Rising Brotosh star Josh O’Connor was in Cannes Film Fest in 2023 with Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera.
This year, he’s back with two movies in competition for the Palme d’Or: Kelly Reichardt’s heist picture The Mastermind and Oliver Hermanus’ The History of Sound, in which O’Connor stars with Paul Mescal.
O’CONNOR: It’s like old-school Spielberg, people will be excited like they were for Close Encounters, E.T. He’s great. He is the dream, the best in the world.”
Playin an American?
O’CONNOR: I’m in my American period at the moment.
Reichardt’s “The Mastermind”
O’CONNOR: It’s the 1970s. The Vietnam War was going on. Kelly’s one of my favorite filmmakers. There’s a handful of directors I have dreamt of working with, and Kelly’s one of them. It’s in the traditional Kelly fashion, looking at the world through the people that fall between the cracks and not necessarily the people you’d expect. Often, she’s looking at artists and stuff like that, and it’s got that vibe. It’s almost like she’s looking at the Vietnam War but averting her eyes.
It’s about James Mooney who’s desperately trying to support his family and make a name for himself. He’s sort of a failed artist, works as a carpenter.
O’CONNOR: When I hear “perimeters of society,” I would normally pick someone ostracized in some way or left behind. But in many ways, this character isn’t that. He’s middle-class, he’s from a perfectly good family, but he’s in the outside of society in sofar as he lives plain, unfulfilled life. That’s what’s pulling him to make a name for himself. It’s almost more tragic in that he just feels forgotten. He just feels like a regular Joe. Kelly’s asking, “What’s worse than being regular Joe?” For someone who has a big ego, that’s not great.
Family to raise?
O’CONNOR: He’s got two kids, two boys and a wife, played by Alana Haim.
Setting of the story?
O’CONNOR: Outside of Boston, in the Cambridge area, but we shot in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is architecturally interesting for the period we’re in, the 1970s. It’s that Middletown, quiet suburbia.
The forgotten white man?
O’CONNOR: If you’re looking at the moment in time, that’s the relevance. An interesting angle on it, is that shooting in Ohio as the election was just going on was a very interesting place to be, and that’s where J.D. Vance is from.
Politically, that period in the ’70s for America and the Vietnam War was really interesting. Kelly is diverting her eyes to the politics always in every film. It’s there in the background and she is talking about it, but she isn’t. It’s like, she’s never crude about it. It’s not obvious like in so many scripts I read, and in many movies, and I understand why. They are movies that are built to, “How can we get these things awards?” [With Kelly] a tear would be welling up in a scene and she’d be like, “Cut! What are you doing? We don’t cry in these movies.” She’s the antithesis of that. She wants to keep it real. She doesn’t want to get too earnest about things. There’s a lightness to it. There’s comedy, but there’s depth.
John Magaro, a Reichardt regular, is in the film
O’CONNOR: The majority of the film is my character on the run. We come across John Magaro, who is old friend of mine from art school, and there are all sorts of characters I come into play with. Todd Haynes had this great quote about Kelly, where he said, “The thing about a Kelly Reichardt movie, is it’s like a road movie that never quite hits the road.” They never quite get that joy.
What kind of artwork does he steal?
O’CONNOR: It’s someone who is the perfect answer for this, because it’s someone who is not headline-grabbing at all. It’s someone worth a bit of money, but not quite worth what they should be worth. It’s Arthur Dove, pioneer of American abstraction. His artwork is kind of surreal, but it’s also not that attractive. It’s funny because he is brilliant and he would sell for money, but it’s not stealing a Picasso. Even in his grand thievery it’s underwhelming.
Reichardt’s father was crime scene investigator
O’CONNOR: I remember thinking, “Oh, that makes sense to me,” just for someone who is led by story to have grown up in that environment. But once we got to work it wasn’t talked about an awful lot, it’s in the background. These aren’t stories that come from her father, but it must’ve had influence on her.
Kelly Reichardt movie
As a Kelly fan, I watched this movie, and you can see Kelly Reichardt in it, the humor, the messaging that’s not overt or crude.
Reichardt commented that what actors do is very mysterious
O’CONNOR: That really resonates with me. I think that’s so true. Although, just to counter it a little bit, I would say she loves that mystery. She loves that she doesn’t understand what we do, but I think she understands more than she makes out. She has a very clear idea of who the characters are. But, like any brilliant director, and I’ve been fortunate enough to witness this, there’s this real gift you can have as a director where you say you have an idea. And rather than go to the actor and say, “This is my idea, OK? Do it.” You just find a way of allowing the actor to discover the same idea you always had in the first place, because we then feel like we have an ownership over it. And that’s not to downplay what actors do in any way. She’s worked with some of the greats, like Michelle [Williams]. It’s just that I think Kelly undervalues her talent and she does have those ideas. What you’re doing is fitting into a Kelly Reichardt vision, and it’s a negotiation, of course, but she is somehow imprinting these ideas in us. That’s my belief anyway.
Infusing her films with disparate stripes of her life
O’CONNOR: She’s an art lover. She loves film very much. She’s one of those filmmakers that has an encyclopedic knowledge of old movies. Kelly does teach at Bard, she’s a great teacher. Again, that’s a similar thing to being a great director. She worked with Todd Haynes at the start. She’s worked in film for years in different roles and capacities. She went to art school, she’s got all that history there, and it just comes through in all of her movies.
Did she screen any old movies for you?
O’CONNOR: She sent me some documentary footage from the 1970s. I can’t remember the name of it, to get this idea of how families are together. There’s a couple of scenes in The Mastermind where it’s Bill Camp, Hope Davis, me, Alana, and we all sat around the table
Where is Vietnam in the movie?
O’CONNOR: It’s kind of an undercurrent of the movie, we don’t go to Vietnam, we don’t ever really talk about it. There might be a brief moment over the dinner table where Bill Camp comments on it. It’s an undercurrent, here is a man of age who isn’t at war.
The History of Sound, which is based on a 2018 short story by Ben Shattuck
O’CONNOR: Then they go on this journey. The film follows Lionel who has this synesthesia, where he can see color and see and feel emotions when he listens to music. He also has an incredible singing voice. And David is like an archivist and has a fascination with collecting the old folk songs of America. And then they go on this very beautiful journey together. And I go missing for a long time.
David plays the piano. Can you play it?
O’CONNOR: I couldn’t play the piano until I did this movie. I still can’t, but I can play it better than I could. I took a few lessons and I just learned in the end. I didn’t have an awfully long time to prep for this movie, and I jumped in between projects. He’s a very beautiful character that is so meaningful to me and to the movie, but I didn’t have an awful lot of time, so I just learned those songs on piano.
Original story is about time and memory
O’CONNOR: I think it’s that thing of what the film does incredibly well is it plays into that feeling of nostalgia and regret and loss. I came in and they shot all of my stuff, which is mostly this traveling through America which is very beautiful. So that was really just lovely. We did that for a couple of weeks, then I left. Then I was on Challengers, and then I was shooting Knives Out [Wake Up Dead Man]. So it was all kind of busy and I felt like that movie was over. But of course they had all of the rest of the movie to shoot. And when I saw it, seeing what they’d done, what they created without me was just … I was so proud of them. It was such a nice feeling. But what’s so beautiful about it is this feeling of song and of music. When you listen to a piece of music and it transports you to a certain place or a time, and if you close your eyes, you can feel like you are actually there.
Shattuck writes about the songs they collect as being stories of people’s lives.
O’CONNOR: David is a connector, he pulls people together, but his ultimate aim is to collect these songs. Whereas Lionel, Paul’s character, starts to see that what they’re getting isn’t just these songs, it’s community.
You and Paul Mescal go on any pub crawls in New England?
O’CONNOR: I wish we did. I am so boring nowadays. I’m in bed by nine o’clock. I don’t know what’s happened to me. But we had a great time. On Knives Out, James Bond was in it, Andrew Scott, some of my closest friends. It was lovely. Even though I’m again playing an American, we shot it in London. It was the first time I could be home for ages.
Images of you in clerical garb in the Knives Out movie
O’CONNOR: I said to Rian Johnson, “My favorite role I’ve ever played was Mr. Elton.” I remember when I saw that movie, thinking, there’s all these brilliant actors, Johnny Flynn, Anya Taylor-Joy, Mia Goth, Callum Turner, all these guys are doing one movie and then me and Tanya Reynolds are doing, I don’t know what we’re doing, but it’s not the same movie. But I had the time of my life.
What’s next?
O’CONNOR: I’m shooting this summer in Europe with an American director, more of which I can’t say. But then I am going to go and do some other stuff for a little bit. I love my ceramics, I love gardening. My poor garden is suffering when I go away. And I’m definitely looking forward to some time to just try some other things and maybe get back on stage. It’s been too long.
Spielberg’s movie?
O’CONNOR: I was in New York and on the night of the Met Gala, I got a text from my agent saying, “Can you meet Spielberg tomorrow for coffee?” And I was like, “Yes!” And I went to his office, Amblin. He told me he didn’t have a script, but he told me the story of the movie and he said, “Would you like to do it?” And I sort of feigned, “Let me think about it.” But obviously…
It was kind of straightforward. He’s just the most special person. He seems to have the most incredible amount of energy I’ve ever witnessed. He comes up to you, he whispers in your ear like an excited child about an idea, and it’s truly inspiring.
