July! July!

June 26, 2005

I forgot to mention that at the end of “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” there was a Q+A with Miranda July. Now, you all know how much I love(hate) Q+As.

Now, you must remember that July just made a movie after going through Sundance Labs and getting funding from Sundance grants as well as IFC funding, and got that movie into Cannes and took home several awards there, for her first feature. In other words, in a theater full of filmmaker wannabes, she just lived the dream. So of course there were dumb questions. Like her characters, Miranda July is goofy and awkward and not necessarily eloquent on-the-spot. As a result, you had uncomfortable exchanges like:

“So what was the symbolism at the end of the movie? What were you trying to say?”
“Ummmmmmmm, I don’t know how to explain that, in words. If I were better at verbalizing things like that, I wouldn’t have had to do this whole thing. You know, make the movie and all that.”

The worst thing, was when she asked for the last question some guy just started blurting out “ohh I think you really made something good here and I think you’re onto something and you’re going to be really big and successful and you did a really good job.”

HEY, what’s the first rule of Q+A? STATEMENTS ARE NOT QUESTIONS, YOU FUCKER. GRAHHHHHHHHH.

In somewhat related bits, movienet has a series of letters (well, excerpts) that July wrote to her friend Julia during the making of the film. Catch the Sleater-Kinney reference at the bottom.

Posted in Moving Pictures