Debbi Litt and Katie Pulles Deangela Duff Ideation and Prototyping 3
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Debbi Litt and Katie Pulles DeAngela Duff Ideation and Prototyping 3 April 2017 The Creative Process of Miranda July Miranda July is a writer, filmmaker, and performance artist whose work explores the commonality, awkwardness, and failure of seeking human connection. Inspiration for her work often comes from her punk, feminist roots and her personal experiences and interactions. July’s ethos could be described as an obsession to maintain her freedom of expression—keeping herself in perpetual motion in order to avoid complacency within her art or life. In an article from The Guardian, July says, “All I can say is that the creative art of moving between the media is my process – genuinely. I’ve done it from the get-go” (Day). While she does not employ a single, linear creative process, she performs many ritualistic behaviors, retains consistent, personal sources for inspirations, and constantly jumps between mediums to feed each new project. Miranda July (born Miranda Grossinger) was raised in Berkeley, CA, where her parents owned and operated a New Age publishing company out of their living room (Onstad). The Grossingers have been described as a do-it-yourself family, and much of the business practices used by her parents had a profound effect on July’s attitudes toward making art (Black). In fact, she cites that her interactive work today comes from her being the child of a small business owner, where she learned how to make something great from beginning to end (“In Conversation: Miranda July & Jennifer Brandel”). However, back then, creating art felt essential for her survival (Morrill 163). When she was 16 years old, and she hired actors to perform her first play at the punk club 924 Gilman. She writes in Akademie X, “I knew this was what I 2 wanted to do for the rest of my life - not write plays specifically, but go out on a limb like this, for an audience” (Morrill 161). July rebelled against her upbringing, dropped out of college, and joined the Portland Riot Grrrl scene in the early 90s. During this time in Portland, July wanted to create a vehicle to allow female filmmakers to share their work with each other. She typed up a pamphlet advertising the Big Miss Moviola video chainletter, writing: “A challenge and a promise: Lady, u send me yr movie + $5.00 & I’ll send you the latest Big Moviola compilation (that’s 10 lady-made movies including yrs)” (Joanie 4 Jackie). The pamphlets were distributed at punk shows by her friends touring across the country, and submissions slowly rolled in. July writes in T Magazine, “I had grown up inside my parents’ small publishing company, so at that time I thought of myself as a small business owner rather than an artist or a Riot Grrrl” (Schilling). After July received a cease-and-desist order from Moviola Digital, she changed the series’ name to Joanie 4 Jackie, “a name that meant women supporting other women – rooting for them” (Schilling). Joanie 4 Jackie was intended to be an antidote to Hollywood’s misogyny. In her pamphlet, she writes: “On the whole, [movies] do not inspire women in the audience to go: I can do that. This is partly because the movies are usually woman-hating or racist or classist” (Schilling). Joanie 4 Jackie filled a void and created a platform for female filmmakers to share their work and their voices. “It sounds really altruistic,” July says, “but I was also lonely. Joanie 4 Jackie saved me, because I felt like I was part of something. That was my film school” (Onstad). After building her own confidence in seeing other women’s work, July shot her first film, Atlanta. Having few resources, she recorded her film over a Superman VHS and edited it secretly in the library of Reed College using a stolen and expired student I.D. (July, “Atlanta”). “Through Joanie 4 Jackie, I learned how to conceive of myself as a filmmaker, and 3 how to create a sustaining community hidden inside a larger culture that didn’t even know we existed” (Schilling). July ran Joanie 4 Jackie while concurrently singing in a band called the Need. This gave her the opportunity to perform what her bandmates referred to as “Miranda’s weird songs,” which were more akin to radio plays (Simonini). Friend and fellow Riot Grrrl Carrie Brownstein writes, “[The Need] had a variety of singers, and when it was Miranda’s turn to be the front person, she seemed to emerge as if resurfacing from underwater, slithering and startled” (Brownstein, Hunger 92). Her time in the Need was cut short after a breakup with a band member. July funneled her heartbreak, rage, and the “wreckage of growing up” into making her art, choosing then to perform her songs as a separate, unique act (Morrill 164). One day after receiving a grant to purchase a video projector so she could publicly screen Joanie 4 Jackie movies, she set up the projector in her apartment and felt compelled to jump into its blue light. “It was almost like being in a movie. From there, my performances became multimedia, and I found musicians who were excited to perform a live soundtrack to my “live movies” (Morrill 164). July continued her solo performances and managed Joanie 4 Jackie until she was confident enough to write a feature-length film, which resulted in the production of Me and You and Everyone We Know. Me and You and Everyone We Know was released in 2005, receiving the Caméra d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival (July, Miranda July). Following her success, July turned away from film to instead work on her book of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You. “Once you know how hard it is to make a movie, you kind of want to do everything else. I was a bit nervous that if I took any of the deals that were being offered at that moment, it would kind of not be my process, and I would become identified as a filmmaker to a degree that didn’t really 4 feel like me” (Goldstein). Thematically, Me and You stands out from the rest of her work. “For all its darker and weirder themes,” July says in an interview, “[it’s] the sweetest thing I ever made. So it was a little anomalous—it was hard to live up to that level of sweetness” (Simonini). On her choice to explore different mediums rather than be restricted to one form, or even one style, July says it’s all a part of making a bigger room for herself across industries. “Being a beginner again and again, that’s a good feeling to me. It makes me feel like each time the medium is being invented… The idea of being a pro sounds nice, but it doesn't sound fun creatively to me” (Black). July commits to strict studio hours, and even goes so far as to unplug the internet after answering emails in the morning, but she still falls victim to severe procrastination (Simonini). Deviating from her main project is part of her method; July says she always has faith that things will reconnect (Black). “There’s some things that just have to happen through living,” July says in a podcast interview with Simon Miraudo. “In a way, I’ll have to let go of the idea of making something and sort of give up… and then I’ll find myself organically back in the story through real life” (“Interview: Miranda July (The Future)”). The best example of her method in action is with her second feature film The Future and It Chooses You, a novel published as the film’s nonfiction companion piece. After publishing her collection of short stories, July hopped mediums again and returned to live performance. Her piece Things We Don't Understand and Definitely Are Not Going to Talk About was inspired by a break-up she experienced during the editing of Me and You (Backman Rogers). The performance uses surreal elements to “explore feelings that are so unbearable they are almost beyond words,” incorporating a sentient T-shirt and a talking cat named Paw-Paw to express her inner monologue. She adapted this magical realism into The Future, which tells the story of Sophie and Jason, a couple in crisis after agreeing to adopt a handicapped cat. While working on 5 the screenplay, July became stuck on how to write Jason’s “a-ha!” moment that he would achieve by selling trees door-to-door. She writes about this difficulty in It Chooses You: I had sixty different drafts with sixty different tree-selling scenarios, and every single one had seemed truly inspired…. Each time, I chuckled ruefully to myself as I proudly emailed the script to people I respected, thinking, Phew, sometimes it takes a while, but if you have faith and keep trying - the right thing will come. And each of those emails had been followed by emails written a day, or sometimes even an hour later— “Subject: Don’t read the draft I just sent you!! New one coming soon!!” (9). She began spending her time browsing the PennySaver classifieds to avoid work, wondering about the people listing items for sale. She put the screenplay on hold as she embarked on an interview series of PennySaver subscribers, thinking she would discover the secret to Jason’s development along the way. It Chooses You chronicles both the PennySaver interviews and her extreme procrastination effort that ultimately led to the completion of her screenplay. The side project took July full circle once she met her last interviewee, Joe—an elderly man who she cast in her film.