50 facts about Miranda July, director, screenwriter, actor, author and artist

Miranda July's 50 things.

1. Miranda Jennifer July is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, author and artist.

2. Her body of work includes film, fiction, monologue, digital media presentations, and live performance art.

3. Miranda July wrote, directed and starred in the films Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) and The Future (2011).

4. Her most recent book, a debut novel The First Bad Man, was published in January 2015.

5. Miranda July was born in Barre, Vermont in 1974, the daughter of Lindy Hough and Richard Grossinger.

6. Her parents, who taught at Goddard College at the time, are both writers.

7. In 1974 they founded North Atlantic Books, a publisher of alternative health, martial arts, and spiritual titles.

8. Her father was Jewish.

9. Her mother was Protestant.

10. July was encouraged to work on her short fiction by author and friend of a friend, Rick Moody.

11. Miranda July grew up in Berkeley, California, where she first began writing plays and staging them at the all-ages club 924 Gilman.

12. Miranda July attended The College Preparatory School in Oakland for high school.

13. Miranda July later attended UC Santa Cruz, dropping out in her sophomore year.

14. After leaving college, she moved to Portland, Oregon and took up performance art.

15. Her performances were successful; she has been quoted as saying she has not worked a day job since she was 23 years old.

16. Beginning in 1995, while residing in Portland, July began a project called Joanie4Jackie (originally called "Big Miss Moviola") which solicited short films by women, which she compiled onto video cassettes, using the theme of a chain letter. She then sent the cassette to the participants, and to subscribers to the series, and offered them for sale to others interested.

17. In addition to the chain letter series, July began a second series called the Co-Star Series, in which she invited friends from larger cities to select a group of films outside of the chain letter submissions.

18. The Joanie4Jackie series also screened at film festivals and DIY movie events. So far, thirteen editions have been released, the latest in 2002.

19. Filmmaker Magazine rated her number one in their "25 New Faces of Indie Film" in 2004.

20. After winning a slot in a Sundance workshop, she developed her first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, which opened in 2005.

21. The film won The Caméra d'Or prize in The Cannes Festival 2005 as well as the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Best First Feature at the Philadelphia Film Festival, Feature Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

22. At her speaking engagement at the Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco's Mission District on May 16, 2007, July mentioned that she was currently working on a new film. This film was originally titled "Satisfaction" but was later renamed The Future, with July in a lead role. The film premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

23. Wayne Wang consulted with July about aspects of his feature length film The Center of the World, for which she received a "story by" credit.

24. Miranda July recorded her first EP for Kill Rock Stars in 1996, titled Margie Ruskie Stops Time, with music by The Need.

25. She released two more full-length LPs, 10 Million Hours A Mile in 1997 and Binet-Simon Test in 1998, both released on Kill Rock Stars.

26. In 1999 she made a split EP with IQU, released on K Records.

27. On their 2010 EP Distractions, Australian band Regurgitator released a track titled "Miranda July" that talks of singer Quan Yeomans writing a letter to her.

28. Miranda July has acted in many of her own videos including Atlanta, The Amateurist, Nest of Tens, Are You The Favorite Person of Anyone?, and her films Me and You and Everyone We Know and The Future.

29. Miranda July also made a small appearance in the film Jesus' Son.

30. Miranda July appeared in an episode of Portlandia in 2012.

31. In 1998, July made her first full-length multimedia performance piece, Love Diamond, in collaboration with composer Zac Love and with help from artist Jamie Isenstein; she called it a "live movie."

32. July performed Love Diamond it at venues around the country, including the New York Video Festival, The Kitchen, and Yo-yo a Go-go in Olympia.

33. Miranda July created her next major full-length performance piece, The Swan Tool, in 2000, also in collaboration with Love, with digital production work by Mitsu Hadeishi.

34. In 2006, after completing her first feature film, she went on to create another multimedia piece, Things We Don't Understand and Definitely Are Not Going To Talk About, which she performed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York.

35. Her short story The Boy from Lam Kien was published in 2005 by Cloverfield Press, as a special-edition book with illustration by Elinor Nissley and Emma Hedditch.

36. Her next story, Something That Needs Nothing, was published in the September 18, 2006, issue of The New Yorker.

37. No One Belongs Here More Than You is a 224-page collection of her stories which was released on May 15, 2007.

38. No One Belongs here More Than You won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award on September 24, 2007.

39. With artist Harrell Fletcher, July founded the online arts project called Learning to Love You More (2002-2009). The project's website offered assignments to artists whose submissions became part of "an ever-changing series of exhibitions, screenings and radio broadcasts presented all over the world".

40. In addition to its Internet presentations, Learning to Love You More also compiled exhibitions for the Whitney Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, and other hosts.

41. In 2013 she started We Think Alone, an art project involving Sheila Heti, Danh Vo, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Lena Dunham and Kirsten Dunst among others where some friends share with July a private mail on a specific topic.

42. Miranda July sends a weekly newsletter to the project´s subscribers with the content of those mails in an attempt to display how mail affects everyone's daily life and the innate voyeurism in each person.

43. In 2014 she created an iOS app, "Somebody", which allows users to compose a message to be delivered to someone else in-person, or to deliver someone else's message in-person. It operates at selected hotspots such as the Venice Film Festival and the New Museum in New York City. The project was funding by Miu Miu.

44. Miranda July dated Radio Sloan from The Need when she first moved to Portland.

45. She went on to date K Records founder Calvin Johnson.

46. Miranda July married the artist and film director Mike Mills.

47. They have a son, Hopper, who was born in February 2012.

48. Johanna Fateman, of the post-punk band Le Tigre, has referred to July as being her "best friend from high school".

49. July's collection of short vignettes was published by Scribner in 2007.

50. Miranda JulyJuly's first novel The First Bad Man was published by Scribner in January 2015. The narrative centers around Cheryl Glickman, a middle-aged woman in crisis whose life abruptly changes course when a young woman moves into her home.

Source: Wikipedia.org