I’ve always loved movies, but I guess I did everything to avoid the very hard thing of making a feature film,” says renaissance hipster Miranda July, whose procrastination produced a résumé more impressive than half of Williamsburg’s: multimedia artworks in the permanent collections of MoMA and the Guggenheim; appearances at two Whitney Biennials; performances at the Kitchen; radio shows on NPR; a music video for Sleater-Kinney; ’zines; short stories in Tin House and The Paris Review; a National Magazine Award nomination; and now, finally, a Sundance Jury Prize for her lovely new film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (June 17).
Me and You, which was produced by IFC and debuted at Sundance, is an oddly openhearted, almost romantic, often comedic drama about a performance artist, a shoe salesman, some children, sex, and the distance between them all. Yes, it sounds pretentious, but it plays out with genuine humor that can’t be faked. And it’s likely to be the season’s one true indie breakout.
“I love the fact that nobody knows what a ‘performance’ is,” she says of her uncategorizable stage work. “That I can just make it all up. But everyone more or less makes a movie the same way. My fantasy is that you see a movie and think that you’re seeing something that could only have happened that night—in that room, with those people sitting beside you.”