Miranda July
Miranda July
Miranda Jennifer Julyis an American film director, screenwriter, actor, author and artist. Her body of work includes film, fiction, monologue, digital media presentations, and live performance art. She wrote, directed and starred in the films Me and You and Everyone We Knowand The Future. Her most recent book, debut novel The First Bad Man, was published in January 2015. July was a recipient of a Creative Capital Emerging Fields Award...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth15 February 1974
CityBarre, VT
CountryUnited States of America
Somewhat predictably, I'm much more comfortable in front of an audience - and a big audience is even better - than faced with one stranger. This always seems like a bit of a failing on my part, as a human. I think that's also why I put myself situations where I'm forced to engage in other ways.
Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy to hope for something else.
I asked myself if I would kill my parents to save his life, a question I had been posing since I was fifteen. The answer always used to be yes. But in time, all those boys had faded away, and my parents were still there. I was now less and less willing to kill them for anyone; in fact, I worried for their health. In this case, however, I had to say yes. Yes, I would.
It was a small thing, but it was a thing, and things have a way of either dying or growing, and it wasn’t dying.
The life you live in front of an audience is like an altered state - it's not totally real. I'm always, even in the course of one day, trying to find ways to balance both sides.
We really wanted to know all the unknowable things about each other and how we were the same and how we were different, if we even were, maybe nobody is.
I knew the beginning and the end – I just had to dream up a convincing middle.
I eat an egg every morning, and when I'm done, I almost always have the thought: 'There. Now even if I'm captured and starved, I'll be able to live off the protein of that egg for a while.
I wrestle my fears with every big decision I make. Ultimately, maybe all that wrestling does is make you sick of your own thoughts, and so with nothing resolved you just go ahead and have unprotected sex. The moment I became pregnant, everything became out of gait. None of those fears seem relevant in the same way, and that's so like life, that once you do the daring move you're in a totally different landscape. Now it's a new story.
I'm not a cinephile. My films don't reference films. I'm more interested in rhythm and feeling.
My earliest memory is aged three, seeing sunlight on water and feeling it was really magical.
When I was very little, I probably wanted to be more normal. I probably wanted the Laura Ashley bedroom, and instead I got thrift-store everything.
There's always the sense that you should strike while the iron's hot and while there are all these opportunities, but that's not the way I get ideas. It has to be more organic, building up through living and through experiencing things.
People tend to stick to their own size group because it's easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means: I am willing to go the distance for you.