Indie filmmaker Kelly Reichardt is known for her minimalist, intimate and thread-bare dramas. 2008’s skeleton-like “Wendy & Lucy” is beautiful, in an excruciating way, but is so narratively emaciated, it almost doesn’t exist. 2003’s masterwork “Old Joy,” is another stripped-down, raw and no-budget affair.
So what’s next? According indie horror wunderkind Larry Fessenden, who has helped her produce some of her films (along with Todd Haynes, who generally lends his executive producing support), she might be attempting something with a bit more ambition and scope (sorta like Mike Judge). Not to mention it’ll be a genre pic: a Western. Though it could be just as minimalist.
“Kelly’s approach, she really has intimate advisors. Todd Haynes is one. I’ve been one. Mike Ryan. Just people that she goes to. She very much wants to talk things out. She always asks for counsel. And yet of course she’s extremely strong-headed and has her own course to follow. I think she knows and truly believes that the only way she wants to make movies is in an extremely organic fashion. A lot of the things I’ve talked about, we aesthetically share. She’s making a Western now, and she’s off building the characters,” Fessenden told the A.V. Club. “It’s still a no-budget movie, but she’s got artisans on board to help her and fulfill that vision. I know the movies she loves and the actors she loves, like Warren Oates. Something about a truth that’s in the films. You know, she’s not a snob. She likes Hitchcock and Sergio Leone. She likes a lot of the great entertainments. But she can smell bullshit a mile off. And she chooses to avoid it, even though she’s had a certain amount of success.
So, no-budget anti-western then, is that it? Are we ready for the most existential (read: slow) Western since, “The Shooting”? After all Monte Hellman — “Two-Lane Blacktop,” , “Cockfighter,” general Warren Oates champion — is returning to the directors chair after nearly 20 years (with als0-ran hipster actresses too, weird). Perhaps a moody tone poem like Jim Jarmucsh’s masterpiece, Dead Man”? Who knows, but after tackling the micro-indie landscape twice now, we’re betting her proposed Western can’t help but be at least somewhat larger in vision. With horses and sets, it sort of has to be, no? A modern “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” maybe? Beats “Transformers 3” that’s for sure. We can’t wait. Someone give this girl a bigger budget, please.
