Meet Lori Reinhart. Lori is known to many here in Sedona because of her connection and involvement with the Sedona International Film Festival,.. and she does so many other things!
Q: What do you do here in Sedona?
A: I have been here for 25 years this year — just passed our anniversary of moving here.
Over the last 21 years, I’ve been with the Sedona Film Festival for 13 years; I have also been the Executive Director for the Sedona Arts Festival. I work year-round at the film festival because the theaters are open. The festival itself is a nine-day film festival in February. Both jobs are intense — the film festival and then the arts festival in October — even though they’re in two completely different seasons.
Pat Schweiss has been flexible with the time I need in the fall. And so it works out beautifully. I have two times of the year that are crazy, and then the rest of the year goes along.
I’m clearly at the film festival office most of the time. I’m the audience services manager, which means I manage all of the memberships that come in for the festival. The pandemic has definitely hurt us. Currently, we have around 700 memberships that I maintain. I run the box office and manage the staff for the box office and the film festival box office. You can imagine it’s an enormous task. In a typical year, we print something like 35,000 tickets.
Q: With the new theater, what are you doing?
A: So the thing that’s nice about the second theater is that it gives us the ability to diversify what we show, and it also provides us with the ability to hold a film over. We’ve never been able to do that. This way, we can keep the movie for another week and put it in a smaller theater. We can switch theaters based on attendance; the new theater is high-tech.
Q: What brought you to Sedona?
A: I grew up in the Midwest, and although I liked growing up in the Midwest, I knew the second I graduated from college, I would get out of it. My mom’s from Colorado. I did a lot of traveling as a kid. I did not want to look at corn fields for the rest of my life. So, as soon as I graduated from college, I moved to Phoenix because my sister was in Phoenix, and it just seemed like an easy thing to go sleep on her couch until I found my own place.
I’ve been with my husband for a long time. We’ve known each other since we were 14, not that we were together that long, but we’ve mostly spent our whole lives together. He came to Phoenix, and he’s a filmmaker. He started working on feature films back in the day when they were actually making feature films in Arizona, which doesn’t happen anymore. Then he wanted to do the LA thing and give it a try. We were 24. We moved to Los Angeles for a couple of years and didn’t like it. There were too many people, and it wasn’t serving either of us. Don’t ask me why, but we moved back to where we were from.
We were in Phoenix visiting for spring break. We had a two-year-old. Brian picked up the newspaper and saw a job for an editor here in Sedona. He interviewed for the job and was hired on the spot. We went home and asked a friend if they wanted to buy our house. And in six weeks, we were back in Sedona — we’ve been here ever since.
Q: If you could choose anyone with whom would you love to have lunch or dinner, who would that be and why?
A: I think that I would like to talk to my grandmother. I’m finding this now with having just lost my dad. Like once they’re gone, there’s no one to ask. I would’ve liked to have known more about my grandmother’s life. She grew up in Colorado, and I just found a picture of her father. It’s a picture out of a Western [movie]. He’s standing in front of a horse with all the garb on. She had a rough life, and I’d like to know more about that time and our family. I was an adult when she died, but we didn’t have time to talk about those things together.
Q: What one piece of advice changed your life?
A: I don’t take things too seriously. I don’t know if that was ever a piece of advice or if I just learned it along the way, but I don’t deal with drama, and nothing is that serious. My husband’s and I relationship is very like that. We don’t get stuck in the petty stuff that drives us crazy because it doesn’t matter in the long run. Just taking life less seriously and with a sense of humor.
Q: What would your best friend say about you?
A: I’m funny and warm. I hope that’s how people see me. The friends I like the best are those who think I’m funny and just like laughing at anything I say. I have a big heart, care about people, and am willing to help when they need it.
Q: When friends visit you, where do you take them?
A: Outdoors, Grand Canyon, or hiking anywhere here in Sedona. We just dragged my sister-in-law all over the place and took her to all our favorite restaurants; there are so many beautiful places
Q: What is your favorite restaurant? The one you’d go to for a special occasion.
A: If you ask what my favorite restaurant is, it’s Mai Thai On Main in Cottonwood. That’s where we go for everything.
Q: What advice would you give people looking for words of wisdom?
A: Don’t be overly dramatic. My advice to everybody, especially in customer service, is that you certainly get more from people when you’re kind. I don’t like to deal with angry or irritated people, not that I don’t want to deal with them. I actually see it as a challenge. Be kind — it will get you further with whatever you need rather than being angry.
Q: What is something interesting that most people don’t know about you?
A: I grew up in the musical theater. My husband, who I’ve known since I was 14, his father was the musical director at our high school. He did community theater in our hometown for 50 years. And that’s where I met my husband. I grew up doing those shows in the summer, singing, dancing and having the time of my life. It was so much fun. I still have so many friends from those years. I don’t suppose people know I used to dance quite a bit and sing.
Q: Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you’d like someone to know about you?
A: I am most proud of my family. I have two absolutely amazing kids — they are seven years apart in age — and have this unbelievable relationship. They’re the best thing I ever did, and they’re my greatest accomplishment. Right now, they’re together in Chicago. They just want to be together all the time. My daughter lives in Chicago, and my son is in school at NEU, but it’s summer.
