Procrastinating with Miranda July

I am completely enchanted by July's work. I first discovered her on Netflix, when I decided to watch "You, Me and Everybody We know" on a weeknight procrastination inspired whim. After that I was hooked.

I also just saw her at Symphony Space reading from her most recent book "It Chooses You" about a series of interviews she had done with the ad posters in "The Penny Saver", the classifieds booklet she gets in the mail at her home. As July read her part as Narrator, she had several actors read the parts of her interviewees as she projected photographs of them on a large adjacent screen.

A not so good quality shot
    of Miranda July @ Symphony
Space, taken with my droid.

This project, July explained, was not planned or intended. Reading the Penny Saver was actually a way of procrastinating and distancing herself from her most recent film, "The Future" while she experienced a creative block. Through the Penny Saver, July meets Joe, an 81 year old retired painter who amongst other quirks, writes dirty limericks for his wife and has a grave yard for all his dead pets on his back lawn. His character actually ended up making its way into "The Future"-- what had started as method of avoidance actually informed her film in a new way.

Here is a deleted clip from "The Future" about  procrastinating. Go figure.