Miranda July

L.A. screenwriter, performance artist, and author, takes to the streets to meet the folks advertising their cheap wares in the local "PennySaver" classifieds shopper. Their stories are humorous, intriguing, and sometimes moving, and ultimately, surprisingly helpful in shaping the film she is trying to complete.

It Chooses You

Trever

3.5. I've had kind of a rough week. I've been really anxious and obsessive and it was just an unpleasant few days. This book was nice and sobering I read at such a time, because July has that New Sincerity tenderness about her.

Melanie Richards

I think there was something July was trying to communicate that wasn't exactly clear, or on the whole she was speaking to herself, but she made me tear up and I blazed through this book, so, a good one.

daniela

Karen E

Dennis Jacob Rosenfeld

Meghan Navoy

Ashley Johnson

Gabrielle Griffiths

Gustav Vallin

Simon Oosterdijk

Roger Amundsen

James Smart

In the summer of 2009, Miranda July was struggling to finish writing the screenplay for her much-anticipated second film. During her increasingly long lunch breaks, she began to obsessively read the "PennySaver," the iconic classifieds booklet that reached everywhere and seemed to come from nowhere. Who was the person selling the "Large leather Jacket, $10"? It seemed important to find out--or at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay. Accompanied by photographer Brigitte Sire, July crisscrossed Los Angeles to meet a random selection of "PennySaver" sellers, glimpsing thirteen surprisingly moving and profoundly specific realities, along the way shaping her film, and herself, in unexpected ways. Elegantly blending narrative, interviews, and photographs with July's off-kilter honesty and deadpan humor, this is a story of procrastination and inspiration, isolation and connection, and grabbing hold of the invisible world.

It Chooses You

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