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
Most great filmmakers are good at place. Like how people say, like, "The city itself is a character in the movie," you know? I'm so interior. I always forget there's such a thing as an exterior wide shot, where you can see where someone is. As opposed to just: how can we show what this person is thinking, in an abstract way that is felt?
I don't think I'm more of a screenwriter than I am a fiction writer. I'm more of a reader than a film-watcher, so I imagine that I'm not approaching fiction or films in a particularly cinematic way.
A more normal, mature way to think about it [my work] would be, Oh, I work on multiple projects at once and they overlap, but the actual psychology of it is a lot more self-abusing.
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.
When I write, I wear earplugs. I don't want to be self-conscious. I don't want to be thinking about the fact that I'm thinking about it. I just want to be in it. It's one element of hypnosis.
I think there's something spiritual in a very day-to-day, mundane existence. It's impossible to articulate, and it's happening now, almost like a perverse secret. . . . That's always sort of fascinating to me.
I think because I write so many short stories, it's not that hard to come up with characters that are not me.
I realize that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before we ask someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.
Most of life is offline, and I think it always will be; eating and aching and sleeping and loving happen in the body. But it's not impossible to imagine losing my appetite for those things; they aren't always easy, and they take so much time. In twenty years I'd be interviewing air and water and heat just to remember they mattered.
There's all different kinds of people, but I don't think it's that unusual that once you get like a little power, you get to do your weird thing even more.
I think it's more interesting if you go all the way with the world you have, and really look at it, and push it to an even more extreme extreme.
Since I started making art, I've always had some kind of project that was really about and for other people, because I think I just need that balance to feel sane myself — you know?
Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it's worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It's okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.
That's the artist's job, really: continually setting yourself free, and giving yourself new options and new ways of thinking about things.