King, Cookie and the cow
Kelly Reichardt’s new film First Cow comes full circle Chris Knight
Early in Kelly Reichardt’s career as a director — she’d already made two short films and 1994’s River of Grass feature — she read Jonathan Raymond’s debut novel, The Half-life. Read it, loved it and wrote to the author to ask if he had any short stories that might make good material for a movie.
Raymond’s reply resulted in Reichardt’s 2006 feature Old Joy, about two long-time pals who get together for a camping trip in the Oregon woods. It also sparked a string of collaborations — Wendy and Lucy ( 2008), Meek’s Cutoff ( 2010) and Night Moves (2013).
Her newest, First Cow, brings things full circle in two ways. The film is loosely based on The Half- Life. And the plot once more centres on two friends in Oregon.
“We’ve made a bunch of films that are about scarcity and living on the edge and hardship, and it was quite a relief to make a film that was more based around friendship,” Reichardt says by phone, discussing her new film. “Because in one way or another you seem to end up kind of living through whatever you’re making a film about. And this is a little more positive.”
First Cow stars John Magaro as Cookie Figowitz, and Orion Lee as King Lu, two settlers in Oregon, circa 1820. After a chance meeting in the wilderness, the men become friends and accomplices, stealing milk from the first cow to be brought to the territory, and using it to make “oily cakes” that are a big hit with other settlers.
The treats were as good as they looked. “Very, very tasty,” Reichardt recalls. “Many an oily cake was eaten by the crew. It’s fried bread; how can you go wrong? It’s basically a donut without the hole.”
The director met her actors in person only a few days before filming began, and says she enjoyed “watching them get to know each other as the film’s going, and see that come through in the performances.”
Before the cameras rolled, she sent Magaro and Lee on a camping trip with a local survivalist. “They spent some nights in the rain and learned how to build fire without matches and how to build the traps and various things that they’re doing in the movie, and they bonded during that experience.”
Reichardt’s films have had a mix of strong male and female characters. Wendy and Lucy was about a young woman and her dog; Certain Women, from 2016, featured the intersecting lives of three small- town American women; and Meek’s Cutoff was about three settler families in 1845. Now she’s back with a mostly male cast and a story about male friendship.
“I think it’s more about being drawn to characters, whether they’re male or female,” she says.
But she’d rather call them people than characters. “They read like people. They have a sense of humour you relate to, a predicament that’s relatable, an affection towards an animal, whatever is their lot in life. Even the men the stories are about — they’re not the power- holders in the game. They’re all characters who are trying to get some kind of toehold into a more comfortable life.”
That extends even to Toby Jones’ character, the local bigwig — his title in the trading fort is Chief Factor — and owner of the first cow. “The Chief Factor could have come off as so one- note if it wasn’t for Toby giving him a helpless undercurrent,” says Reichardt. “There’s a vulnerableness to him and a humanness to him, and some humour. Toby was really able to pack a lot into his character.”
No discussion of First Cow would be complete without some mention of the cow. Was it a digital animal, or perhaps multiple cows?
“She did not have a standin,” the director reports. “It’s always Evie.”
That would be Eve, the two- year- old Jersey scouted by animal trainer Lauren Henry. Word is that Eve was a little agitated the day she met Henry; her owner said it was because she was late being milked, and “she’s used to being the first cow.”
That settled it; Eve was First Cow’s first cow. “First cow and only cow,” says Reichardt.