♪ethereal ambient music♪
[lock clicking]
[heels clacking]
[car engine revving]
♪♪♪
[Miranda VO] Risk, in general for me, is really such a comfort zone.
I was the kind of kid who was just like,
"Dare me to do something."
I loved the high of that.
♪♪♪
(plastic rustling)
(mellow music)
I am remembering when I was maybe seven or something
playing at the park, and there was...
You know those really intense basketball games
with men playing, and they're just shouting,
and like, "I'm open, I'm open!"
You know, like, [chuckling] um...
And my friends dared me to join the game.
(mellow music)
[Miranda] Do you mind holding that for a sec?
You can let go whenever you need to let go.
Thank you.
[Miranda VO] And I just jumped right in,
and just was like, "I'm open, I'm open!"
You know, just, like, doing the [chuckling] stuff I saw them doing,
and I was, like, floating on air,
you know, because I'd done it and I'd survived.
[Miranda] Do you mind just holding this?
You can let go whenever you need to let go.
[Miranda VO] I guess I learned if you're not afraid --
and why should you really be afraid? --
then it's like you can fly
You have this superpower.
♪curious electronic music♪
Now, I usually say I'm a writer, filmmaker, and artist.
So within that,
I perform
and I work in these different mediums.
♪♪♪
- Some things are hidden for a reason,
and if you see them, you'll be changed forever.
But I wanted to be changed forever.
♪♪♪
[Miranda VO] It feels like there's a million sub-genres
of all those things,
Like, "filmmaker" -- you know,
that, to me, includes feature films.
[Miranda] And, cut!
And things you might make really quickly
and in an afternoon.
So I'm not really a purist.
♪lush ethereal music♪
I started so young.
I started when I was 16
writing and directing my first play.
[heels clacking]
I had started a correspondence with a man in prison.
There used to be lists of prison pen pals
in the back of magazines,
and I really just chose him at random.
It wasn't romantic
because I was, thank God, a hardcore feminist,
but it was very intimate once that boundary was set.
Dear friend, this is legal paper.
I wish it was the opposite.
How has your day been so far?
You make me wish we could meet.
Perhaps we can someday.
[Miranda VO] I think he and I were in it
for similar reasons in that we loved the attention.
What teenage girl doesn't love...
Like, literally, I was the only person --
like, free person -- in his life.
Like, he hadn't gotten a letter in 12 years.
And, like, I became alienated from my friends
and high school ''cause I couldn't get this across.
And so I wrote a play.
[man VO] You see, you're making me remember,
but I'm not remembering who I was,
I'm remembering who I wanted to be,
[whispering] and there's a difference.
- I shouldn't be able to know you as well as I do
because I know- - I mean I guess one reason
I do these projects with people
who are so far out of my world
is that I am thrown out of my own assumptions
about how things work or what things mean.
Even just very basic things, like even friendship, like:
Is this a friendship?
My parents are writers.
So from them, I learned how to be intimate with my work.
And I guess my great hope was that through my work,
I could have intimacy with other people.
Based on what I saw growing up,
I wasn't sure how else to connect.
I don't know, the idea of the...
you know, the...
the found family or the...
or the friend that kind of saves you, like, I...
those are sometimes in my work, and it's-- you know,
and I know it's a kind of common theme,
but I can't-- you know, it...
[chuckling] never gets old!
[panting] How about this, right?
You think that was the big one?
-I don't think that-- -It was.
That was it. [laughs]
Thank you.
[typing]
- I dropped out of college, and did wanna make movies,
and was surrounded by women in bands.
And we started a recording studio in our basement,
and there was very much the sense
that you could just figure it out yourself.
So I started this thing first called "Big Miss Moviola"
and then Moviola tried to sue me.
Welcome to "Big Miss Moviola."
My name is Miranda July and I'll be your host.
[Miranda VO] The premise was, if you send me your movie,
I'll put it on a VHS tape
with nine other movies made by nine other women...
-Hi, Vanessa!
[Miranda VO] And send the tape back to you,
so we can all see each other's work.
I was providing a service that I needed
in order to conceive of myself as a filmmaker.
And I did that for 10 years.
I did it until...
until I made "Me and You and Everyone We Know."
Man: What are you doing in my car?
[laughs]
I don't know you
and you certainly don't know anything about me.
I mean, what if I'm a killer of children?
-Woman: [chuckling] Yeah, well, that would put a damper on things,
wouldn't it?
Miranda: I remember actually after that movie came out,
and I remember performing and realizing, like,
"They just wanna see the girl from that movie."
That actually was a bit of a crisis at first.
And that was actually the point when I started making pieces
that asked a lot of the audience.
[Miranda] When I signal you,
if you could just walk towards me very, very slowly.
♪tender piano playing♪
I noticed her immediately
when I walked out on stage that first night.
[laughter]
She seemed to radiate light.
♪tender piano playing♪
I've been in two relationships with women before, but...
they were more...butch.
[laughter]
[ambient music]
[Miranda VO] So right now, I am finishing a book,
a kind of long novel...
[footsteps thudding]
about the second half of a woman's life.
And it's a romance.
There's also dance in my book.
So, this is my novel.
[chuckling] No one's supposed to see this ever,
but, um, so don't maybe get too close but...
Or it's fine, whatever, who cares?
This is the first half of it.
This is the second half.
When I can't write anymore -- like it's diminishing returns --
then I come to this rack.
It's, like, [chuckling] costumes to dance in?
Or...
just to make things in if I want to become aware of my body in a
different way.
And then I'd be like, "Well, this was a costume,
but-- but who is this," you know?
♪cool percussive music playing♪
And I started actually buying things
that make no sense in real life,
but are great for this sort of thing.
Like, what is...
what is this?
♪chipper triangle music♪
[Miranda VO] For me, it's always about energy,
and excitement, and mystery.
And one way it exists is in these mediums,
like, simply working in a form
with materials you haven't used before
is novelty and mystery in a quite physical sense
and sometimes in a collaborative sense.
[typing]
So day one of the pandemic,
the phone rings and it's an unfamiliar number,
and I answer it, and it's clearly like a solicitor.
[dogs barking]
- Miranda's phone number was assigned to me
but she wasn't a typical customer
that will immediately hang up the phone or drop the call.
- Maybe I'd somehow ended up on a list
for self-published authors, which I'm not,
and so I answered all their questions and then I said,
"Can I ask you some questions?"
Where they were, they were in the Philippines.
How old they were, 27.
I couldn't tell what gender they were.
They were a trans woman.
[Jay VO] Here in the Philippines,
most of the religion is Roman Catholic.
It's very hard for you to be accepted,
to belong in a community.
So I started to share my background
and she thought of a project that we can collaborate.
This is the edition -- the limited edition --
that I made out of the project with Jay.
- She said that she's gonna be sending me assignment
and then I'm going to respond it in pictures.
This is the first assignment
where Miranda asked me to bow to something
that is also important to me, which is money and a bed,
because I love to sleep.
So, in this picture, this is where all my suffering happens.
- The best feeling is when you throw down a challenge
and then the person comes back with something much bolder.
I mean, that is what really makes it a collaboration,
and that happened so regularly with Jay.
♪calm ethereal music♪
[Jay VO] This is me.
So sharing that to Miranda was really kind of risky,
but at the same time happy
because I was able to express everything.
Like, every pain,
every truth that happened to my life is all in this project.
♪♪♪
- I mean, I'm full of my own...
trust, abandonment issues,
like all kinds of things that make it hard
to get close to people.
So it's a real miracle
when something like that connection can happen.
It becomes very beautiful, and emotional, and light,
which is so, so incredible
because it's not very light inside me.
[chuckles]
♪♪♪
I think that's part of the risk thing
is literally anything is possible in the moment.
♪♪♪
It's kind of like being in a dream or something.
♪♪♪
But a shared dream, not a lonely in-my-head dream.
♪♪♪
And the reward of working this way
is creative freedom
on every level.
♪♪♪
♪ethereal ambient music♪
♪♪♪