In her new film “Showing Up,” the director Kelly Reichardt reunites for the fourth time with the actress Michelle Williams, who plays Lizzy, a stressed-out sculptor, in the Portland-set art world comedy. In previous Reichardt films Williams has portrayed a drifter looking for her lost dog (“Wendy and Lucy”), a beleaguered and dehydrated pioneer (“Meek’s Cutoff”) and a Montana woman trying to acquire sandstone for her new house (“Certain Women”). At this point, Reichardt and Williams’s collaboration is one of the most fruitful in the realm of indie cinema.
“She has extreme depth perception,” Williams said of Reichardt in a phone interview. “She can see where my sight stops, so I do what I can and I add what I can, but I really am trusting her to take me to the new place, to the next frontier.”
But Williams is not alone in being drawn to Reichardt. “Showing Up,” now in theaters, also marks the second time Reichardt has enlisted John Magaro, last of her acclaimed 2020 feature “First Cow,” and the third time she’s brought on James Le Gros, who has shown up in her 2013 eco-thriller “Night Moves” and also in the 2016 omnibus “Certain Women.” In “Showing Up,” Magaro plays the mentally ill brother of Williams’s character, while Le Gros plays a teacher at the art school where she works.
In the nearly three decades since her first feature “River of Grass,” Reichardt has developed something of a troupe of actors who are eager to work with her time and time again. In addition to the repeat performers from “Showing Up,” others have made multiple Reichardt films, among them Larry Fessenden, Will Oldham and Will Patton.
“There’s no requirement to come back,” Magaro said. “A lot of these people go on and make a lot more money doing other jobs.” But the actor said that there was a reason people return. “At the heart of it is Kelly and that team and that camaraderie and that family atmosphere she creates.”
Reichardt works with small budgets and often in and around Portland, Ore., telling intimate stories that often focus on outsiders and the minutiae of life, whether she’s making a movie set in a fur trapping community in the 19th century or at an art school in the present. “Showing Up” is arguably her lightest film yet, a funny exploration of the quotidian struggles of being an artist.
The director’s resources have grown since she made “Wendy and Lucy” (2008) — her first collaboration with Williams — but not by much. Reichardt remembered the actress, who had recently received her first Oscar nomination, sitting on an apple box on the side of the road during the filming of “Wendy.” “We had nothing,” Reichardt said. She also explained that, on “Night Moves,” Eisenberg and Dakota Fanning helped push a car out of a ditch and lugged equipment around with the rest of the crew.
“You really need to be the kind of person who wants to pitch in and who doesn’t mind that there aren’t walls between people and that you might be asked to drive yourself to work,” Williams said. Over the years Reichardt has recruited big name stars including Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern, but she has said that “plenty of people” still say no to her. Acting in a Reichardt movie is not for everyone, she herself admitted.
“I have a great rejection letter from Chris Cooper,” she said. “He just wrote, ‘I don’t want to live through this.’” (A representative for Chris Cooper did not have a comment.)
Reichardt does not begrudge that response. “People are smart, like Michelle is down for it and is really game and you have to have people that are up for this kind of filmmaking,” she said, adding, “otherwise they’ll be very unhappy.”
The lack of hierarchy on Reichardt’s sets also manifests onscreen, in some of Reichardt’s artistic choices. Patton recalled throwing away his ego on “Meek’s Cutoff,” about a group of pioneers in the arid Oregon desert under the guidance of a bloviating leader (Bruce Greenwood). “At a certain point you say, ‘OK, maybe you see me in a distance walking up a hill for this whole movie,” he said. “That’s kind of wonderful in a way.”
That said, it was a wide shot in “Meek’s” that first made Magaro take notice of Reichardt as a filmmaker. The “brave” choice made him want to seek out more of her work.
In addition to “brave,” Reichardt was described in interviews for this piece as a “genius” (by Williams), a “rascal” (by Hong Chau, who makes her Reichardt debut in “Showing Up”), and scary, of all adjectives, by Le Gros. “She scares me a little bit,” he said. “I don’t want to get her on my bad side.” When asked to explain why the small-in-stature Reichardt scares him, Le Gros said, “Any room that she’s in, she’s the toughest one there.”
Reichardt knows what she wants and she is relentless in her pursuit of that. “She’s very decisive and uncompromising and she has a vision in her head and nothing is going to stop her from getting that on the screen whether that’s hail storms or oxen or 120-degree heat,” Williams said. But rather than Reichardt’s vision being restrictive, it’s actually liberating, according to Williams. “You can trust her to the ends of the Earth because of the filmmaker that she is,” the actress added.
Reichardt, for her part, doesn’t think about actors when writing her films, which she often pens alongside Jon Raymond, who co-wrote “Showing Up.” When it came to Lizzy, an exhausted artist preparing for a show, what first made Reichardt consider Williams for the role was a photo of the sculptor Lee Bontecou.
There’s no rehearsal on a Reichardt film, but Reichardt does provide her actors with reference materials before they arrive on set. Chau recalled the casting director Gayle Keller arriving at her house with a box of books and art supplies Reichardt wanted her to have before portraying Lizzy’s landlord Jo, a fellow artist with a slightly haughty demeanor.
Beyond reading, there is also often an experiential element to preparing for a Reichardt film. The cast of “Meek’s Cutoff” went to a “pioneer camp,” while Magaro ventured into the wilderness with his “First Cow” co-star, Orion Lee, and a survivalist who gave them roadkill-skinning lessons. In the case of “Showing Up,” Chau shadowed the artist Michelle Segre, while Williams observed Cynthia Lahti, who provided the delicate statues of women that Lizzy makes.
“I feel like that’s what it is with getting to work on films like ‘Showing Up’ or getting to work with Kelly Reichardt is what you do offset is just as important or if not more important than what you are doing on set,” Chau said.
Williams has now been traveling to Portland to make films with Reichardt for 15 years and considers it a “homecoming.” She has even considered moving there full time. Williams remembered that way back when she was joining “Wendy and Lucy,” Reichardt told her, “I can’t promise you much but on set we’ll have good coffee and good sandwiches.” To Williams, that sounded great.
Now they have some more amenities but the spirit of their work remains the same. “As these movies have gotten a little bit bigger and have gotten more attention, we still carry this incredible intimacy,” Williams said.
And others want to come along. “I hope I get to join her little troupe of actors,” Chau said. “I will always show up to whatever Kelly does if she invites me.”
