The Thousands

Everyone we know seems to drool over everything Miranda July does. Her short stories, movies and art all document her hilarious journeys into the decaying soul of modern civilisation, while showing how she seriously removes sleep from her eyes. She’s the everywoman art darling, with an eye on the deep and the dumb.

Her new book, It Chooses You, is Miranda’s procrastination project she wrote while making her most recent film, The Future. While It Chooses You is a diary of the angst associated with writing her film, it’s mostly a retelling of her encounters with eleven extraordinary normal people in L.A., people she tracked down via their PennySaver classified ads.

With Brigitte Sire along to take photos, and a guy called Alfred there to ‘protect them from rape’, Miranda takes us into the bedroom of Domingo, a single 45-year-old who pastes up photos of women and babies on his wall and pretends he’s in the LAPD. And 17-year-old Andrew, who’s trying to sell tadpoles before they sprout legs. And the dangerously creepy Ron, who’s under house arrest (there’s a tracker on his leg) selling Dr Seuss books. Joe, the last we meet, is an old man full of nostalgia who Miranda generously casts in The Future, one week before he dies of cancer.

Miranda July’s problems with the writing of her film is compounded by the weight and significance of the lives of the real people she interviews. At one point she says that they are “too big for fiction”. She’s right, and It Chooses You leaves you thinking that perhaps The Future, a lesser achievement, was in fact her real procrastination project.