Miranda July: The Future
Tags: the future, miranada july
I understand Miranda July’s new movie The Future, completely. I don’t think I can explain it, except to say that each individual scene, even single lines of dialogue, can inspire an entire conversation.
Writer/director July crafts the story of Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater), a couple planning on adopting a cat they rescued. In the time it will take for the shelter to heal Paw-Paw (voice of July and yes, the cat narrates), Sophie and Jason plan to make the most of their remaining time without commitment. Sophie cancels the internet, yet still plans to record dances that she’ll upload at Wi-Fi enabled cafes. Jason explores a career in environmentalism.
Yet those are not the themes I focused on. The unique voice of July is that she will give Jason the power to freeze time, or the characters will contemplate the end, as in the big end. The story of Jason and Sophie’s relationship progresses to a conclusion, but it’s the abstract steps along the way that evoke thought and feeling.
At the Los Angeles Film Festival, July met me in the lobby of the J.W. Marriot downtown while her film played at the Regal Cinemas. She would return to the theater for an audience Q&A, but while a new audience experienced The Future, July sat in an outdoor bar, magenta stockings shining in the sun, and analyzed her film with me.
Fred Topel: Would you consider yourself a New Wave filmmaker?
Miranda July: Wow, what is the New Wave? Is there a New Wave?
FT:
I was thinking of the French New Wave which was 40 years ago.
MJ:
Right. I’m not French so I guess no, but that would be cool if I was somehow part of that but I don’t think there’s any way I could claim that.
FT:
If one were to say they felt your films were reminiscent of the French New Wave, would that be a compliment?
MJ:
Yeah, but to be honest, I’m such a bad film scholar that it’s not like my understanding is deep and intrinsic of Godard and stuff like that. I love those movies but because I’m married to someone who really loves those movies and studies them and stuff, I know that I’m not that person.
FT:
I could say that about your husband, Mike Mills' film Beginners also.
MJ:
Well, whatever. I wouldn’t say that about his either.
FT:
Not to say you intended it, but whatever your thought process might have something in common.
MJ:
Yeah, they seem so much looser than me in a way. I feel so kind of narrative. Maybe it doesn’t come across that way but I’m a real story person.
FT:
It totally does but you’re willing to take departures from standard narrative.
MJ:
Sure.
FT:
Would calling The Future an art film be an inspiring genre, or too much of a niche to put it in?
MJ:
That’s fine. I love art films. I don’t have a problem with that.
FT:
How do you decide how you’re going to physically move with a dance or standing in the yard?
MJ:
The one standing in the yard that you’re probably thinking of when I do this thing, I hadn’t planned that and I think everyone when they read that part of the script, I forget how it’s described but it says I do a little move. I guess everyone had their own vision of what that would be, so when I just suddenly started doing that when we were rolling, I remember rafter I yelled cut on myself, everyone was like, “What? What was that? That was so weird.” I was like, “That’s the move. I don’t know. I just did it.” Then in other times, like what we call the butt dance, when she’s in front of the computer dancing.
FT:
You call that the butt dance?
MJ:
Well, not like a sexy butt dance but it involves moving my butt. That one I remember I tested it out on my computer the day before. I had a couple different dances and that was the one I went with.
FT:
Are you a happy person?
MJ:
Yeah, I feel like I have a certain tendency to be hopeful while maintaining a constant level of anxiety. But it’s not a doomful anxiety. I get a lot of energy from it I think.
FT:
I get that, but I thought of the question because I could see one reading of the film might be sorrowful.
MJ:
Yeah, this movie’s for sure quite sad. There’s humor in it but I wanted to make a sadder movie. I think sadness is really interesting to me and I think there’s a lot of room in there, in some ways more room than a happy movie. There’s all these colors to sadness. It’s not just someone weeping. It’s a really large haunting territory. But that doesn’t mean I’m sad all the time.
FT:
Even if you expect the end of everything, you can still be happy along the way, right?
MJ:
Right. Yeah, sure and I tried to make the end have a certain feeling of openness. Not just a kind of obliterating sort of nothing’s working out type thing, but kind of the end of a beginning like the cat says, but that’s just still the beginning.
FT:
Isn’t that a spoiler?
MJ:
No, you don’t know what I’m talking about. I could be talking about anything, it’s so vague.
FT:
Are you able to use the internet in creative, productive ways?
MJ:
Yeah. Certainly even in making the movie, it’s such a joy to pull reference pictures from all of time and all over the world. There’s just so much art really and photographs at our fingertips. With my first movie, it wasn’t like that at all. I did this for this one too, but I was only scanning pictures from books because that thing hadn’t happened of tons of people putting all those pictures from books online.
FT:
What kind of books?
MJ:
Just photo books. All the books that you would want to own but you can’t go out and buy every single great photo book there is. Not costume books but lots of photo references for clothes and looks of apartments or whatever. You can just get into a good area of the web and keep pulling stuff. Then you make a gallery and then you e-mail that gallery to your production designer. It’s fun. So yeah, it’s definitely very useful. It’s just not useful when you’re trying to have a new idea and write, I find.
FT:
When Sophie says she wishes she were one notch prettier, do you feel that way?
MJ:
Yeah, I mean, I look just like her so that line wouldn’t make sense if I didn’t think that that was apt for me too. I mean, if a model looking actress said that, you would just roll your eyes, right? You’d be like, “What?” But I feel like I pull that off.
FT:
You’re right, if a model type said it it would seem insincere, but why? Why shouldn’t anyone be able to feel that way?
MJ:
I think that people who are not like universally pretty or pretty in every picture are allowed to claim that feeling. People who everyone agrees are pretty, they don’t get that feeling. They can have it if they want but I’m not going to be going to great pains to make that a safe space for them. It’s a pretty shallow, fleeting thought. It’s entirely about outside perception of your face and your outside of you so I’m not even talking about how you feel. It’s just purely how you think you are on the scale of prettiness. It’s almost embarrassing that one knows, everyone knows kind of where they are in that. You might as well claim it. You can claim your particular level.
FT:
I guess I'm trying to shake down the whole hierarchy of beauty but I can't really articulate it right.
MJ:
Of course there’s a whole world of I think there’s all different kinds of beautiful and what makes someone beautiful is very complex. I think I was taking the simplest, flattest version of that which in a movie that’s obviously pretty complicated, that’s not filled with gorgeous people, I feel like it’s kind of nice to almost have something that simplistic. This isn’t an ideal world. I’m not having every person say what is a good, true thing to say. I of course feel like that’s wide open. Of course I do.
FT:
Is there a particular inspiration that goes into your style?
MJ:
I think just liking the colors. Friends influence me. I have a friend named Jennifer Johnson. She’s a costume designer. She actually did the costume for Beginners but she’s an old friend. Then just the same pictures that I’m talking about that I pull. Half those pictures were just for me. I didn’t even get all that in the movie but they were amazing costume references.
FT:
Where do you shop?
MJ:
All over. I was about to give away my big secret but we’re in L.A. so I can’t do that. But in L.A. for new clothes, Creatures of Comfort, Opening Ceremony. For vintage clothes, Scout is a good store.
FT:
Is Ella, the real cat who played Paw Paw, okay?
MJ:
She’s fine, yeah.
FT:
I feel like I understand the film, and I don’t know if I can express how I understand the film. Is that a reaction you understand?
MJ:
Yeah. I feel like often, whenever I’m asked to explain what the film is about, I’m just lying because if I could, then I wouldn’t have had to make the movie. So that makes perfect sense to me. In some ways, you’re forced to reduce it to something. I am too and that’s not unique to my movie. But I think when you’re trying to make a movie about things that are not easily or maybe impossible to articulate in words, it’s a weird challenge when you’re forced to do it.
FT:
I understand what stopping time means and I love it. I don’t know if I could tell people here’s why that happens.
MJ:
Right, I know. It’s true. Especially with this movie, almost all the answers I give I feel are sort of just the answers I’ve decided to give to this set of questions that I get. I can’t ever quite nail it.
FT:
What are your next plans for art or movies?
MJ:
Well, I just finished a book that comes out in the fall that’s a nonfiction book. It’s kind of its own project but ultimately it intersects with the movie, called It Chooses You. I won’t go into it, it’s a whole other interview. Then I’m working on a novel, so that’ll be the next long term thing.
The Future opens August 17.
The Future opens August 17.
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