BPS 303: How I Wrote a Sundance Film with Chloe Okuno

Today on the show we have writer/director Chloe Okuno.Chloe is a
graduate of UC Berkeley with a masters degree from the American
Film Institute Conservatory. There she received the Franklin J.
Shaffner Fellow Award, and directed the award-winning horror short
film SLUT.

Her recent work includes writing a remake of “Audrey Rose” for
Orion Pictures and writing and directing a segment of the anthology
series V/H/S/94. She's the director of this year's Sundance feature
film Watcher.Julia joins her husband when he relocates to his
family’s native Romania for a new job. Having recently abandoned
her acting career, she finds herself frequently alone and
unoccupied. One night, people-watching from her picture window, she
spots a vague figure in an adjacent building, who seems to be
looking back at her. Soon after, while alone at a local movie
theater, Julia’s sense of being watched intensifies, and she
becomes certain she’s being followed — could it be the same unknown
neighbor? Meanwhile, a serial killer known as The Spider stalks the
city.

Below is the story of making The Watcher from Chloe's POV.In making
“Watcher,” I wanted to capture a kind of constant, uncomfortable
dread that accompanies many women throughout their lives- one that
is expressed through the character of Julia. Julia moves into this
apartment building with her husband and quickly begins to believe
she is being watched. She recognizes that the Watcher is a threat.
She feels it very clearly- even if it’s difficult to articulate the
extent of that threat to the people around her. It’s a situation
that’s probably quite familiar to most women. We experience the
world in a different way than men and then when we try to express
that experience, we’re often doubted- written off as paranoid,
irrational, or overly sensitive… which in turn can make us begin to
doubt ourselves. This has always been at the core of a story that
in other ways has evolved greatly since I was first hired to direct
it in 2017. Initially, the script was set in New York City, but
when it became clear that we would be shooting the movie in
Romania, I decided to rewrite it to take place in Bucharest.There
are times as a filmmaker where practical limitations end up being
creatively very freeing- unlocking something great when you’re
willing to embrace the unexpected. This was one of those
times.

Suddenly, Julia’s experience as a foreigner in this new city
heightens all her other feelings of unease and uncertainty. She
finds herself increasingly isolated- largely unable to speak the
language and therefore alienated from everyone around her. There
were of course natural (sometimes uncomfortable) parallels shooting
the movie on location in Romania: unable to speak the language,
oftentimes sequestered in a hotel room amidst the raging pandemic,
and occasionally fighting against the doubt that surrounds you as a
woman working in a male dominated profession. Fortunately, life
didn’t fully imitate art. I finished the movie without any
nightmarish descent into Watcher-style darkness, content with the
hope that all of the tension found its way on screen. The
filmmakers I admire are the ones who are able to create a language
for emotion through their craft, translating what they feel into a
form that other people can see and experience for themselves.

For Watcher I was inspired by the work of David Fincher, Sofia
Coppola, Satoshi Kon, Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Kieslowski, and
Mary Harron- filmmakers who have excelled at translating fear,
loneliness, and alienation. The hope is always that there will be
someone else who can empathize- telling stories so that we can take
comfort in the recognition of ourselves in others. As a person
filled with seemingly endless anxieties, making films is the best-
and possibly the only- way I’ve found to confront them. I’ve done
my best to portray them honestly in this film, and I can only hope
that those who have experienced similar fears and anxieties will
find solace in the knowledge that they are not alone.

Enjoy my conversation with Chloe Okuno.

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