Wednesday night Miranda July was in town at Symphony Space to perform a few scenes from her new book It Chooses You which was just released by McSweeney's this week. The book details her real-life interviews with people she met through the Pennysaver while trying to complete the fictional script for her most recent film The Future. A host of veteran Broadway actors joined her on stage standing in for her subjects as photographs of the actual interviews were projected and Miranda occasionally interjected to give context to the situations.I have to say that the performance was one of the most entertaining and informative of all the many Selected Shorts performances that I've seen so the two hours felt more like 10 minutes. The dialogues themselves were both funny and moving sometimes in a truly meaningful way as she managed to really engage the people she met. The people, who as July pointed out mostly don't use computers otherwise they'd be using Craigslist, had encounters that revealed some inner truths about themselves and in doing the interviews Miranda in a sense does the same. The final interview ended up helping her complete her screenplay for the film as she hoped the process would and the subject and his interview appear in the film with the main character stepping in as July. By the end of the evening I felt like July was a kindred spirit and her honesty about her artistic process was enlightening.
If you haven't seen the film, here's a recent review I wrote - The Future
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