Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/760821
70 DGA QUARTERLY PHOTOS: (TOP) THUNDEREGG, LLC.; (BOTTOM) JOJO WHILDEN days, while winning the best picture award at the London Film Festival the same weekend (it expanded to 60 screens in week two). Even so, at mid-career, Reichardt, 52, has a body of work that now includes six highly personal feature films and three shorts. "I don't think about how many people will see the film," she says of Certain Women on its opening day. "I have no idea what any of the films have ever done at the box office, to tell you the truth. It always seems a miracle these films can get out at all. I'm super-grateful for any traction they can build." Much of her achievement has involved stretching scant resources solve pieces of the puzzle. If nothing else, it takes you away from your life, and your mind is free to think about your story." Her standout works Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy and Meek's Cutoff were shot around Oregon, where writer Jonathan Raymond, a frequent collaborator, lives and locates his tales. When Reichardt switched focus to Montana for her new film, Certain Women, based on short stories by Maile Meloy, the banal décor she encountered at restaurants and hotels along the road wound up having a significant impact. "I've been driving through Montana for years, and when I started to think about shooting there, the first thing that stood out for me was how you see Native American art referenced everywhere, but without any texture or soul to it," reflects Reichardt. "It's an antiseptic version of Native images. And meanwhile around you there are no brown faces—it's all white. It's so bizarre how we chose to repurpose the culture [as decoration] but throw away the people." The new film stars Laura Dern, Michelle Williams and Kristen Stewart in a trilogy of loosely connected tales about women struggling to survive in a harsh, indifferent environment. Reichardt saw keen parallels between the clumsy co-optation of Native culture and, in one of Meloy's stories, a somewhat hollow attempt by upscale home builder Gina (Williams) to bring authenticity to a country home by muscling a load of indigenous local sandstone out of a confused old man (René Auberjonois). "I ended up swapping the middle story I was using for the one that's there now, which was a breakthrough," says the filmmaker. She admits that her quest for the exact right location can become borderline obsessive. For Wendy and Lucy, which stars Williams as a penniless traveler who becomes separated from her dog while on the road, Raymond had set significant scenes in a Walgreens parking lot on the same block as his house in Portland. "I thought, 'I'm not shooting there— that's so lazy,'" says Reichardt. "I went to 39 states scouting Walgreens parking lots. Finally, I called Todd Haynes [a mentor and producer on several of her films] and said, 'I've lost track of what I'm doing.' He said, 'Just describe the parking lot you're in. How is it different than the one near Jon's house?' I had to admit it wasn't much." She went back to Portland to shoot. "I sort of have to spin my wheels and exhaust myself sometimes before I settle in one place." To other filmmakers, the biggest mystery about Reichardt's movies is likely how she manages to make them at all. Hers is a refined art cinema, driven as much by the nuances and subtleties common to great literary fiction as by absorbing performances and moody visuals. Typically, the work piles up critical accolades and festival awards while notching only modest theatrical receipts. Certain Women, which opened in October via IFC Films at a scant five theaters in New York and L.A., tallied $61,000 in its first three O P E N S PA C E S : On the previous page, Kelly Reichardt surveys the scene while filming Meek's Cutoff with her protagonist/muse Michelle Williams, with whom she has worked on three films. Above, a scene from the film with Paul Dano. Below, the director frames a shot on the set of her current release, Certain Women, with ensemble player Kristen Stewart looking on.