“We were on the edge of our seats.” Interview With Joshua Rofé Director of SASQUATCH

What starts off as an investigation into a seemingly unbelievable story of a certain well-known cryptid, quickly veers into a string of dark and disturbing discoveries. I spoke with the director Joshua Rofé for the fantastic new Hulu docuseries Sasquatch. We spoke about the origins of this investigation, the unpredictability of such a journey, and his thoughts on the titular myth. 

This is Kristy Strouse with Film Inquiry. I really love the show.  I am a fan of true crime documentaries and I am always interested in exploring the strange. So, this of course caught my attention.  Congrats!

Joshua Rofé: Wow, thank you so much, I seriously appreciate that. It’s weird, you know, Kristy, because at the time we knew we were making something weird, and I knew it was interesting to me but there was this part of me that’s like, maybe this is too weird for people? I don’t know. And that’s kind of what excited me. But yeah, that’s, really nice to hear. I appreciate that.

I love that! I think you’re going to find that a lot of people really enjoy it. There’s an audience! How did you first get involved with a project so strange and with such an undertaking as this one?

Joshua Rofé: Yeah. So basically, in February 2018 I was having dinner with a friend, his name’s Zach Cregger he’s one of the Executive Producer’s on the show actually, and you’ll understand sort of how that kicked off in a sec, but after dinner Zach said, you really ought to listen to this podcast called Sasquatch Chronicles. This is people calling up with their encounter stories. And I wasn’t interested at face value, but at his behest, I listened to an episode, and then four days later I’d listened to 11 episodes!  What I was really taken by was the visceral fear, what I felt was authentic visceral fear that I was sensing from the people telling their Sasquatch encounter story. And so for the next week I just sort of thought… I’m going to make a Sasquatch something. But, what would that look like? And then by the end of the week, I thought well if I can find a murder mystery that is somehow wrapped up in a Sasquatch story that could be really special. And so David Holthouse is somebody who he was working with me actually at the time on my series Lorena. And we’d already known each other and been working together for a few years, and I knew David‘s history is a Gonzo journalist and if you were me, David, the person you’d reach out to if you were looking for a story that seemed sort of out of the box. And so I send them a text that essentially, well actually- I literally said: this is the craziest text I’m gonna send you for the next five years. I want to find a murder mystery that is somehow wrapped up in a Sasquatch story, and if that exists pursue it for the next project. And then he wrote me right back and he said “I love it, I got one. I’ll call you in five,” and he told me that story about that night in the cabin in 1993. That’s how it all began. 

Wow. So you hadn’t heard that story, and you had no idea when you reached out to him?

Joshua Rofé: I had no idea, but because I knew David when he told me that my reaction was oh, of course, David Holthouse had one. [Laugh] And the next day when I came into the office I told my editors (because we all made Lorena together and then Sasquatch as well). They had the same reaction, of course, that Holthouse has a story, you know, his history as a journalist and just as a human being is that he has seen and done things that are not standard experiences. 

Yeah, I love that you didn’t know, but somehow knew. That’s amazing. I’m curious, from there on how long did the process take, how long were you were working on this?

Joshua Rofé: So, from the moment that I heard that I sort of came up with that idea, and then Holthouse really cemented it for me with an actual story that he had, and that was February 2018. You could say that we were researching it from that moment until we started shooting in May of 2019. And, just a lot of digging, a lot of conversations that David was having with folks. And then we shot from May 2019 till about June or July of 2020. A lot of it was us just… we really just needed to chip away at this thing, because there were so many different doors that were opening there that we couldn’t have seen coming. And then all of a sudden, we’d go from a three month period where it seemed that we were dead in the water, and no progress was made in the investigation, to all the sudden something has really shaken loose, and that thing that shook loose… it just sort of burst into, you know- five other pathways that we’re going to chase down. There’s just this little by little process. But, you know, just the constant pounding of the pavement was really what it was.

I love the mystery of it! It’s so compelling, and as a viewer it really grabs you. As you were doing this was it similar for you? Were you feeling that anxiety?

Joshua Rofé: Oh my god. Let me say, there were times when David would have a 3 pm meeting scheduled with a potential source, and by 11 pm the location had been changed, multiple times. Now he was no longer going to meet somebody in a public place in daylight hours. He was going to go meet somebody close to midnight, and the place that he was going to meet them at, it turned out it was a bar or a restaurant that was closed. And, “oh by the way, there are eight other people who are also going to be at that meeting.” And at that meeting, they would say “oh you should talk to this person on the phone” and they’d get them on the phone with somebody who lived about three hours away somewhere else in Northern California, deep in the woods.

Oh wow. 

Joshua Rofé:  And then this person would say something and sort of leave a little breadcrumb that felt like it could be a big break in the investigation. And they say, “why don’t you come out?” And David would respond, “yeah, maybe I could come see you tomorrow” and they say’d “no now.” And he would kind of play it off like “I’m kind of beat, we started filming early in the day,” you know. Then somebody else who was standing there with David said, “Oh, I’ll drive you. We’ll be there in three hours, nothing.” He didn’t go, thankfully, and all the while I’m back at the hotel. We are all up there, in Northern California and I’m back at the hotel just waiting for his text message updates. Sometimes it was until two-three in the morning. Anytime he could sneak away to go to the bathroom he’d be texting me what was going on. So much of our experience really did parallel what I think the viewer’s experience will be. We were on the edge of our seats and we were afraid, for a lot it, really. 

I can imagine you would be. Was there a lot of footage/interviews that you didn’t include in the final cut?

Joshua Rofé: Oh, there were a couple of interviews that we got that we didn’t use. But, I mean there’s certainly plenty of footage. There probably would be enough for another episode but it wouldn’t have been as good of a show. We shot a decent amount, not as much as I shot when I made Lorena when we interviewed 50 people, ya know?

Yeah, that makes sense. 

Joshua Rofé: With this, there were going to be far fewer people who are going to be willing to talk. And this story is… it’s just so much more intimate. But, you know, there’s always a ton of stuff that you leave on the cutting room floor.

Yeah, I think I asked that just because as a viewer, someone that was quite fascinated by the story, it’s like… I want more! [Laughs] 

Joshua Rofé: Yeah! [Laughs]

Would you ever be open to investigating this further?

Joshua Rofé: I mean, potentially. That’s definitely something that we’ve talked about, but there would need to be something very compelling that develops or gets revealed. There is more that I know and that we all know, than could even… let’s say, legally go in the show. But we, we took his story to the end. Even the way we laid it out, we really did. So, something would have to shake loose in a new way to do a follow-up episode but, I mean, I’m not particularly keen to do that because I know that we told the story really from start to finish, as much as it is possible.

Yeah, absolutely. I’m sure there’s a lot that you can’t include. With my last question, I might as well ask, do you believe in Sasquatch?

Joshua Rofé: I would need to see something like that, to believe it exists. But, I will say that (and David says something to this effect in the show) when you’re up there, in those woods, long enough, you do start to experience your own senses in a different way, in a way that is slightly more paranoid. And so, I guess I’ll just leave it there.

That’s a great answer, keep the mystery going! I think when people watch the series they’ll understand how much that answer makes sense. 

Joshua Rofé: Exactly.

Thanks again for taking the time to speak with me today!

Joshua Rofé: No problem, I appreciate you doing it, thanks so much for the kind words!

Film Inquiry would like to thank Joshua Rofé for taking the time to speak with us. 

Sasquatch will be available to stream on Hulu on April 20th. 

Watch Sasquatch