The Mind Of Miranda July

With Mike Pesca in for Tom Ashbrook

Indie film icon Miranda July takes us a tour through the PennySavers in search of something greater in herself.

It chooses you, the future.  No one belongs here more than me and you and everyone we know.  List the works of Miranda July in sequence and they sound like a possibly profound poem.  Those works include two acclaimed films, a series of performances pieces, and a new book of , well, journalism.

The characters are trying to connect and communicate, blocked by technology and themselves.  One other big thing you need to know about them, and this sometimes gets lost.  They’re Funny.  She’s funny.

This hour, On Point: Miranda July.
-Mike Pesca

Miranda July, author and filmmaker. Writer and director of "Me and You and Everyone We Know" and the new film, "The Future." She's the author of “It Chooses You.”

The New Yorker "It’s only October, and the autumn deluge of Oscarizables is only now beginning, but it would have to be a great fall indeed for Miranda July’s “The Future” not to rank high, at year’s end, on my list of 2011 releases. Here, this week, The Book Bench is offering excerpts from July’s forthcoming book “It Chooses You,” which is less a work of nonfiction or a memoir than it is a documentary film in book form. In effect, it’s a making-of regarding several key elements of “The Future,” and it illuminates the process of discovery and invention that gives the film such a thrilling, live-wire immediacy."

The Guardian "There are some film-makers who are infuriated by the Teflon sensibility of modern cinema audiences and go all out for something that will stick, or get a reaction: astonishment, outrage, a seat-bang, a walkout, anything. Gaspar Noé described how, in his legendary shocker Irréversible, he deliberately used a droning frequency that causes nausea for background white noise. Artist-turned-film-maker Miranda July, renowned for her fey and quirky style, may be part of this tradition, simply by being 20 times more irritating than any normal person can stand."

The New York Times "To appreciate “The Future,” Miranda July’s ingeniously constructed wonder cabinet of a movie, you may first have to pass through a stage of mild annoyance or even something more intense. A recent profile in The New York Times Magazine depicted Ms. July — a quiet figure on the screen and a thoughtful, witty presence on the page — as an improbably polarizing filmmaker, as likely to be scorned for her supposed preciosity as celebrated for her ingenuity. And the first part of “The Future” seems, quite deliberately, to test the spectrum of audience response. Are you curious? Enchanted? Frustrated? All of the above?"

"Pauline & Raymond" from It Chooses You

Excerpted from It Chooses You by Miranda July. Copyright © 2011 by Miranda July. Excerpted by permission of McSweeney's. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.