Miranda July on releasing a feature film in a pandemic

Life and Art from FT Weekend

Forhecz Topher

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 601 Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2020

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Miranda July is an artist ahead of her time: a prolific filmmaker, writer, musician, actor and more. Her work deliberately leads us into discomfort – and then hugs us from behind. Her third feature film, Kajillionaire, now on US and UK general release, is an exploration of loneliness and love that feels especially prescient now. Miranda and Lilah discuss what it’s like to release a film during a pandemic, how to make art when we don’t know what we’ll want in the future, and how a weirder world has made her film a lot less weird. Plus: FT writer Harriet Fitch-Little joins Lilah to debrief on the interview and discuss why we all stopped going to digital events.

The coronavirus pandemic has broken so much open. And that gives us a very unique chance to reimagine. Welcome to the first of a six-part season. From now to the end of 2020, Lilah will be posing the question “what’s possible now?” to different creators and thinkers, to FT Life & Arts journalists, and to you.

What do you think is possible now, that seemed impossible before? Email us at [email protected]. You can message Lilah on Instagram or Twitter @lilahrap, and find the podcast on Twitter @ftculturecall. We love voice notes – so send those, too.

Links from the episode:

Our Next Gen virtual festival, hosted by the FT’s young editors, is on October 22! Buy tickets here, and use our discount code, NextGen2020

Anthem, by Leonard Cohen

A deep dive on the line, “There is a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in”

Lilah’s piece about living through history

Harriet Fitch-Little’s profile of Miranda July

FT’s Kajillionaire review by Danny Leigh (paywall)

Jenny Odell interviews Miranda July

Behind the scenes of Jopie, Miranda’s crowdsourced film

An excerpt of John Giorno’s memoir, Great Demon Kings

@newyorknico on Instagram

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, you're listening to Culture Call, the Life and Arts podcast from the Financial Times.
0:06.1	I'm Lila Raptopoulos, an FT editor in New York, and welcome back.
0:11.0	Coming up today.
0:12.4	I mean, the funny thing is, this movie is less weird in a way.
0:19.8	Totally.
0:20.8	Like the world got weirder.
0:23.7	Whenever I try and think about people who are making big art,
0:27.6	like art and sort of capital letters about the pandemic,
0:31.6	the expression that always comes to my mind is like laughing at God.
0:35.2	Like we have so little sense of what is going to happen next week.
0:40.1	Yeah.
0:43.8	Welcome to Season 3 of Culture Call.
0:46.8	This season we're doing things slightly differently, for a few reasons.
0:50.6	Firstly, my co-host, Griselda Murray Brown is on maternity leave, so it's just you and me.
0:55.9	And secondly, but probably more importantly, we're living in what feels like a new world.
1:01.1	Gris and I have always had one criteria for choosing the people we interview on this show.
1:05.6	Are they pushing culture forward?
1:07.5	Are they naturally breaking new ground and taking us somewhere different?
1:12.2	Of course, back in March, when the pandemic hit, pushing culture forward didn't mean what it used to. It almost didn't
1:17.1	feel like it meant anything at all. Suddenly, culture as we knew it had stopped in its tracks and
1:22.1	started taking on new, wild-looking shapes. As we stayed indoors, everything went online.
1:29.0	Creators started responding differently, and so did we.
	...

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