In the same year Vanessa Renwick made a perfect short film, The Yodeling Lesson (1998), Miranda July made her own perfect short film The Amateurist (1998), with Vanessa as her DP.

In the new issue of Plazm, Vanessa tells Nora Robertson that Miranda improvised all her lines as the mysterious Professional who constantly evaluates the equally mysterious caged Amateur.

I have such respect for this work!

From Australian Centre for the Moving Image:

The Amateurist features two figures, both portrayed by the artist, caught in an off-kilter relationship based on a system whose rules, boundaries and ultimate aim remain fascinatingly opaque.

The ‘Watcher’ views the ‘Amateur’ via a video surveillance system, suggesting numbers to her and interpreting the Amateur’s vague gestures and responses with a mixture of pride, concern and condescension. The Watcher considers herself the ultimate professional – telling us she has been engaged in this activity for four and half years – and yet the emotional intensity she has invested in this eerily empty activity is immediately evident.>

What is going on?

Here’s Miranda’s own description of The Amateurist.

I hereby claim The Amateurist as an Oregon film, on the basis of the location shooting, the Portland DP, and the at-the-time Portland filmmaker, Miranda July.

Pittsburgh has George Romero, Baltimore has John Waters, and Boulder has the memory of Stan Brakhage.

Portland has Gus Van Sant, Bill Plympton, Matt Groening, Mike Richardson, Jon Raymond, Aaron Katz, Chel White, Jacob & Arnold Pander, James Westby, Jim Blashfield, Joan Gratz, Joanna Priestley, Matt McCormick, Rose Bond, Vanessa Renwick and Will Vinton.

Ever wonder why?

For cities wishing to replicate Portland’s densely populated cinematic scene, here’s a handy “how to” guide.

1.  Start early.

As soon as people were making films in New York and Fort Lee, they were making them in Portland. Portland’s first film studio, American Lifeograph, opened in 1910. That’s the same year movies came to Hollywood.

2. Have a show business friendly mayor.

During the 16 year tenure of theater-owner-turned-mayor George Baker, downtown Portland was wall to wall theaters. John Gilbert, Clark Gable, William Powell, Edward Everett Horton and Eugene Pallette are some of the actors who jumpstarted their acting careers on the Portland stage, some of them in Baker’s own stock company. It was Baker who renamed Seventh Avenue “Broadway”.

3. Support innovation.

Oregon’s oldest source of print media, The Oregonian, responded to the puzzling new medium of radio by setting up a station right in the Oregonian Tower. Radio later served as an Early Warning System to identify the talent of Portlanders Mel Blanc, Suzanne Burce (renamed Jane Powell by MGM) and Johnnie Ray.

4. Grow your own film processing lab.

After WWII, Portland inventor Frank Hood went to work for a brand new electronics firm named Tektronix. He set up his own home lab to process films he made for them, after losing patience with the delays of sending film to LA. Eventually, he went into business as Teknifilm Lab. For decades, independent filmmaking in Portland was supported by Hood’s lax attitude toward payment schedules.

5. Provide a home for an exiled Hollywood film scholar.

Andries Deinum came to Portland during the blacklist. His vision of film as a mode of social discourse laid the groundwork for PSU’s Center For The Moving Image, housed in Lincoln Hall. Jim Blashfield, Bill Plympton, and Matt Groening were among the faithful attendees of the Center’s influential screening series, run by the Portland State Film Committee.

6. Provide a day job for the guy who wants to mentor the guy who wants to revive the archaic art form of stop motion animation.

Homer Groening led a dual life – ad man by day and experimental filmmaker by night. He had a family, a home, and his own business doing what he loved – and he did it all without leaving Portland. Aspiring filmmaker Will Vinton paid attention, and followed suit. His career, like Groening’s, would encompass both television commercials and art house films, but on a much larger scale.

7. Work with, not against, a pair of cinema addled students who want to start a regional film center.

When the National Endowment for the Arts decided to seed regional filmmaking, they went looking for the right person to submit a grant for a film center in Portland. They were pointed to Brooke Jacobson and Bob Summers, members of the Portland State Film Committee. Brooke and Bob wrote the grant, Portland Art Museum acted as fiscal sponsor, and the Northwest Film Center went into business. This year marks its 40th anniversary.

8. Work with, not against, a visionary film preservationist who wants to create a moving image archive.

Lew Cook was trained as a newsreel photographer by the first generation of Portland filmmakers. His stop motion film, The Little Baker, made circa 1925, proved prophetic when it came to Portland’s future claim to cinema history. He and Thomas Vaughn conceived Oregon Historical Society’s moving image archive, and Cook personally trained the preservationist, Michele Kribs, who currently presides over it.

To re-cap: by the end of the 1970’s, Portland had a film program at Portland State University, a film archive at Oregon Historical Society, and a regional film festival (now the NWFF) located at Portland Art Museum. That nucleus of film creativity on the park blocks was balanced by a film processing lab, an emerging animation studio, and a warehouse waiting to be filled with  filmmakers’ offices over in northwest Portland. No one entity owned the scene – the infrastructure and the support system served all comers.

The following timeline concentrates on factors which contributed to a culture where independent filmmakers supported each other in Portland. It does not address the important role played by Hollywood productions shooting in Oregon. The symbiotic role of Hollywood and the Indies in Portland is embodied in the career of Gus Van Sant who slips and slides with ease between these two worlds.

A timeline:

American Lifeograph founded 1910

Lewis Moomaw makes The Chechacos 1924

Lew Cook makes The Little Baker c1925

PGE makes It Can Be Done c1936

Tektronix founded 1946

Frank Hood founds Teknifilm Lab, early 1950’s

Andries Deinum arrives 1957

Homer Groening starts his own ad agency 1958

Center For The Moving Image founded 1965

Bob Summers and Brooke Jacobson found Northwest Film Center 197o

Tim Smith and Matt Groening make Drugs: Killers or Dillers 1972

Brooke Jacobson founds Northwest Media Project 1974

Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner make Closed Mondays 1974

Don Zavin makes Fast Break 1977

Penny Allen makes Property 1979

Rose Bond makes Gaia’s Dream 1982

Gus Van Sant makes Mala Noche 1985

Bill Plympton makes Your Face 1987

Matt Groening makes The Simpsons 1987

Jim Blashfield makes Leave Me Alone 1988

Joan Gratz makes Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase 1992

Gus Van Sant makes Good Will Hunting 1997.

Miranda July makes The Amateurist 1998

Chris Eyre makes Smoke Signals 1998

Will Vinton makes The PJ’s 1999

Travis Knight makes Coraline 2009

Jon Raymond writes & Neil Kopp produces Meek’s Cutoff 2010, one of five Oregon films at Sundance in 2011.

This post is dedicated to Portland filmmaker/film writer David Walker, who inspired it by raising the question “how rare is regional filmmaking, anyway?”

“Now in this part of Florida, all the fish are federally protected, except from each other.”

Homer Groening’s travelogue combines found footage ala Craig Baldwin with cosmically disoriented voiceover  ala Miranda July.

To place this in Oregon film history…..

Ten years after this, Penny Allen would take Property to Sundance. The ever resourceful Allen had paid her crew, which included Gus Van Sant, with CETA funds.

Ten years after that, in 1989, Gus Van Sant would make Drugstore Cowboy.

1989 was also, of course, the year that Matt Groening would begin his conquest of prime time television, with The Simpsons moving out from under Tracey Ullman’s wing and debuting on their own.

But in 1969, all this was in the future.

I hereby claim Basic Brown Basic Blue as an Oregon film, on the basis of Homer Groening’s contributions as producer,  writer, director, editor, and narrator.

You know, and I know, that Miranda July has made a career of questioning the very basis of domestic stability – acceptance of boredom. So choosing to face and confront this obvious discrepancy between her talents and interests, and the third act resolution required by the romantic comedy genre, she has created her own version of a marriage comedy ( OK, its not a romantic comedy if the third member of the love triangle is a cat ) which should be pretty unique.

Here’s the info:

In partnership with Portland State University’s Social Practice MFA program led by Harrell Fletcher and Jen Delos Reyes, and with support from Roadside Attractions, the Hollywood Theatre will host Miranda July on May 6th and 7th, presenting advanced screenings of her latest film “The Future,” as well as a shorts program featuring her early work.

BUY TICKETS @ http://tinyurl.com/3tvgbgx

The shorts program, taking place on May 6th, will be collaboration between Fletcher, Reyes, their Practice MFA students and July, featuring various participatory art projects inspired by July’s work. A limited number of Miranda July prints designed especially for this event will be available for sale throughout the evening. On May 7th, two advanced screenings of “The Future” will take place at 7pm and 9:30pm. July will make appearances at both screenings, participating in an audience Q+A after the first, and introducing the second.

“The Future” stars July, (who also writes, directs) alongside Hamish Linklater in the story of a thirty-something couple who, on deciding to adopt a stray cat, change their perspective on life, literally altering the course of time and testing their faith in each other and themselves. The film opens in theatres on July 29, 2011.

So nice to see Miranda July make the trip from Hollywood to the Hollywood!  Oregon Movies, A to Z salutes Miranda as a  lillypadder, a classification which puts her in excellent company.

Its hard out there for most retired rockers, even for Carrie Brownstein, who spent her years post-Sleater-Kinney reinventing herself as a writer-actor-producer. Not that she had to build her new career from the ground up : Carrie’s greatest gift has been an ability to lose herself in performance.

And she brought this with her to Thunderant, her webseries with Fred Armisen.

But Carrie’s considerable talent is not solely responsible for her success tonight, as Portlandia premieres on national television. Art takes strength. An independent filmmaker has to have the heart of an Alaskan sled dog and the stamina of a long distance runner. You have to see what no one else can see and  believe it can happen. How is this ability nurtured?

Miranda July had the idea that the reason there were no women filmmakers was that there were no women filmmakers. No role models, no company, no mentors = no women in film. Carrie arrived in Portland just as Miranda was getting her anti-isolation Miss Movieola project off the ground.

The third member of Carrie Brownstein’s Cinematic Sisterhood of Portland Peers, Marne Lucas, made a prizewinning film her first time out and then placed her full attention on still photography.

That’s Marne in a self portrait taken at the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where she now lives. I believe Marne, retired from indie filmmaking by the time Carrie arrived in Portland, still counts as a member of her support team because of her legendary skepticism when it comes to the fanfare of success, and her disciplined focus on creating new work.

Miranda July, Vanessa Renwick and Marne Lucas are three Portland contemporaries Carrie Brownstein witnessed up close and personal, staying the course, exploring their gifts as artists. I’ll save for another post the longer history, and deeper roots, of women in film in Portland.

We’ll let Carrie play us off…..

]]> http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2011/01/carrie-brownsteins-sisterhood-of-the-traveling-pants-vanessa-renwick-miranda-july-marne-lucas/feed/ 5 http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2011/01/miranda-julys-portland-years/ http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2011/01/miranda-julys-portland-years/#comments Fri, 21 Jan 2011 22:55:39 +0000 Anne Richardson http://talltalestruetales.wordpress.com/?p=3248 Click here to view the embedded video.

Miranda July (born Miranda Jennifer Grossinger) arrived in Portland in 1996. A film school drop out attracted by the Pacific Northwest’s Riot Grrrl scene, she proceeded to create, from the ground up, both her own career and a national support network for other female filmmakers.

I saw Miranda perform Love Diamond, a “live movie” commissioned by Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, at Lincoln Center in 1999. The room had maybe twenty people in it. Three years later, I watched her lecture on Nest of Tens to a packed auditorium at the Museum of Modern Art. In 2005, everyone who wasn’t talking about Gus Van Sant’s Last Days was raving about You Me and Everyone We Know, Miranda’s first feature film. Both hit Manhattan at the same time.

It was around this time I began to think that Portlanders underestimated how much Oregon there is in New York.

A classic lillypadder, Miranda July now lives in LA. She has kept her Portland years close to her heart, as you see in the following video, in which she tries to pass on to a group of young Angelenos her love of DIY, postering, and open source everything.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Miranda July directed this Sleater-Kinney music video, starring Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss, during the earliest chapter of her career. Twelve years later, July’s second feature film, The Future,  is about to premiere at Sundance, while Brownstein is all over the New York Times as the writer-producer-star, with Fred Armisen,  of IFC’s new comedy series, Portlandia.

Good going, Riot Grrrls!

I hereby claim Get Up as an Oregon film, on the basis of location shooting and the Portland citizenship of every single one of the creative principals.

Oregon Movies, A to Z invented the classification “lillypadder” to describe the artists who came to Oregon in pursuit of greatness and left for the same reason. July is a classic lillypadder, a label she shares with actor Eric Bogosian, screenwriter Callie Khouri, and author John Varley, among others.

The genius of Ridley Scott’s direction and Callie Khouri’s groundbreaking screenplay is that they allow the film to flirt with standard archetypal conventions, all the while upending conventional notions of women — particularly women in the sort of situation Thelma and Louise find themselves in. Jason McKiernan

Callie Khouri came to Portland to finish her Oscar winning screenplay for Thelma and Louise, taking a break from her secretarial job in the music video business to do so. It was her first script.

Other screenplays written in the rain: Todd Haynes came here  to write Far From Heaven (2002), leaving behind the fleshpots of Brooklyn. Miranda July’s Me, You And Everyone We Know ( 2005) was written in Portland. I am guessing that Gus Van Sant wrote Mala Noche (1985), Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991) in Portland.

I hereby claim Thelma and Louise as an Oregon film on the basis of Callie Kouri’s decision to use Portland as a writer’s colony.

Lillypadders are artists who make use of a limited stay to Oregon to push forward their careers. Miranda July is a classic lillypadder, as was Clark Gable, Callie Khouri and Eric Bogosian. John Varley and Chuck Palahniuk made the most of long stays in Oregon, but since they now live elsewhere, they fall within the lillypadder classification.

Edward Everett Horton (above) left Columbia University to pursue an acting career, which quest brought him to Portland, where he performed with the Baker Stock Company. He leapt from the Portland to Hollywood (this was during the silent era) and the rest, as they say, is history.

Portland continued to have a strong fan base for Horton. In the 1940’s he was invited to serve as Grand Marshal for the Rose Festival Parade.

I am fascinated by lillypadders. Please alert me when you learn of one.

Portland also was a pit stop for Hollywood superstars John Gilbert and Clark Gable, although they appeared with other theater companies, not Baker’s.

A list of more recent stars who used Portland as a lilypad from which to leapfrog to fame would include Eric Bogosian and Miranda July. Any others?