was masturbating for her boyfriend, for her lover, and she was married to someone else.
Capone: I remember hearing about that.
EW: I remember that too.
NV: For me, the shocking thing was people were blaming her, and it’s like okay, wait. One guy, which was the guy in the video, he felt cheated by her at some point. He put this video on the internet, and the initial reaction is blaming her for doing that on the screen. It’s this story. There’s something inside our brains that is so backward.
EW: Yeah. And I think that certain people's actions have ruined it, because she was innocent in that. But there are other people that’ll throw their sex tape online because they want to be famous, and unfortunately--
SG: Yeah. “Oh, I got caught.”
EW: Do you know what I mean? They’re literally being manufactured now. So that’s probably why she was judged for it, which is a shame.
NV: Yeah, a famous account in Spain is the police account. They have a really, really interesting account, but I got angry some day when they said to the girls, “Be aware about taking photographs of you naked. Be aware if you’re naked on Skype talking to your boyfriend. Be careful because that can turn against you.” And it’s like, you shouldn’t tell the girls not to get naked in front of camera, you should tell the boys not to share information, because that is the crime. The crime is using that stuff in that way.
EW: You’re absolutely right.
NV: The crime is not being naked in front of a screen. That’s not going to be a crime ever. It shouldn’t be a crime ever.
EW: It’s the exploitation.
NV: The exploitation is the crime. I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s disturbing.
Capone: Talk about shooting in Austin, because clearly that was a dream for you guys. Why that was important, using this city. Because all those chase sequences it’s like a tour of the city. But talk about like why you wanted to be here, and are you disappointed you didn’t get to premiere at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar location [which was closed for renovation and is used as a location in the film]?
NV: I mentioned that at the presentation as a joke, but it wasn’t a whole joke, it was partially a joke. But I would love to premiere the movie at the same place. The fake movie premieres at South Lamar. Austin for me, this is the place I was born a filmmaker, because this is the place where my first feature film was shown in front of an audience. And it was a really dramatic part of my life because at that moment until that day, I wasn’t sure of myself as a filmmaker. I wasn’t sure that my movie was a good one. I was ready to accept failure. But when I came here and I screened TIMECRIMES in front of people, and it worked so well, I felt born in many ways. So this place is really close to my heart.
Capone: So you came here at your most vulnerable, and Austin just gave you a big hug and told you it was okay?
EW: It was surreal. I wasn’t a part of the replica of Fantastic Fest for that sequence, but watching it, it’s all of our friends. Tim League is in an owl costume.
NV: It’s the most bizarre family film ever made.
[Everyone laughs]
EW: But it was great. It was great to come back to the place, because Nacho and I met at Fantastic Fest as well. I owe Tim League a debt of gratitude for this film, in a way, because I don’t know if I would have been a part of it had it not been for us meeting at the festival.
