Miran­da July: ​‘I’m inter­est­ed in the lit­tle self-sab­o­tag­ing things we do’

Good things sup­pos­ed­ly come to those who wait, and Miran­da July’s third fea­ture film is proof of that. In the nine years since she direct­ed The Future, July has been keep­ing extreme­ly busy. Per­for­mance art, a nov­el, an app, a char­i­ty shop run out of Sel­f­ridges – her pro­duc­tiv­i­ty (not to men­tion her ver­sa­til­i­ty) knows no bounds, but even she was sur­prised when the ker­nel of an idea for a heist movie popped into her head. The result is Kajil­lion­aire, a sweet, delight­ful­ly off­beat sto­ry of love, loss and lar­ce­ny in Los Angeles.

LWLies: You’ve been con­cen­trat­ing on oth­er art forms for a while now, so how did you land on the idea for Kajillionaire?

July: The last big project I worked on was a nov­el which didn’t have a heist plot but did have a lot of reveals and twists and turns, and I knew I want­ed to use those mus­cles for a movie. But my ideas come from my uncon­scious. I don’t think, ​‘I want to write about the issue of…’ It’s not like that, it’s more mys­te­ri­ous. I wrote two scripts kind of quick­ly that I put aside which were kind of false starts before Kajil­lion­aire – and I’m say­ing that so that it’s less annoy­ing when I say that it came to me all at once one morn­ing fair­ly fully-formed.

So it took a year, but then it came all at once, and I was won­der­ing, ​‘Why a heist movie?’ as I was typ­ing it. But when I got to the end and read it back, I was kin­da punched in the gut. I nev­er would have cho­sen to write about these icky fam­i­ly betray­als if I’d been con­scious that that’s what I was doing. I think maybe the way it works for the audi­ence is sim­i­lar, that you’re kind of hold­ing on to this idea of a mad-cap heist. I mean, there is a heist, but it’s more of an emo­tion­al heist movie in the end.

There’s a through­line in your work about how peo­ple con­nect with each oth­er, specif­i­cal­ly roman­ti­cal­ly and as fam­i­ly. What is it about these sorts of rela­tion­ships that fas­ci­nates you?

It’s not that con­nect­ing that inter­ests me as much as the unique ways that peo­ple make it hard­er for them­selves. Because that’s where everyone’s cre­ative inge­nu­ity comes in – all the lit­tle self-sab­o­tag­ing things that we do. That’s what inter­ests me. To use a metaphor, it’s not the kiss at the end, but all the ways peo­ple make it almost impos­si­ble to get to that kiss.

Is the heist genre one that you had any inter­est in before the idea came to you?

It’s not that I’m a heist movie fan, although I did grow up watch­ing a lot of the Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble TV show, so that’s all very moth­er tongue to me, rever­sals and lit­tle twists and the sat­is­fac­tion of a good scam, although all the Kajil­lion­aire scams are ter­ri­ble. I just love intri­ca­cies and I love the ways that peo­ple can be artists with­out being artists – they’re act­ing, they’re doing these per­for­mances, these kind of sleight-of-hands, they’re dress­ing up in cos­tumes. That’s often the case in my movies, even the peo­ple who aren’t artists are also some­way mak­ing some­thing. And then also I should give a lit­tle shout-out to my punk fem­i­nist, ​’90s roots in which the scam was con­stant. I can’t pre­tend I haven’t done some of these scams in my deep, deep past. There was this thing of always look­ing for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a buck in some way.

You’ve got to give me an example!

One that I was try­ing to get into the movie was, I remem­ber in New York City doing this once – going into a dry clean­er and say­ing, ​‘I think I left my sweater here, it was a black cardi­gan,’ It kind of works with a lot of lost-and-founds. Either there’s noth­ing like what you described there and you just leave, or there’s some­thing like that and you take it. It’s horrible!

You men­tioned grow­ing up on Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble – Kajillionaire’s open­ing sequence reminds me of watch­ing Tom Cruise dan­gling on a rope, and the heist scene from The Thomas Crown Affair.

The first scene I wrote was not that scene, but I remem­ber there was a point in edit­ing where, for a lit­tle while, it was moved a lit­tle lat­er in the movie, but it was sup­posed to be the open­ing and I was so glad when it went back to that. There’s a PO Box right by my stu­dio. So I went there with a chore­o­g­ra­ph­er friend and I just did every­thing you could pos­si­bly do to get into the build­ing. It was fun­ny because it’s a busy enough cor­ner that more than one per­son texted me lat­er that day say­ing, ​‘I saw you falling out of the post office, what was going on there?’ and I was like, ​‘Jesus! Did all of LA dri­ve past me in that moment?’

One of the films that I was remind­ed of watch­ing Kajil­lion­aire was Punch Drunk Love – anoth­er won­der­ful film about social­ly-awk­ward scam­mers in LA.

I love that movie – I wrote the Cri­te­ri­on essay for it. I nev­er real­ly thought of the sto­ry like that but I’ll take it. But I will say that like the way that was shot, Sebas­t­ian Win­terø and I looked at it, and I think he want­ed to under­stand what I was respond­ing to about how it was shot. And prob­a­bly if it wasn’t for that movie I wouldn’t have used so much dol­ly track!

All three of your films have been set in Los Ange­les, which is where you live. Is there some­thing about the city that par­tic­u­lar­ly inspires you?

This could change, but so far I’ve real­ly been so focused on people’s inter­nal worlds. Peo­ple talk about the set­ting as anoth­er char­ac­ter in the movie, but I don’t real­ly feel like I’ve done that. I’m start­ing with the ter­ri­to­ry that I’m lit­er­al­ly in as I’m walk­ing around, mak­ing up the movie. But also I don’t real­ly wan­na leave! The whole thing seems hard enough with­out hav­ing to like go some­where. Maybe I’ll have to break out a little. 

You had the star­ring role in your past two movies. Was there a rea­son you decid­ed for this one you would con­cen­trate on behind-the-scenes?

Hon­est­ly I had the idea, I was already a cou­ple of days into brain­storm­ing when I was like, ​‘Oh hold on, there is lit­er­al­ly not a woman my age in this movie. They’re in their twen­ties or they’re in their six­ties, I’m not rep­re­sent­ed here.’ And there was like a slight pause, and I was like, ​‘I guess I’m not in it.’ And I didn’t think again, oth­er than to appre­ci­ate how much more direct­ing I was get­ting to do. It’s like the movie got all of me as a care­tak­er, like a moth­er of it rather than part of me hav­ing to be like the child. You have to real­ly switch brains when you’re act­ing, too. That has its own ener­gy, but here I could just take on more. It also meant I got to cast all these women which was new to me and a dream come true. I’d always tak­en the big role in the past.

One of the things that I’ve honed in on through watch­ing your films again but also read­ing your mono­graph is this idea of obses­sion. A lot of your work is like laser-focus­ing on the things that dri­ve peo­ple, whether those are artis­tic or roman­tic or finan­cial. Do you think that focus­ing on these obses­sions is a way to get to know people?

It can be. I feel like what I’m real­ly a fan of is just focus in gen­er­al. Of just going as far as I can go on one thing. And weath­er­ing the chal­lenges of that, and includ­ing them in the process. But you’re right, these obses­sions are often the heart­beat of peo­ple, like their sleep­less­ness, their finan­cial prob­lems, class issues or romance. I am des­per­ate­ly try­ing to fig­ure out what it’s like for oth­er peo­ple in their heads. I often try to get friends to describe things like, ​‘Do you have a voice in your head? When you’re just walk­ing around your house what’s hap­pen­ing in there?’ Which nev­er is like that effec­tive. So art is a bet­ter way some­times to get into that space. 

As some­one who does work across so many dif­fer­ent medi­ums, what’s your favourite thing about mak­ing films?

It’s the one that I want­ed to do when I was a teenag­er. This to me is like when a kid dreams of being an astro­naut, and then ends up on the moon. That kid is prob­a­bly like, ​‘I can’t believe I’m here on the moon!’ That’s how I feel on set, on the first day, even though it’s such hard work and I’m more used to it, it still has this child-like dream qual­i­ty to it. And I love see­ing the things peo­ple make in their depart­ments, like the dif­fer­ent cos­tumes and props and spe­cial effects. I’m gid­dy watch­ing them.

Then film is such a uni­ver­sal lan­guage, it’s so inclu­sive. There’s a whole lot of peo­ple who will nev­er read my books, but movies are the most wel­com­ing, and so it’s great I can do all this weird stuff and peo­ple will always kind of be some­what friend­ly. Even the scari­est movie, you can’t hide the fact that you’re invit­ing peo­ple in. If you’re not, you wouldn’t have made a film.

Kajil­lion­aire is released 9 Octo­ber. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.