We’re living in the era of sequels and remakes... this script reminded me of the heyday of art films
DIRECTOR MIRANDA JULY, AND STARS EVAN RACHEL WOOD AND GINA RODRIGUEZ, DISCUSS OFF-BEAT HEIST FILM AND FAMILY DRAMA KAJILLIONAIRE WITH GEORGIA HUMPHREYS
THE second Evan Rachel Wood signed on to star in comedydrama Kajillionaire, she started working on her character’s very specific physicality with the film’s writer-director, Miranda July.
Crafting that, and figuring out who Evan’s character Old Dolio was, as the daughter of two con artists, sounds like a 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 Evan, 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.”
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 LA office block.
Old Dolio has been brought up without ordinary paternal affection. Instead, she’s always been treated like an adult, 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.
Discussing her portrayal of Old Dolio further, Evan explains how they wanted the character to be “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, Evan 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 – we never really get to see a leading lady like that – everything about it jumped out at me.”
“It reminded me of the
heyday of art films with these incredible people and this kind of Sundance, weird, artful class of films that we just don’t see as much any more – or it’s harder for them to get funding,” she continues.
“But that’s how I started, they’ve always been my first love. And so it felt like a call back to that, that golden era of independent films.”
Vermont-born Miranda – whose film debut was 2005’s Me And You And Everyone We
Know – notes this is the first movie she has made as both a daughter and a mother (her son Hopper, who she 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 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’.”
The film tackles questions about identity and why we are in the relationships that we have.
Was this something she 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 says, with a chuckle.
“I was writing a funny heist movie and all that dialogue was really fun to write. 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.
“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,” adds Miranda.
“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.”
Chicago-born Gina, is clearly enamoured of Miranda’s unusual creative process.
“She is a mystical, magical creature,” enthuses the 36-year-old, star of the sitcom, Jane The 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.... Working with her was a spiritual experience, it was an educational experience. It was falling in love.
“I would get goosebumps and butterflies going to set, like all I wanted to do was be good for Miranda.”
I felt like I had this kind of longhaired, butch icon on my hands and I’ve loved women like that, it’s really an ode to that kind of woman. Miranda July on Evan Rachel Wood’s character in Kajillionaire
Kajillionaire is released in cinemas now