When reflecting on the greatest American filmmakers of the 21st century, any conversation would be incomplete without Kelly Reichardt. The filmmaker behind films like “Old Joy,” “Wendy and Lucy,” “Meek’s Cutoff,” “Night Moves,” “First Cow,” and “Showing Up,” she’s more than cemented her status as an icon of indie cinema. However, her latest shows she’s not only still challenging herself, leaving behind the Pacific Northwest where she’s made much of her work, but continuing to cut deep into the soul of both the country and the often troubled characters that populate it.
In “The Mastermind” (in theaters October 17), the troubled character in question is Josh O’Connor’s James Blaine Mooney. A deeply flawed family man who doesn’t seem to actually want to be living this life, he uses them as cover to case a local art museum that he’ll soon attempt to rob when we first meet him. It’s the 1970s, and his quiet corner of Massachusetts is both somewhat removed from and also deeply a part of the protests against the catastrophe of the Vietnam War. But James seems unbothered by any of this turmoil, instead becoming quickly consumed by his fixation with pulling off an art heist that may destroy his life as he knows it.
I’ve spoken with Reichardt twice in the past (for “First Cow” and “Showing Up” respectively), but when I talked with her about “The Mastermind,” I was struck by how much she opened up about her latest work and her perspective on the world. Though the film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, is set decades in the past, it feels urgently relevant and timeless as it grapples with a world on the brink of massive upheaval. It reunites her with some familiar faces, both in front of the camera, such as the always joyous John Magaro, and behind it in the great cinematographer Christopher Blauvet, though it also feels like something new for her as well, showing how she’s willing to take on a new era and genre without missing a step.
In conversation, Reichardt discussed “The Mastermind,” her joy in the art of filmmaking, her desire to always cast Josh O’Connor in the role, her advocacy as a filmmaker for the state of the world, and the exploration of what happens when a charming leading man runs out of charm.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
This is the first feature you’ve written solely yourself that wasn’t based on anything, so I wanted to start there: how do you write, and how is it different when it’s just you?
Well, when I did the Maile Meloy stories for “Certain Women,” I was writing the script myself. That was its own process. They’re all their own process. I didn’t have the batting around time with Jon Raymond that I usually have, but when I got in the weeds at a point with my third act, he came and batted around things to help me figure out what I could cut out of the third act [laughs]. But it was nice; I actually enjoyed it. I hadn’t done it like that before, where I just worked from the blank page. It was fun. I had a good experience with it. I enjoyed it. Until I got screwed up. I kept making the third act like a first act and had too much stuff in it, so I needed to do some excavating. But that was all part of the process.
How did you find your way out of that third act being like your first act?
I showed it to Jon, and I said, “Where’s my thread in here? I can’t find my path. It’s too much.” He read it and marked out a bunch of stuff to get rid of. He was just like, “This is the line, follow the line.” I was like, “Oh yeah, okay, great.” That was good. Yeah, so I had some hashing out sessions with Jon of what I thought I needed and explaining what I was trying to get up to. It took many different turns, but it was an enjoyable process. It filled a lot of hours, days, years.
So you’re still finding joy in the work?
Yeah. Otherwise, I wouldn’t do it. I have a day job and a teaching job. I wouldn’t do it if I weren’t into it. Yeah, this was a really great process. This was the most enjoyable film to make. They’re all hard, but this was hard for all the right reasons. COVID made “Showing Up” hard in a lot of ways. I mean, there were a lot of great things in that film. Building an arts school was a really great experience. It’s always great working with Michelle [Williams] and Hong [Chau]. But COVID tripped us up in so many ways. You couldn’t just all hang out and be in a van together to meet. Just sharing ideas over Zoom is really different from sharing ideas in a room together or being in a space together. It was really fun to go back to that. We were in a new location, which was exciting. We had a really great local crew with us. We had a really good, challenging experience.
And you worked again with cinematographer Christopher Blauvet.
I worked with him on “Meek’s Cutoff,” “First Cow,” “Showing Up,” and “Certain Women.” I’ve made a lot of films with Chris. He’s my total partner in crime. It’s a constant with Chris.
What was the first day of conversation like between you all on “The Mastermind?” Do you feel like you’re on the same wavelength in terms of what the other needs and thinks about in setting out on a film?
Well, I gotta turn him onto what I want things to look like, what I want it to be, and what I want the tone to be. So I sent him some stuff to look at. I make some books. We talk. But we’re mates, so we’re in contact and talking about stuff all the time. So I talked to him early on, when I was working on the film, about what I was thinking and what it might look like. Then we keep building on it. We eventually start scouting. The very first scouts, Chris wasn’t on. I went with Neil Kopp, one of the two producers that I work with all the time, and with [production designer] Tony Gasparro. I think we went on the first scout, but Chris joined soon after. Then you look at stuff, and the conversation just keeps building. Usually, it starts with me just talking to him about color and showing him some images to begin the conversation.
What were some of those colors and images that you were showing him?
We were looking at some Robby Müller films, particularly the colors in “An American Friend”, which were interesting. That was these golds and dark shades with browns and tans kind of thing [laughs]. That doesn’t sound like colors, really. It’s a little bit of a slow crawl. The film takes place in 1970, providing many opportunities to revisit topics that are always part of the conversation, such as Stephen Shore’s parking lots. Then it becomes a conversation working one-on-one with Tony Gasparro and working one-on-one with Amy Roth, the customer, with Blauvet. The conversations eventually move into a warehouse, and people start working together. The look evolves as we go, and we find places we’re gonna shoot. The Dove art was a major contributor to thoughts on color and texture. There was a lot of Dove diving, diving deep into Arthur Dove.
When did Josh O’Connor then come into the picture? Because he feels like someone of this time. I know that you looked at documentaries, and it feels like he could just be a cousin in the background of one of them.
Yeah. I mean, the docs I looked at were shot in 16 mm, but they’re beautifully shot. The first thing with Josh was giving him an idea of a specific period in America, so he wouldn’t have a broad idea of the ‘70s. I sent him tapes of what was on the radio and then things that might be closer to his taste. Artwork that might be in the world of Dove. Some docs from the period. He started working with a voice coach. But I had him in mind for a long time when I was working on the script, so it’s lovely that it worked out. He was the only actor that I ever talked to about it, so that was fortunate. He’s got a talented face. His mug can fit into a lot of different worlds.
Speaking of radio, I recently rewatched “Old Joy” where we hear broadcasts about the invasion of Iraq, and this too is about a catastrophe a world away, but it is being closer than you realize. What was your thought process in terms of that framing with Vietnam?
Well, to be honest, I don’t want to talk about it too much, and I don’t see them all as connected or anything. That radio in “Old Joy,” you’re a young man [laughs], you might be too young to have remembered Air America, but that was lefties having a radio station for ten minutes. This is set in 1970, where there is a lot going on. The Weather Underground is kicking it off, the war in Vietnam is moving into Cambodia, there is a shooting at Kent State, it’s a volatile time.
But [James] is living his life, and so it’s all kind of on the periphery of his psyche and what he’s thinking. It’s not where he’s focused. He might have some of the rebellious spirit in him; he’s definitely rebelling against his parents’ life, his middle-class upbringing, the structure of the life he’s fallen into, being a father and husband. He has the privilege of blowing that up because there are some women around to pick up the pieces [laughs]. But it seemed like the reasonable period to set it in, just because the dreams of the ‘60s are over, and that didn’t work out. Then there’s this kind of haze of “What the fuck?” and Watergate is yet to really be, but it’s around the corner. It’s moving in, too.
Absolutely, and I’m not looking to have you explain the movie because that’s the last thing I’d ever want you to do.
No, yeah. I just don’t want to make the background seem like the foreground. But the things that ring true to me at this moment are all that’s going on here, Palestine, and everywhere, just as we keep going on with our everyday lives. When I was making this film, I was pretty judgmental of my character for doing that, even though he’s fucking up his life. He’s just a little past draft age, has two kids, and maybe his dad could get him out of it anyway. But his friends’ lives are more precarious. How easy it is to get on with your own life.
When you mention Palestine, several of your fellow filmmakers have spoken about it this year.
I didn’t mention Palestine.
Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you had just a moment ago.
I did, but now I see where you’re going. Alright, go on.
I just wanted to ask if you had any reflections about your place as an outspoken filmmaker? I think of the Spirit Awards when there was a protest last year, where I believe you had referenced Robert Altman in terms of the importance of speaking up.
These are big questions. I wish I could be a better spokesperson for it. It’s easy to wonder what exactly you should be doing. My friends and I were saying the other day, “Where is everyone? Why isn’t everyone out in the streets?” Then we were saying, “Well, maybe it’s up to us, maybe we’re supposed to be getting people in the streets.” But then what’s really gonna happen in the streets, where I live in Portland, is the National Guard is coming in, and then you’re dealing with that. There’s a lot going on.
I’m more comfortable putting my politics (not that I think of my films as being really political films, but everything is political) into my film work. I think there are just many more articulate people in the world who would be better spokespeople for this. But I guess if you have a microphone, you want to take the moment just to say how fucking hideous it is to be witnessing a genocide. ‘Do people really have the power?’ is the question I’ve been asking myself lately.
It feels as though this film is about sitting with the horrors, even when they’re happening a world away, and yet having to find what place you have in the world.
I mean, this character is kind of blowing up his life. I don’t want to put too fine a point on it because I think there are different ways to interpret it, or I hope there are. But that’s what a lot of young people are doing. This is a middle-class white guy, but the revolutionary moment of the period is that this family structure, that this suburban life is some kind of dream, is fucking bullshit. So some people were blowing up the system, but our guy is just blowing up his own life [laughs].
But I kept thinking this is the murkiness of the end of the 60s before the 70s are defined. It’s hard not to think about how these times will be defined and what you did in them. Obviously, it’s different because of the Internet, and so much happens on the Internet as opposed to in the streets. Sometimes I’m just like, “Where is everybody?” There’s this guy in Portland who stands on Burnside every day holding his Stop Authoritarianism sign. He’s just there holding his sign, and everyone gives him a little honk as they go by. It’s just like, wow, alright. That’s different.
That makes me think of the moment in the film where we’re spending time with John Magaro’s character, and he says the people who are fleeing to Canada are “draft-dodgers, radical feminists, dope fiends—good people.” In many ways, your films have been a search for those good people in a world where so much has gone bad.
I mean, he’s being a little ironic. But there are good people all around. It’s how to live. The guy in the bar, who is telling his friends later in the film about his experience having to go to boot camp and go to Vietnam, says, “I wanted to find out what kind of person I was.” I think there is a thread in the film where the main character wants to discover what kind of person he is. He’s going in a lot of wrong directions. He’s a person who comes from a place with a lot to fall back on and a lot of privilege. He’s used to working off his charms. He just can go through the world thinking it will work out for him somehow, which isn’t the way everybody operates.
What has stood out to me is that he is charming. You are swept up in so much of what he is doing, but then I think of that phone call scene where he’s trying to work the charm one more time.
The charm is running out. The Gabby Hoffman character calls him on his charm offensive not working, and she’s a really grounding force in the film. That’s a turning point where the levers you’re used to working for you aren’t working the way they usually do. That’s a scary place to be in. I always thought of it more as a coming apart or falling apart than as a heist film. Or a coming undone film. That’s the coming undone part of it.
When you talked with Josh about the nuances of coming undone, his grin started to fade, and he became reserved, then beaten down. What were those conversations like together?
With someone like Josh, you’re just feeling out each scene and what’s in front of you and responding to it. There’s a big sense of where it’s going and all, but it’s also staying in the moment and responding to exactly what’s happening right now. Like, oh shit, I got to pay for this cup of coffee or this bus ticket or this phone call. It’s almost as if the heist, the thievery, the idea of the plan of how to go about that is the thing he’s most sure of in the whole film [laughs]. And he doesn’t want to let go of that as being a good idea. That was Josh’s mantra through the whole movie, saying, “This is a really good idea. This is a really good idea.” And it’s like sure, sure. What could go wrong?
I read that you said at the New York Film Festival that you like including elements in a heist film that other films would take out. When you’re exploring quote-unquote “genre movies,” what is it you look for and how do you go about putting slivers of life back in?
I like day-to-day stuff, and then you take day-to-day stuff. Then you put it in the mold of some sort of genre then try to make those things work together. I like to add the smaller moments into all these different kinds of forms and see what happens when it’s not just the highlights, when you’re looking at the B-side of things, of the practicality of what it takes to pull certain things off. It’s usual in a heist that something will go wrong, something unexpected will happen. Someone forgets their keys at work and has to return to the office, so someone unexpected is gonna show up. Whatever it is, the night watchman made his rounds early because something happened with a dog; there’s always something that throws the plan a little off.
So that’s normal, it’s just the lo-fi-ness of it, perhaps, and the way it plays out in time. As viewers, we’re all so literate with story that our inner clock tells us what’s supposed to be going on. Like things shouldn’t be slowing down right now; they should be speeding up right now. What does it do to put a trip wire in a form we all know?
Is there anything you’re looking to bring a trip wire to next? I know you had talked years ago about adapting Patrick DeWitt’s novel “Undermajordomo Minor,” then you made “First Cow.” Still, I’m curious if there is anything you’re interested in or that has you excited?
Yeah. It’s not a genre anything. But I hate to talk about things too soon. It’s nice to live with it in your head. I’m just diving back into trying to figure out and understand America more, and where we are.
Would it ever bring you back to Portland or the Pacific Northwest?
Maybe not right away. I really shot up the Pacific Northwest. It’s fun to discover some new landscapes. But you know, we all like shooting there. It’s all so beautiful because it’s always just rained. But sometimes it’s good to get away from home to make stuff too. Eh, we’ll see. Anything can happen, anything can happen.
“The Mastermind” opens in limited release this Friday, October 17, expanding to other cities later.
