‘We’re living in the era of sequels and franchises and remakes’
Kajillionaire is a unique piece of film. Filmmaker Mirandy July, and stars Evan Rachel Wood and Gina Rodriguez, discuss why with GEORGIA HUMPHREYS.
THE second Evan Rachel Wood signed on to star in comedy-drama Kajillionaire, she started working on her character’s very specific physicality with the film’s writerdirector, Mirandy July.
Crafting that, and figuring out who Old Dolio was, sounds like a fascinatingly complex process.
“We watched videos and we would do scenes together and we would improvise, and she would limit my form of communication,” explains North Carolina-born Wood, 33.
“So we’d do a scene and she’d say, ‘OK you’re not allowed to talk’, ‘OK this time you can’t look anybody in the eye’, ‘OK this time you can only make noises like an animal’ and then, through these exercises, we would find little ‘isms’ and things that I would do and we would keep those and we would put them in the toolbox.”
Kajillionaire follows a dysfunctional family – Old Dolio and her parents Robert (Richard Jenkins) and Theresa (Debra Winger), who are small-time hustlers living in an abandoned
and decrepit office block in LA.
Old Dolio has been brought up without ordinary paternal affection. Instead, she’s always been treated like an adult companion, and she yearns for love and human connection.
We see how her heart is stirred by Melanie, played by Gina Rodriguez, who the trio meet during an elaborate scam involving lost luggage, and it’s a moving, singular and sensitive piece of work.
Discussing her portrayal of Old Dolio further, Wood explains how they wanted the character to be “very genderless”.
“I definitely am androgynous but can still fall more into the feminine side, and so even little tells, like my hands, had to change and had to become slightly more creature-like, and my voice had to lower, and I just had to embody something completely different,” says the star, who’s best known for American sci-fi series Westworld.
“One of my references was Edward Scissorhands actually – someone that is just so uncomfortable in the real world, who has lived in a different world, and someone who doesn’t really say very much but is breaking your heart every time they’re on screen and is communicating so much by seemingly doing so little.”
As for what attracted her to the script, Wood says she remembers “feeling so relieved and excited” when she finished reading it.
“I can’t tell you how hard it is to read a script and it be completely original. We’re living in the era of sequels and franchises and remakes.
“And so to see an indie art film like this, which was so funny and so sad all at once, and had a heroine like Old Dolio, which we never really get t lady like that, eve jumped out at me
“It reminded of art films with t people and this k weird, artful clas just don’t see as m or it’s harder for funding,” she foll
“But that’s ho they’ve always be And so it felt like that, that golden independent film
Vermont-born film debut was 20 AndEveryoneW this is the first m made as both a d mother (her son H
shares with her director husband Mike Mills, was born in 2012).
“There’s something about having been on both sides of that, that really sends you back in time,” suggests the 46-year-old, who’s also an acclaimed author and artist.
“And the themes of like birth and rebirth within a heist movie . . . When I realised that, which is how it began for me, I thought, ‘I think I’ll follow this as far as it goes’. And here we are.”
The film tackles so many questions about who we are as humans, and why we are in the relationships that we have.
Was this something she specifically knew she wanted to address?
“To be honest, if I’d known I was writing about this kind of uncomfortable family stuff, I probably wouldn’t have done it,” she quips, with a chuckle.
“I was writing a funny heist movie and all that dialogue was really fun to write and when I got to the end and read the first draft back I remember feeling kinda punched in the gut, like, ‘Oh, this is also really heartbreaking’.
“And I was glad I made it through that draft without being too self-conscious because hopefully, that’s sort of the journey the audience goes on.”
It’s quite unusual to see complicated relationships between complex women on screen, but there are multiple versions of that in Kajillionaire, which feels quite poignant.
“I felt like I had this kind of long-haired, butch icon on my hands and I’ve loved women like that, it’s really an ode to that kind of woman,” expands July.
“And to get to see one version of where a woman like that might have come from, and then also
have a beautiful woman fall in love with her, was quite meaningful to me.”
Chatting to Chicago-born Rodriguez, it becomes even clearer just how much of a unique creative July is.
“She is a mystical, magical creature,” enthuses the 36-yearold, star of the sitcom, JaneThe Virgin.
“When you’re around her, you know you’re experiencing something different. Even just the way she sees the world, the way she sees colour, the way she sees story and relationships . . . She’s such a 360 artist, so working with her was a spiritual experience, it was an educational experience. It was falling in love.”
She reaffirms fondly: “It was literally like falling in love!
“I would get goosebumps and butterflies going to set, like all I wanted to do was be good for Miranda.
“It’s such an interesting feeling, as a grown woman, to be like, ‘I just want to be good for this person’.”