An interview with writer-director Kelly Reichardt about the restoration and re-release of her debut film RIVER OF GRASS!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here, with another piece from our Sundance stringer Matt Hoffman, who caught up with writer-director Kelly Reichardt, who was in Park City to support her new film CERTAIN WOMEN, as well as the restored version of her first film, RIVER OF GRASS, which is making its way through the art-house circuit right now. I’ll let Matt take over from here…





I’m not one to get nervous before an interview, but one can’t help but feel a little jittery when they’re getting to talk to one of their favorite filmmakers. That was the case when I was given the chance to speak to Kelly Reichardt. While her films often live under the radar, Reichardt does have a league of loyal fans. Her most well known films are perhaps WENDY & LUCY as well as MEEK’s CUTOFF, both starring Michelle Williams.

Her upcoming film CERTAIN WOMEN stars Williams again, as well as Kristen Stewart, which is sure to get it noticed. Reichardt was in Park City for the Sundance Film Festival in January, where I got to speak to her following a screening of the restoration of her debut film, RIVER OF GRASS. Perhaps it was helpful that I wasn’t warned of Reichardt’s reputation for being a tough interview beforehand. Enjoy…


Matt Hoffman: RIVER OF GRASS is a really cool movie. It’s certainly an anomaly among the rest of your carefully paced, slower films. Where did the idea come from?

Kelly Reichardt: It's hard to say exactly where one's head was 20 years ago, but I think the idea at the time was about...gosh, who the hell knows? It was like trying to deal with the hero movie, bad-people-on-the-run movie, when this sort of concept had already been so co-opted and in the mainstream. How can you still be an outsider and an outlaw? That's sort of a standard image in selling every kind of product or idea or lifestyle. It was a deflated version of a road movie.

Matt Hoffman: This is the first film you made with Larry Fessenden, who you would work with again as an actor and producer. Can you talk about your relationship?

KR: When we made RIVER OF GRASS, Larry was the editor. It was shot on 16mm, and we transferred it to offline three-quarter-inch video. Larry cut it without even a timecode. Then we matched it back for the print by eye. Anyway, it was just a summer. It was almost like film school for me, learning how to edit with Larry. Just thinking about ways of putting things together. I had been thinking about shots before, but I hadn't thought about construction.



Just the idea of sound design and what the cut does, it was a great project for that. Obviously, we became good friends and he has supported me. He runs a production company Glass Eye Pix, aside from being an actor and a filmmaker himself. Every project before you can start you need some kind of backing to even afford to write it or do the first location scouts or do the first bit of research. Larry has supported me in that way pretty much through every movie I've made.

Matt Hoffman: Why shoot this film in Florida, considering that the rest of your films are set in Oregon?

KR: I'm from Florida. I shot in the area that I lived in during high school. I was a Floridian, so...

Matt Hoffman: The drum solos spread throughout RIVER OF GRASS are quite remarkable.

KR: Dick Russell, who plays the drumming detective, those drum solos are from his son. I think his son was like 10 in those recordings. His son had passed away, but he had these cassette tapes of his son drumming. He would have been a great drummer, but his life got cut short. Dick let us use those tapes.

Matt Hoffman: Was that was not originally in the screenplay?



KR: The character was always a drummer. He auditioned, and I really liked him. I said, "You know, this character's a drummer." He pulled out a business card and tossed it at me, and it said, "Dick Russell," and it had drumsticks and a guitar, "Drummer." It was a crazy casting moment.

Matt Hoffman: While RIVER OF GRASS may be an anomaly location and plot wise, it does have a strong connection to your other films in the way it was shot. Beginning here, you have continued to shoot nature in a very interesting way. Where did that fascination come from? Did you do a lot of landscape photography before this film?

KR: I did photography as a kid up until my 20s. I was very into photography and did a lot of road trips. I do a lot of them as an adult, but as a kid my family used to do a lot of camping—Miami to Montana, going out west. That's where I learned to take pictures. It was probably from there.

Matt Hoffman: The characters in your films are certainly connected to their environments. Land itself plays an important role in all of your films. Are you consciously writing this into your screenplays, or does it naturally come through?

KR: I think that a person's natural environment, whether it's the city or a desert or the country, I think all of that stuff is very present in John Raymond's writing, which a lot of my films are based off of, the films after RIVER OF GRASS. That's something I'm interested in. I find my way into a story through scouting first and driving around, figuring out how I would shoot it and just how a person is in a place and how it effects them. That's the entryway for me. I think the combination of that and John being that kind of writer. In my latest film, CERTAIN WOMEN, Maile Meloy is that kind of writer. It's just a good pairing for my filmmaking.

Matt Hoffman: What other filmmakers or films pushed you towards RIVER OF GRASS?

KR: I think the inspirations are somewhat embarrassingly raw and lay on top of the surface of the film. I clearly must have been watching Godard. I was clearly watching Terrence Malick. A lot of Anthony Mann and film noir and B-movies. At that time, I was watching a lot of everything because I was obsessed with Hollywood films from the '70s, the new Hollywood as it were.

Matt Hoffman: Is it strange for you to go back and look at a film that you made so long ago?



KR: I haven't seen it. I haven't looked at it. I remember making it. Larry Fessenden and I did an audio commentary for it. We hadn't seen the film since 1994. It didn't have the sound on it, so we just looked at it while we talked. I edit most of my films, so I've really had enough. It's like looking at edits. It never really becomes a movie in a way.

Matt Hoffman: MEEK’S CUTOFFis such an excellent film. Where did you get the idea to do this anti-Western?

KR: It's just a story told from the perspective of people who usually don't have a voice in Westerns. It's told very much from an outsider's perspective, and I guess Westerns are usually told by a protagonist who is usually a person who has a lot of control and a lot of power.

Matt Hoffman: Regardless of events in the plot, your films are always character-focused works. As a filmmaker, are the characters more important than the situations that they're in?

KR: It's sort of chicken and egg, I guess. I can't remember exactly how that all goes. You can find out a lot about people by what their day job is and what their interests are. Whether it’s a job they like or don't like, or how you make your money, just what your small struggles are. I guess it's all tied together.

Matt Hoffman: There was a lot of discussion around your film NIGHT MOVES relating to this. The main argument being whether it was really a film about the environment or rather three people in a difficult situation.

KR: I'm all for the lefty eco-fighters, believe me, but that's not what I was doing. I'm not making a propaganda film. There were disappointed viewers. We really started out with that film to make a film about a fundamentalist; that was the idea of it. That was the original idea of NIGHT MOVES.

Matt Hoffman: One of the great things about NIGHT MOVES, as well as MEEK’S CUTOFF—the ambiguous endings. Do you ever deal with pressure over endings like the ones in those films?

KR: No. Someone did once send back MEEK’S CUTOFF and said that the ending was missing from their DVD.

Matt Hoffman: All your films have ambiguity in their endings actually.

KR: They're all small pieces of life. Almost all these films take place over a week or two of whoever's life your in, a season at the mos. You catch up with all these people while their life is under way, and you leave them as their life is still under way. They're pieces in motion. It's as if you've just dropped into someone’s life for a moment. It's in motion and it's still going. There's no conclusive endings.





Reichardt’s RIVER OF GRASS will play in a limited run at theaters across the U.S. and Canada throughout the summer. Look for Reichardt’s latest work, CERTAIN WOMEN, later this year.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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