‘Nomadland’ director Chloé Zhao embraces community at every turn
Chloé Zhao has been holed up at a Burbank Airbnb guesthouse for more than a month now, working seven days a week on “Eternals,” the upcoming cosmic gods Marvel movie she directed and cowrote. The cottage is a five-minute drive from Walt Disney Studios. She probably could have stayed in a bigger place or a four-star hotel, but Zhao likes the coziness. She also appreciates the way its modesty contrasts with the work she’s doing — and relishing.
“When you’re making a film and everything feels so big and expensive, it’s really nice to come home to a cave at night,” Zhao says. We’re talking via Zoom early on a recent Saturday morning, sipping coffee, shaking off the sleep. She’s telling me about the few personal touches she brought from her Ojai home: the warm, wool blanket she purchased in England while shooting “Eternals,” the rice cooker and the kitchen utensils needed to fully employ and enjoy that beloved steaming appliance.
“Dairy products do not agree with her digestive tract,” Frances McDormand tells me when asked what I should know about Zhao. It’s the most McDormand answer I can possibly hope for, the plainspoken star of Zhao’s Oscar-nominated film “Nomadland” dishing on her director, remembering the first time they met after a screening of Zhao’s acclaimed western “The Rider” at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.
“Fun, eclectic, casual and professional, typical of the rest of how we proceeded,” McDormand notes. “She sat on the floor; we both kicked off our shoes. We recognized each other pretty fast. We have a lot in common: We set our professional bar very high, and the one that suffers first for not reaching that bar is usually ourselves.”
Eight months ago, Zhao and McDormand were about 10 miles east of Burbank at the Rose Bowl for a pop-up drive-in screening of “Nomadland,” the best picture contender that earned six Oscar nominations, one for McDormand’s lead turn, four for Zhao (as a producer, director, writer and editor — the first woman to do so), as well as a nod for cinematographer Joshua James Richards, Zhao’s longtime collaborator and partner.
It’s the only movie Zhao has seen outside her living room this season and marked the first time she’s ever been to a drive-in. The evening was memorable for a hundred other reasons, one notable example being that ash was falling from an evening sky that had turned orange because of the nearby Bobcat Fire in the San Gabriel Mountains. Driving down from Ojai, Zhao felt a little depressed and, looking around after she arrived, she even wondered if people would be able to see the screen through the smoke.
Then, as the movie was about to start, she had a moment of unexpected catharsis. One of her all-time favorite films, “The Empire Strikes Back,” began showing at a regular drive-in next door. Zhao could see the lightsabers reflecting on the screen playing “Nomadland.” Midway through the movie, she walked to the bathroom at the Rose Bowl and on the way back took a peek, “probably longer than I should,” at “Empire” across the way.
“You didn’t see the lightsaber reflecting on our screen?” Zhao asks me. Nope. “You must be very focused. I appreciate that. If you moved your rearview mirror, you could have watched ‘Empire Strikes Back’ in your car with the sound of ‘Nomadland.’”
That would have made for a different evening. “Nomadland” is a movie about Fern, a widow (McDormand) taking to the road, wandering through western America, discovering a subculture of fellow travelers who live out of RVs, campers and cars and, in turn, finding herself. Watching that story at that particular moment and in that particular setting, with the nomads depicted in the movie among the audience at the Rose Bowl parking lot, resonated deeply. It was perfect.
“I wouldn’t ask for it any other way, which goes with a philosophy I have a lot of faith in: Everything happens for a reason,” Zhao says. “It brought people closer together.”
With the surge of antiAsian racism and violence, the Beijing-born Zhao has been thinking of community lately, phoning friends to check in and offer encouragement. “Even just a stranger walking down the street, you smile and you wave and you might make their day,” Zhao says. “To be vulnerable and put yourself out there ... you might not say the perfect thing, but the act of doing it, I promise it means something.”