"I have a confession to make: I only picked up this book because I had a slew of things I didn't want to do and I wanted a distraction. Little did I know I'd stumbled onto an ode to procrastination written by an evident master of the craft.
Struggling to finish a screenplay, Miranda July starts poring over items for sale in the PennySaver. She starts calling up the sellers and then interviewing them in their homes, photographer in tow. It Chooses You is a hybrid book comprised of interview transcripts, photographs and July's own writing: a funny, heartfelt commiseration about being creative, distractible, and in a funk, and also a book that is touchingly concerned with the non-electronic.
Most of the interviewees don't own computers, and the real, tangible things they are selling are invested with the sorts of stories only physical objects can contain, stories that end when the object is destroyed or thrown away or simply when the last person aware of its meaning disappears. July writes hilariously and compellingly about these stories and about trying (and failing) to tell them. If you decide to take a break from what you really should be doing to read this book, you won't be wasting your time."
Publisher McSweeney's
Publication Date 2012-07-31
Section Film / All Staff Suggestions / Margaret B.
Format Paperback
ISBN 9781938073014
In the summer of 2009 Miranda July was struggling to write her second screenplay, The Future, when she began to obsessively read the PennySaver classified ads. The iconic Los Angeles newsprint booklet served a computerless demographic—a quickly disappearing group, but one rife with stories. Who was the person selling the LARGE LEATHER JACKET, $10 OR BEST OFFER? It seemed important to find out, or, at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay. Working with photographer Brigitte Sire, July interviewed thirteen PennySaver sellers to create portraits of their surprisingly moving, profoundly specific realities. Among these was Joe, an energetic 82-year-old with his own sweetly perverse body of artwork. By the end of the summer, July had written Joe into the movie as himself and the voice of the moon. July reveals her hilariously random and blindly faithful creative process as we travel with her all over the city, and eventually to the set of The Future. Combining narrative, interviews, and photographs, this book tells the story not only of the making of a movie in Los Angeles, but of the city itself.
