Kajillionaire

Miranda July dedicates her latest film to all the Old Dolios.

Miranda July is a trailblazer for upcoming femme filmmakers, climbing to Annapurna heights from performance art, literature and a short-lived mobile app, and creating communities without ever becoming preachy or boring.

Part of July’s appeal is her ability to consolidate her neuroses and perspective into art. Her latest film, the Doestoevsky-come-Soderbegian Kajillionaire, proves no exception; its narrative partly based on one of the artist’s early girlfriends. In Kajillionaire, we see the world through the eyes of an achingly constricted underground scammer absurdly called Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood). Old Dolio lives in constant rental avoidance under the guidance of controlling and weirdly conservative parents (Debra Winger & Richard Jenkins) in an industrial office that overflows with pink bubbles daily. They ‘skim’, living in poverty and stealing just enough to survive.

Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez saves the day (and the film) as a confident outsider who enters the family ‘business’ (if you could call their low-success, con-artist lifestyle that) out of fascination and boredom, and ends up opening up Old Dolio’s life to new possibilities.

At the risk of overhyping it, Kajillionaire feels like the only serious offering to the queer canon this year. I was excited to speak to Miranda July about the casting process (and how Gina Rodriguez was gayer than expected), why she finds fiction more powerful than documentary and how her early chain letter tape project Big Miss Moviola—later renamed Joanie4Jackie after a cease and desist—shaped her as a filmmaker.

Was there a connection between Old Dolio and your sixteen-year-old self that was putting on an experimental theatre show?

Well you’ve definitely done your homework. I guess the connection that I made is that I was basically dating Old Dolio at that time. There have been Old Dolios in my life and they’re always so appealing to me. This movie is definitely an ode to a certain kind of woman that I have loved, but she is also [partly] me, too. I put bits of myself in all the characters I think.

"There have been Old Dolios in my life and they’re always so appealing to me."

What is the best outcome for Old Dolio?

Oh gosh. This has been debated! I’d like to go as far as to say that Melanie and Old Dolio definitely go all the way that night, you know. That relationship is consummated. I want to believe Old Dolio moves in with Melanie and they really try and make a go of it but I know that she’s a handful, you know she’s got some rough edges, and I hope Melanie can handle that. Melanie can handle it, Melanie can handle anything!

That’s the thing though! Melanie can handle anything but this is a lot to put on your plate. There’s less in it for Melanie I find.

I know! I know! I mean she’s probably feeling quite rebellious, you know, to fall in love with Old Dolio but we’ll see if Old Dolio can evolve quickly enough.

What was it like getting a smoothie with actor Gina Rodriguez that first time?

That was magical. She sort of put her cards down on the table, you know? She was a lot gayer than I realised so that was nice, and she was pretty explicit and just spoke honestly about the script and why she cared about parts of it; that meant the world to me. And then this woman came up to us—and we were at the most out-of-the-way smoothie place though it’s not surprising that Gina would be recognised anywhere she goes—and she said she was the biggest fan of both of ours and she really hoped we were talking about something we were going to work on together. That seemed really magical to us and she was the one person on Earth who sort of knew before anyone else did.

How important is serendipity to you? I was flicking through your monograph Miranda July and Evan Rachel Woods talks about how she knew at fifteen that she was going to work with you. Was that important to have someone that felt just right for you so you could step away from performing yourself?

Yeah, I mean I didn’t know that until later so it was very nice to hear, but I do think that she knew my voice along with a lot of the people in this movie so I didn’t have to be literally in it for that to come through. They were going to carry it, not even consciously. Although Gina said she was also listening to the audiobook of my novel The First Bad Man the whole time, which is insane—if I’d known that I probably would have put a stop to it.

"This movie is definitely an ode to a certain kind of woman that I have loved, but she is also [partly] me, too."

I find that voice coming through in your early Kill Rock Stars tapes—I can hear the voice of Old Dolio in some of those tracks.

Yeah, Evan [Rachel Wood] said that she listened to those and they did inspire her. I mean, these actors are very smart. I would have never thought to play her any of that.

To me it’s a trans voice and the parents and her relationship with them is so interesting because they don’t hate each other, but they’re confined together. And that’s such a queer experience of: ‘well, I’m comfortable and I’m surviving so do I leave?’ That feeling to me is captured in that transcendental scene when ‘The Big One’ happens and suddenly we are floating in space, that moment of knowing ‘I’ve got to jump off the edge here.’

That was the most important scene to me—that she has to die and be reborn, essentially, and we have to kind of go with that. It is a big leap to take, and I let it be kind of abstract there with the stars. I felt like if anyone has ever looked at their life and knew [that feeling] suddenly, through meeting someone or surviving something, they would know whether that moment felt true or not—it had to be true.

It’s such a delicate moment and it feels like a breakup as well as a rebirth which I feel is like what America’s kind of going through. It felt cathartic, maybe cathartic isn’t the word, but it felt right and I think maybe that’s because you’re working from the unconscious. Did you find it helpful or healing to work in fiction rather than documentary?

It means you can sort of channel in a way without getting your head into it. If I can find just the right fiction, which has to come to me unconsciously, then I feel like it’s this clear space that all kinds of things that I wouldn’t be able to speak about—whether they’re political or just so painful, or I’m just not smart enough yet or don’t have words for—but the right fiction is sort of like a code that all those things can pass through.

And I feel like that’s that energy from Joanie4Jackie that I love. You’re telling women filmmakers that it doesn’t matter what it is, we’ll show it and you’re seeing all these people—all these women, specifically—making films, who then stop after university meaning all these voices are missing and all these ways of telling stories are getting missed. Were there things that you took from running Joanie4Jackie that you found helpful when dealing with the likes of Brad Pitt and Megan Ellison as producers on this project?

Nothing beats the confidence that I got from surrounding myself with other women filmmakers who were not even striving for Hollywood or Sundance or whatever. We thought each other were enough, we thought we were the prize. We got to see each other’s work and in a really deep way, not in a, like not even in a punk ‘well fuck ya’ll way, like in a way where it felt really good to be seen by each other. If that’s your start you can never fall very far because that’s always there inside you.

"Nothing beats the confidence that I got from surrounding myself with other women filmmakers who were not even striving for Hollywood or Sundance. "

There was another quote in your book where someone recalled you saying that you thought that you’d never done anything great and that reminds me when I read Nicole Kidman saying that she had never given a great performance—but for me she’s so expansive and experimental and ambitious that maybe her body of work is the greatness, do you feel that way?

When my friend Starley said that in the book, I thought: ‘that’s okay, it’s not like I’m looking to have peace.’ I’m willing to stay agitated for my whole life because as you said the whole life, all of this, is the thing. That is the prize, to get to live this, and it’s uncomfortable

I know that gift giving is a really important part of your practice and I was just wondering who the film is for, if anyone?

Well the first thing that came to mind was it’s for Old Dolio. I don’t know if that makes sense?

Your old Old Dolio, like the one that you were dating at sixteen?

Her and a few other ones and then all the ones that will ever be. Many of whom are all different genders and it’s been surprising to see how many different types of people are claiming her and that’s interesting to me, really, that’s the best possible thing.

Jen presents a fortnightly film segment on Sydney’s FBi Radio called ‘Movies Movies Movies’, runs a resourceful film night called Garden Reflexxx Presents and makes videos with their partner André Shannon. All of which you can find links to at www.gardenreflexxx.com.