Miranda July

Started by Film Student, February 02, 2005, 02:17:19 AM

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Film Student

Hey guys, I haven't been to the board in a while (regretfully), but I wanted to shamelessly celebrate/plug my stepmom's friend, who's getting a lot of attention right now for her film "Me and You and Everyone We Know".  

Here's an article by Ebert:

A chance bus ride to the fest's best

BY ROGER EBERT / January 30, 2005

It happened like this. I was sitting in a movie that wasn't working for me. I walked out of the screening, thinking to take the shuttle bus to Prospector Square. But the next bus was going to the Yarrow, and so, what the hell, I went to the Yarrow.

There were two press screenings at the same time. A San Diego State film student in the lobby said he heard good things about "Me and You and Everyone We Know." And that is how I saw the best film I've seen this year at Sundance. Just like that.

The movie was written and directed by Miranda July, the well-known performance artist, who developed it at the Sundance summer workshop. She stars as Christine, a would-be artist and full-time Elder Cab driver. She falls in love at first sight with a shoe salesman named Richard (John Hawkes), who is separated from his wife and helping to raise his two sons. It also involves two sexually curious teenage girls, a solemn neighbor girl, a dirty old man, some art curators, and me and you.

We are involved because the movie, with perfect control of tone and an insidiously haunting sound track, weaves us into its world. I have rarely felt so contained by a film. "Me and You and Everyone We Know" is delicate, tender, poetic, and yet so daring in some of its scenes that you sit in uncertain suspense, wondering if July can get away with her audacity, which ventures to the edge of what mainstream audiences find acceptable. She can. She knows exactly what she's doing.

Like David Gordon Green, Miranda July writes dialog that you have never heard anybody say before, and yet you believe these characters would say it. I will not describe the plot, partly because the plot is not the point: It is simply the path these enormously sympathetic but lonely and strange characters follow on their way to tomorrow.

"What if I am a killer of children?" he asks her at one point.

"That would put a damper on things."

Let me tell you about one scene. After Christine first sees Richard the shoe salesman, they talk briefly and something happens between them. She knows it. He knows it, but doesn't want to deal with it, because he is going through a divorce and has two boys to raise and doesn't need romance just at this time.

He leaves the store to walk to his car. She catches up with him. They walk together. Playing with words, they pretend that this walk is their lifetime. So when they get to Leland Street, that will be halfway through their lives. At Tyrone Street, she has to turn one way, and he the other.

"But I'm thinking like Tyrone is our whole lives," she says. If they don't separate at that corner, they could walk on together forever. Their walk down the sidewalk is one of the most perfectly written and conceptualized scenes I have ever seen.
"I think you have to be careful to not become a blowhard."
                                                                          --Ann Coulter

Film Student

And another one on Variety in their "10 Directors to Watch For":


Miranda July

By BETH PINSKER, Tue., Jan. 18, 2005, 8:00pm PT

Having spent the last decade-plus multitasking performance art, short films, fiction, journalism, video art installations, Web-based presentations and the grassroots film distribution network Joanie4Jackie, Miranda July is a little flummoxed to have devoted the past year concentrating on one project. Whenever the self-trained experimental artist would emerge from an editing room in Los Angeles, where she cut her first feature film, "Me and You and Everyone We Know," she wouldn't know what to do with herself.

"If I had a spare hour, (I'd think) what should I do? Maybe I should write a short story," she says. At one point, she jumped headlong into writing a new script. Then she stopped and said to herself, "You're crazy."

Making a full-length feature is harder than her other media, she admits, even if it's not that different aesthetically or conceptually from her other creations. "People who know my work will recognize it in the film," she says. "There are characters that are the same, and the whole story deals with themes I've been working on, like, all my movies have children in them with a certain kind of power you don't always see."

The main difference is that instead of playing all the parts, as is customary in performance art, she took on the not completely unfamiliar role of a shy performance artist only. Other actors play the philosophical shoe salesman she falls for, his two children and their neighbors.

Although July has been showing her work since high school (and is practically a cult figure in Portland, Ore., where she spent most of her adulthood), the film promises to widen her audience. A planned release from IFC Films would likely reach more people than the rest of her work combined. Her film also unspools in Sundance's Dramatic Competition.

"It's exciting to have somebody coming squarely out of that experimental world make her way into a more mainstream independent film community -- but with those sensibilities intact," says Ruby Lerner, president of the Creative Capital Foundation, which has funded July's work. "I love that. I think that's the future."

July says she's ready for the explosion of interest in her, and she's also not afraid of any backlash from her underground fan base.

"When I moved from punk clubs to fine arts spaces, the same sort of thing happened," she says. "All those kids just came to the Whitney and other places like that. All those venues said, "this is really different from our usual ticket buyers." So hopefully, the same thing will happen again."
"I think you have to be careful to not become a blowhard."
                                                                          --Ann Coulter

Slick Shoes

I read a story she wrote for the Paris Review awhile back and thought it was wonderful.

ono

It's fitting that she's now a director.  Miranda July sounds like a movie title, not the name of a person.  This sounds very interesting, can't wait to see it.

SHAFTR

"Talking shit about a pretty sunset
Blanketing opinions that i'll probably regret soon"

modage

Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

SHAFTR

"Talking shit about a pretty sunset
Blanketing opinions that i'll probably regret soon"

JG

she'll make a great movie one day if she sticks with it.  we need this chick . 

Pubrick

Quote from: JimmyGator on December 09, 2005, 02:27:38 PM
she'll make a great movie one day if she sticks with it.
uh yeah, another great movie.
under the paving stones.

JG

i unno...part of me wants to say that me and you... was great, but until another viewing i'm sticking with "really good and one of the best of the year." 

but i like her a lot. 

godardian

When I lived in Portland, Miranda's office was about 4 blocks from me. She was doing only video/performance art then, but I would see her around, and she was really a very nice, personable, talented woman. I once interviewed her, and she was one of the most gracious interviews ever. Even though she left Portland after I did, I'm still sad that one of my hometown's talents has gone missing. . . .

She is on the cover--in cartoon form!--of the new issue of Punk Planet, with a really in-depth interview inside (it details her horrible experience with the release of the MAYAEWK DVD, which sheds some interesting light on how the filmmakers can get screwed in these processes).
""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

Stay informed on protecting your freedom of speech and civil rights.

godardian

On this DVD there is a short film, Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?, written by Miranda July, directed by Miguel Arteta (who, in the accompanying booklet, reveals he and July were dating), and starring July, John C. Reilly, and Mike White. It's cute, if slight. The DVD is put out by McSweeney's and is supposedly a quarterly deal.

Wholphin
""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

Stay informed on protecting your freedom of speech and civil rights.

Pubrick

Quote from: godardian on February 05, 2006, 08:44:27 PM
On this DVD there is a short film, Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?, written by Miranda July, directed by Miguel Arteta (who, in the accompanying booklet, reveals he and July were dating), and starring July, John C. Reilly, and Mike White. It's cute, if slight. The DVD is put out by McSweeney's and is supposedly a quarterly deal.

Wholphin

yep. we have a thread about it. http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=8332.0
under the paving stones.

godardian

Quote from: Pubrick on February 06, 2006, 01:05:28 AM
Quote from: godardian on February 05, 2006, 08:44:27 PM
On this DVD there is a short film, Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?, written by Miranda July, directed by Miguel Arteta (who, in the accompanying booklet, reveals he and July were dating), and starring July, John C. Reilly, and Mike White. It's cute, if slight. The DVD is put out by McSweeney's and is supposedly a quarterly deal.

Wholphin

yep. we have a thread about it. http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=8332.0
:oops:
""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

Stay informed on protecting your freedom of speech and civil rights.

godardian

I received the Sep. 18 issue of The New Yorker today. It contains a short story by Miranda July entitled "Something That Needs Nothing."

On the "Contributors" page, it states: "Miranda July has a collection of short stories, 'No One Belongs Here More Than You,' coming out next spring.
""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

Stay informed on protecting your freedom of speech and civil rights.