Kelly Reichardt

What are your favorite New York movies?
Kelly Reichardt: Shirley Clarke’s The Cool World and Billy Wilder’s The Apartment are two of them.

Your first film, River of Grass, is set in the Everglades; both Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy take place in the Pacific Northwest. Do you think you’ll ever make a film in New York?
Kelly Reichardt: I can’t imagine it. I hope to keep making films with writer Jon Raymond, whose stories all tend to be about the Northwest.

Who are your favorite New Yorkers?
Kelly Reichardt: Lighting designer Susanne Sasic, filmmaker So Yong Kim, radio host Sam Seder and Irwin Rose, the “Sausage-and-Egg Hermit.”

What’s the biggest thing that’s happened to the city in the past 13 years?
Kelly Reichardt: The closing of the rock & roll booking agency Twin Towers on Broadway and Houston Street.

What’s your favorite place or thing in New York?
Kelly Reichardt: Film Forum, Yo La Tengo’s Hanukkah shows at Maxwell’s, Smokey’s Roundup at Sunny’s, Museum of the Moving Image, McCarren Park Pool shows, Peking Duck House, Anthology Film Archives, Spoonbill bookstore, Walter Reade Theater, Gene’s, the IFC theater, Tandem Sound on 14th Street, Sullivan Street Bakery, Astoria Park and the whole film and electronic arts scene up at Bard College.

What’s your personal favorite moment in New York? Where were you, and what was happening?
Kelly Reichardt: One nice New York memory is when I was with my friend Matt Ebert. It was raining and we happened upon a Barbara Stanwyck double feature at the Ziegfeld: The Furies and Forty Guns. I also remember that huge light installation down on the piers one summer and that integrated art show on 42nd Street—that was amazing. I was on a bus passing all the movie marquees, having no idea they were done by people like Jenny Holzer. I think one said go where people sleep and see if they are safe, and I thought, What in the world? New York was such a great place back when you could just stumble onto some art that you weren’t even setting out to see.

What’s the future of New York? What are your hopes, and what needs to happen?
Kelly Reichardt: I suppose the future of New York is that it continues to become this amusement park. We need to get the peep shows and dirty bookstores back on 42nd Street so that people will go visit Disney in Florida and California. We need more mo’-better rent protection, fewer NYU dorms and more off-leash hours.

What does Time Out mean to you?
Kelly Reichardt: I’ve misbehaved and have to sit in the corner.

Complete the sentence: New York is…
Kelly Reichardt: …for the super-rich and well-connected.

Wendy and Lucy plays at the New York Film Festival Sept 27 and Sept 28, and opens at Film Forum Dec 10.

Next: Junot Díaz >

The New York 40: