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. He played himself and provided the guiding words Jason needed to hear.

July has mentioned in several interviews that she has other tricks to keep up with managing different projects. She assumes different identities, inventing a kind of role-play scenario in order to keep working. This might involve imagining she’s “playing hooky” from one medium while she works on another. In an article for The Believer, she describes her self- trickery: 6

I’m supposed to be writing this book, but—heh heh heh—I’m writing a movie, secretly.

I’m procrastinating, and in my off-hours I’m working on this movie that I’m not allowed

to do, because I’m supposed to be writing this book! And then the book’s done and I’ve

got this movie started, and I’m secretly working on a performance. That’s the kind of

crucible I’m always in (Simonini).

Departmentalizing herself in order to work is one way she achieves success, but surprisingly, her work often overlaps or references itself. For example, as seen in her performance The Swan Tool and in the movie The Future, a character decides to bury themselves in the backyard. After writing It Chooses You, she created a brick-and-mortar store that sold the items she purchased from the classifieds. She then recycled this idea to market her latest novel

The First Bad Man via an online store that sold items described in the book (Franklin).

“Whenever I near the end of the project, I get excited about marketing ideas, which are really just my art ideas just channeled through the marketing department. I try to funnel other ideas that really have nothing to do with this.” (“Miranda July's Relentless Creativity”). Everything is fodder for her art, even a construction paper book she created as a 7-year-old titled Lost Child!, which she later published as a zine and also developed into a performance that discussed her career and creative process (Daniels).

July’s choices, experiences and emotional reactions inform her work more than any other source. But what of inspiration outside her own creation? She admires filmmakers like Jane

Campion and Roy Anderson, but otherwise she struggles to list favorite films when asked in interviews (Black). July has admitted she is not much of a cinephile, and states in an interview, 7

“My films don’t reference films. I’m more interested in rhythm and feeling” (Onstad). Often if a project idea is not mysterious enough, or she knows too much about it already, she will not pursue it (“In Conversation: Miranda July & Jennifer Brandel”). Matched with July’s habit of unplugging the internet to avoid distraction, she strives to create her art in a vacuum. In one interview, she says, “As far as creativity and feeling absolutely alone and being able to generate something out of nothingness, that’s not easier now that there’s the internet. You have to be a lot more conscience … and decide not to watch TV all day long” (“Interview: Miranda July (The

Future)”). She believes the internet is great in a DIY sense, where people can create their own audiences instead of depending on someone of affluence to discover them, but her own ability to seek out “unknown spaces” and “make things out of nothing” hinges on how much of the internet she is absorbing in a given day (Anders).

This strategy is a bit contradictory, as some of her work has depended on crowdsourcing online content. We Think Alone delivered her celebrity friends’ emails in a weekly newsletter, and her project with Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More, relied on user-submitted responses to prompts such as “Feel the news” and “Record your own guided meditation” (July,

Miranda July). She also developed a messenger app, Somebody, in partnership with Miu Miu.

The app is purposefully convoluted—messages sent through the app are delivered to recipients by another app user, in person, based on geolocation. From its website, “The most high-tech part of Somebody is not in the phone, it’s in the users who dare to deliver a message to a stranger”

(July, Somebody). The app harnesses the power of technology but removes the impersonal nature of communicating via text message by forcing its users to make new connections with strangers.

This project aligns with her goal in exploring the inefficiencies of interpersonal communication:

“I am interested in the ways we all make things overly complicated. We all, in theory, want 8 intimacy, but yet we all have our completely unique ways to make that very hard… What if I could make a world where none of that has to be apologized for or fixed, but instead it could be mined for its powers?” (“Miranda July's Relentless Creativity”).

In order to manage the immense number of projects she touches, July writes her ideas down in notebooks. The form often comes along with the idea, and she writes a letter in the corner of the page to identify each medium: “P” for performance, “N” for novel, and so on, as a pseudo filing system (“Interview: Miranda July (The Future).”). Her studio houses her personal archive: old notebooks, every letter she has received, carbon copies of the ones she’s written, photographs, and all documents or props pertaining to her work are carefully stored and organized ("Miranda July: I Began with Performance | TateShots"). Rather than getting right to work, she arrives at her studio, drops off her things, and habitually takes a walk around the quiet neighborhood to jumpstart her ideation process. Walking alone allows July to contemplate project ideas without feeling the pressure generated by being in her workspace, surrounded by her past achievements. She says in an interview, “Whenever I’m in front of the computer, it’s like I am being watched, or I am reminded of a world that could watch me, whereas if I’m out in the actual work, I feel more fleeting, I’m just someone passing by… really, I don’t want to be seen” ("Miranda July: I Began with Performance | TateShots").

July’s iteration process depends on the medium. She hammers out short stories quickly, with no drafts, and so switching to the long form of a novel was “torture” for her at first (Day).

No matter how bad the writing seemed to be, she felt the love for her characters and their story pulling her through to the end, making the process more enjoyable than previous ones

(Simonini). Writing the first draft reminded her of the filmmaking process. In an interview with

The Guardian, she says, “It was just such bad writing but the amazing thing was, after that was 9 done, I had a book. Then I was just re-writing from there – and that, I loved. To me, it was like editing a movie but with the endless ability to re-shoot scenes for free” (Day). As a director, she describes herself as super controlling and relentless, but in her other pieces she focuses on losing her control (“Miranda July’s New Society”). For example, her latest performance New Society is highly audience-participatory, and its goal is not to be perfect. Still, in order to ensure the basic narrative of the storyline continues, July says, “I worked so hard to understand what the exact words were that elicited responses that I was looking for. I rehearsed it again and again with different audiences, sometimes to ridiculous results” (Helfand). July forfeit the feeling of winning after a perfect performance for something that would only happen once, as a kind of practice for herself to let go (Black).

No matter the medium of her latest projects, July maintains the daily practice of meditation (Simonini). She has practiced meditation for years, and has completed multiple

Vipassana meditation courses and has attended Japanese Soto Zen meditation retreats (Jones).

After the success of Me and You, July found herself referring back to skills she developed at these retreats in order to digest harsh criticisms of her work. “When I wake up my heart is already racing, the thought that I can check my email calms me down. I know that if instead I meditate, it is much more likely that I will be creative” (Jones). She is also a fan of the app

Headspace for quick meditation sessions, which she says has been more helpful than some of her deeper meditation experiences (“Miranda July on writing books, living clumsily, and meditation”). July explains, “When you are working, struggling with a problem, whether its [sic] on the set or in writing, usually the solution comes from changing your perspective radically”

(Jones). 10

Changing her perspective, whether through meditation or by “cheating” via her side projects, can lead her to inspiration. July said the storyline of her 2015 novel The First Bad Man came to her fully during a long car ride, but the inspiration behind the relationship of characters

Cheryl and Clee came earlier through an experience at a silent meditation retreat (Brownstein,

“Miranda July”). July became obsessed over another female participant and spent the retreat fantasizing about their relationship, but once it was over she realized the woman was not who she dreamed her to be. This misreading and assumption of gender and sexual identity was the basis for Cheryl and Clee’s relationship in her novel, and also inspired a skit on Brownstein and

Fred Armisen’s show, Portlandia. In a different Interview Magazine article, Brownstein asked

July what daily habit makes her feel the safest. July responds: “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” (Higgs). This quote shows July’s quirky humor, but also speaks to her ritualistic tendencies. Everyday monotony changes into a source of fuel and power—echoing her choice to explore themes on mundane social interactions and transform them into stories of universal feeling and understanding. She says, in an interview with

New Republic, “All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life— where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it” (Franklin).

In conclusion, Miranda July’s multidisciplinary career is, in a sense, her own creative process. By challenging herself across mediums, she explores the tedium of everyday life and human interaction, and she does this with success. “There are things that I’ve just gotten used to over time about how the creative process works, that allow me to endure the insecurities and sort of sniff out when there’s too big a problem to overcome” (Siddall, “Miranda July on 11 sexuality…”). By maintaining strict working habits and practicing meditation, she balances her work load without overstraining her mind, career, or personal life.