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MillimeterFade to Black:
Miranda July, Filmmaker
Jul 1, 2005 12:07 PM, By Dan Ochiva
In a summer filled with the usual round of big-budget films, some of those who buy a ticket for Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know might think they've stumbled into an alternate universe.
At first, the film sets us in a recognizable, somewhat mundane, suburban Los Angeles world. That perception soon changes, however. July leads us on a sometimes comical, sometimes wistful, emotional journey that explores her characters' hopes to connect, to reach out to someone else, and to transcend their everyday reality. In doing so, they help us as viewers transcend our reality as well.
The film, the 31-year-old filmmaker's first feature, was nurtured in the Sundance Screenwriter's Lab and won a Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at Sundance 2005, while sharing the Caméra d'Or at Cannes.
"I had always thought I'd direct [a feature], even in high school," says July. "It's just with the path that I took to get there, you can see that I wasn't hell-bent on breaking into the industry."
In an unusual itinerary for a feature director, July's path over the last decade includes performance art, short films, fiction, journalism, video art installations, and a grassroots film distribution network. July wrote, directed, and stars in the movie, joining the ranks of do-it-yourself artists like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and becoming one of the few in Hollywood to successfully pull this triple play off.
In a telling set piece that a lesser talent might fumble over, July's character Christine walks down a suburban street with her love interest, Richard, a shoe salesman still fragile from his recent divorce. As they walk down a generic city street, one that a mainstream director might tart up, Christine simply talks, block-by-block weaving a story out of their simple journey. By the time they part, that story has been transformed into an elegiac look back at their potential life together.
Her child protagonists, meanwhile, move between scenes that are alternately hilarious and surreal. July brings to their scenes a sharp sense of young lives growing and testing, without the usual cute or sordid take on their often-awkward sexual coming-of-age rituals.
Her characters' language, more than their actions, turns out to be key throughout July's work. "All [of my characters] come from writing dialogue," says July. "As I'm writing them, I'm acting them out, sometimes moving around the room, speaking them aloud. That's when I'm in character, I'm being that character, so by the time I get to the set, I know it from the inside."
With her first film behind her, July doesn't plan to leap into another one—at least not just yet. "I have projects that I'm in the middle of, for every medium that I work in," says July. "That includes a book of short stories, a CD, a performance … they're all just waiting for me to come to them. This is a great time to throw myself into massive projects."
