Open Windows is kind of a weird movie; it's viewed almost entirely through a series of computer windows on a laptop screen. It's also kind of a prophetic movie; it's about a young actress named Jill Goddard, the target of a hacker who infiltrates her smartphone and laptop—and her life.
But instead of stealing the contents of the starlet's private life, the hacker in Open Windows, out on VOD today, makes a young fan, Nick (Elijah Wood), his unwitting accomplice by giving him access to the actress' phone and the ability to watch her through surveillance cameras. And, unlike IRL celebrity phone hacks, Nick doesn't use his access to snatch nude selfies of Goddard (Sasha Grey) and post them online; instead, he tries to save her from the skeeze targeting her.
The concept, which may remind viewers of a modern-day Rear Window, was actually vaguely inspired by the movie Closer (more on that later) and has been in the works for a couple years, but writer/director Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes) and his star are aware it's coming at a time when hacks like the one that hit Jennifer Lawrence and other (mostly female) stars are making headlines. Though the problem of online harassment—both of celebrities and civilians—is nothing new. "There's always a lack of privacy, there's always an infringement that is possible with the internet," Wood says. "We've read these stories time and time again, this just happens to be the latest infringement."
WIRED asked Vigalondo and Wood to interview each other about how they made their movie (Vigalondo had to make an animatic of the film's multi-windowed scenes so that Wood could understand what it would look like) and how it eerily intersects with everything from phone-hacking scandals to online harassment during #Gamergate.
Elijah Wood: Hello, Nacho.
Nacho Vigalondo: Hi. You look so beautiful this morning.
Wood: What should we talk about, Nacho? Perhaps maybe how we first met?
Vigalondo: We met so many years ago we should probably try to make some sense out of it.
Wood: Yeah. We met initially via email. I had spoken to Spanish press and I think they had asked me if there were any Spanish filmmakers that I liked or any films that I had seen that I loved. And I had said that I thought one of the most incredible films to come out of Spain in years was Timecrimes. I don't think we've ever talked about this, but how did that actually reach you?
Vigalondo: I'm feeling the shivers on my spine at this moment because that was the first time in my whole career, that someone I consider a star was talking about me. At the time, Timecrimes didn't have ambitions to become an international film. I just considered myself a local filmmaker. It was like the universe was collapsing on me.
Wood: I was blown away because, and I still have never lost this even though we go to Fantastic Fest every year, I'm still a child when it comes to meeting other filmmakers. I still have that enthusiasm.
Vigalondo: You have to keep that innocence as a spectator.
Wood: I don't have any cynicism or take it for granted. So when I ultimately got an email, which I think may have come from a manager or someone that you work with, but eventually I had an email from you and I just thought that was the coolest thing.
Wood: So you came up with the notion for Open Windows. It was a notion that was based on an idea that your producers had? How did that whole thing come together, ultimately?
Vigalondo: Do you remember Closer, the movie by Mike Nichols, in which it cuts to a conversation on a computer screen? Remember Messenger? The Skype of the last decade? My producing partners wanted me to make a movie where social media was a big element. They wanted the internet as a language on the screen. What I gave them back was the suggestion of making a movie in which all the villains were followed through a screen connected to the internet. In the beginning I was like, "OK, we're going to tell a film through a laptop computer, so this is going to be a twist on the found footage format, so what are we going to do now? Alien invasion through computer? Zombie invasion through computer?" We came with this story that was linked to the internet in such a way. Somehow the movie is about its own form.
Wood: Oftentimes with a nugget like that, when the idea predates the story, the idea becomes the focus, rather than the story itself. I think that's often a mistake, that you're trying to survive on the gimmick. Whereas you realized you had to make it in such a way where the gimmick can only exist because of the actions in the film. That's clever.
Wood: One of the things that people probably won't realize when they see the movie is that the movie looks less complicated than it actually is. [Laughs] Talk about how you had to make the movie before you made the movie.
Vigalondo: I have this rule that I follow: When I'm writing the script, I'm not directing the movie. I don't want to make a script that only works because the shots are going to be awesome. So I stick to the words and make something that works in a pure narrative way. But in this case things were different, because the narrative and the format gets together in this insane way. The fact that we were able to see something is because a specific [computer] window is open. The reason this window is open is a narrative reason. I couldn't forget myself as a director and I couldn't forget myself as an editor. So from the very beginning the movie was edited on paper.
Wood: Yeah. You sent me the script, and I would've done it regardless, because I wanted to work with you—but it was the most complicated thing to read.
Vigalondo: Sorry.
Wood: No, no, no. The beautiful thing about it is that if you read it and you can focus on the technical aspects and push those aside a little bit, the narrative is there. The technical aspects of the film had to be ingrained in the script itself. Like you said, if a character is speaking and then looking at something on the screen and then opening a window, what you see then is all based on those decisions. So that all has to be in the context of the script as well.
Wood: But you also made an animatic before we started shooting. Why did you feel like you had to make a version of the movie before filming? How did you work on that? What was the process?
Vigalondo: This wasn't a big production, but you have to convince people on the effectiveness of this idea, so we not only had to have a proper script but we also had to pre-shoot the movie, like an animated film. This is basically an animated film because all the images are settled over a digital landscape. So we had to make a pre-visualization of the whole movie, like if it was a Pixar film.
Wood: Because it's so technical, it helped to break it down. Sometimes it was difficult to read the script and understand what was happening on the screen. So to be able to see bits of the animatic—it was one of the first things you showed me and it made so much more, it made sense of what your vision was. It was very helpful.
Wood: Even when we were doing initial preps for the movie, before it came out in Spain, and when we showed it at South By Southwest, it was prior to that particular [celebrity phone hacking] scenario, but no less relevant. There's always a lack of privacy, that is possible with the internet. We've read these stories time and time again, this just happens to be the latest infringement.
So the timing is bizarre. But that notion of the fact that we share so much of our lives now online and with social media [isn't new]. And the fact that most people—especially young people—are unaware and, I think, a little bit naïve to what they're sharing and the fact that things they're putting out to each other on Twitter and Facebook are being seen by a very wide group of people. And it lives there forever and there are actual real consequences for those actions.
One of the things that's so fascinating about the internet is that we all have dark proclivities, but in public places amongst other human beings most of us have it hardwired into ourselves to treat each other with respect. To sort of curb some of the darker elements of human nature. But the internet is a step removed from that. You see it manifest in comments on articles or message boards. People, because they have this distance—these are people who would never say these things to each other in person ...
Vigalondo: It's a lack of empathy.
Wood: It's a lack of empathy, totally, but it's a disconnect. It's a removal from reality. There are no consequences for their behavior.
Vigalondo: When you don't have a face, you become someone else. Why is this happening? Why have we assumed this so easily? Why are we happy with the fact that people around us go to the internet and since they are anonymous, they become someone completely different, with a different set of values? It's frightening.
Wood: Another example of this, which I've been paying attention to and I think you have too, is the whole #Gamergate situation. It's just horrendous and you're seeing the worst sides of human beings who are literally threatening people with death because they have an opposing view. Again, they're able to do this because they have a distance. These are people that in real life there's no way that they would walk up to a woman and threaten her in same way, but because they have that sense of anonymity and distance, they feel like they can speak in this sort of disenfranchised mass that they are.
I think that the internet comprises the best and worst parts of humanity. I think that's always going to exist. As soon as someone can feel like they have a voice and can have a certain sense of anonymity, they will use that any way they want. We need accountability.
Vigalondo: I think we've reached that point where the internet has built a reality, but I think that today education is still far from that reality. I was never raised with that empathy, respect for other people [online] premise. No one taught me about that as a child. Education should be aware of the power of the internet, and the significance of being anonymous.
Wood: I think the thing that's a little scary about the way things are going is that it makes a really strong case for policing the internet, which is also what we don't want. We want the freedom of the internet to continue to exist because it's an incredibly powerful world and if you start to impose rules and control over that then what's beautiful about the internet would cease to exist. There needs to be better education and better self-policing.
Vigalondo: I think there needs to be a rule that you should behave on the internet as you would in real life. That rule is out there, but it's not clear. ... [With online harassment] we're discovering a new moral world. People have vague notions about what is good and right and what is bad, but all those notions have to be actualized in a really specific way for young people. The number of cases is too big, it's happening everywhere. Online harassment, leaking naked photographs, the threats, the abuse—it's happening everywhere constantly.
Wood: Yeah, look what happened with [videogame developer] Zoe Quinn and that whole situation. I think it was her ex-boyfriend, this is literally a jilted-lover situation, where he put private information up that has no bearing on her position in the world of games, and used it against her. It's total online harassment and it doesn't belong on the internet. The great thing about these things getting a little more attention is that it's going to start a much larger conversation to what our sense of responsibility is going to be online.
Open Windows is available on VOD today and hits select theaters Nov. 7.
