December 2011
The Second Film By The Artist Miranda July Explores Dysfunctional Relationships Through The Eyes Of A Talking Cat.
Filmmaker, artist and author Miranda July’s latest film The Future is an affecting follow on from her debut success Me You And Everyone Else We Know. Her knack for pulling at sentimental heartstrings is just as potent; love, loss, loneliness and time are gently squeezed without feeling gushing. A young disenchanted couple decide to adopt a sick cat, whose narration offers a fantastical dose of warm surrealism. Shaken by the realisation that this step will significantly alter their lives, each pursues their own small adventure as they obsess with the notion of time and their relationship. Simon Jablonski chatted with Miranda about fear, time and identity.
Is The Future about fear?
Miranda July: There’s certainly a lot of fear in it, yeah, it’s not really a movie about hope exactly, although I do feel ultimately there is transformation in it, but it’s not the kind of transformation that feels good while it’s happening. It’s also a movie obviously about time and I wanted this character that just waited in the way a lot of us wait to fall in love or someone to save us. And then I wanted there to be a literal end to that waiting, like a death and then some hint of what comes after that, like an after life.
Subject of time has come up in your other work, is it linked to fear for you?
Miranda July: I think I just am interested in time, period. My interest in time is very old and goes back to childhood. So it’s not always about fear, you know. I could make a really hopeful, fantastical, fun movie about time too, it’s not like inherently emotional to be about fear.
Is the obsession with stopping time a childlike fantasy?
Miranda July: I see it as a pretty adult metaphor too, I don’t think that children for the most part find themselves in situations that are so painful that they want to stop time. Obviously there’s a lot of fantastical things that happen in the movie, but I don’t think it’s childlike. That moment in particular where they stop time is pretty intense, almost like a freak out. I was trying to find a way of sharing that emotionally without just trying the same old thing. My art isn’t literal; there’s a huge role of art that isn’t literal, that deals with metaphor and abstraction, that isn’t necessarily childlike.
How did The Future start life?
Miranda July: It started out as a performance that I knew would evolve into a movie, but I thought it would be a much more experimental movie. The performance had a lot of audience participation, so I thought the movie would too, but ultimately I ended up making it more of a narrative.
What is the relation between the book you’ve just released and the film?
Miranda July: I met the old man in the movie Joe, the same way that Jason meets him through the classifieds, I was doing a project where I was interviewing people selling things through the classifieds, so it escalated to the movie. So when I met Joe I asked him if he would be in the film and I worked with him. He plays himself. That’s his house, they’re his clothes, he made those cards himself.
Is your work heavily autobiographical?
Miranda July: None of my work is autobiographical. I wrote one short story once that was pretty autobiographical, but that’s one out of a book of sixteen. Neither of my movies have anything in them that really happened in real life. If I start to get too literal or write about things that have happened, it’s not what I’m best at, so my work suffers if it’s too close to my own life.
Even though you’re the subject in the book, are you in character?
Miranda July: Yeah, it’s you, but if you write enough stuff that’s like the inner workings of your head, it gets pretty metaphorical pretty quickly! But I’m not picturing another person; it’s not another character like when I’m writing fiction. I’m really thinking ‘what was I feeling like when I was in that house?’ The only thing I add is a little exaggeration and the same tools you would use in fiction.
Is there a link between keeping distance between your art and personal experience and changing your name?
Miranda July: No, I changed my name when I was a teenager, teenagers want to be self-suffering and self-amending, but it also had to do with the fact that my family lineage was kind of complicated, my own father’s name changed a couple of times. There wasn’t a long family connection to this particular last name I was born with, there was already a lot of speculation and ambivalence towards it, I wasn’t a blood relation to any of the people who shared that last name. So I think it was a little different from most families where that name would feel sacred. So I changed it officially once I was an adult, I’d been using it for so long.
