Dear Jon

Jon Raymond is fond of a tangent. At one point in our conversation, he tells me about the recent trend in the US of Sikh drivers taking up long-haul trucking and completely transforming the industry. “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this,” he laughs. “People don’t often ask!” The author and screenwriter from Portland, Oregon has rarely been interviewed in the years since his debut novel ‘The Half-Life’ was published in 2004, a book he followed with a short story collection and several screenplays written for – and with – the filmmaker Kelly Reichardt. Their stories are embedded in the Oregon landscape, attuned to the movements of the region (and the truckers passing through). From page to screen, the line at which Raymond’s work ends and Reichardt’s begins is faintly drawn, and it has continued to fade over the course of their unique creative collaboration.

Since they first, the director’s adaptation of one of Raymond’s short stories about two friends camping overnight in an Oregon forest, their storytelling partnership has continued to evolve organically. Together they have worked on all but two of Reichardt’s feature films (her 1994 debut , and 2016’s ), either adapting one of Raymond’s stories, or with Raymond writing an entirely new script as he did for 2010’s , a quietly suspenseful western, and 2013’s , a drama about radical environmentalists.