Every journalist is genuinely moved when a celebrity they’ve profiled shares or praises their work. It feels good to know that someone famous or important you’ve spent time with didn’t just forget the experience as soon as they walked out the door, and it’s especially humbling for that person to react in such a way that makes it feel like they’ve been seen or understood.
There’s those moments, and then there’s the way “Kajillionaire” director Miranda July reacted to her recent profile piece in Vulture by writer E. Alex Jung. On Wednesday she shared a letter on Instagram addressed to Jung and New York Magazine in which she was so profoundly affected by the piece that…well if I got that sort of reaction to anything I wrote, thanks, we’re done here, career accomplished.
“Dear Alex Jung, I told you that regardless of how the profile for @nymag turned out I’d always be glad for our fifteen weeks of quarantine zoom conversations. That’s still true,” July wrote on Instagram. “After I read the piece yesterday I had a strange, shaky feeling that I’ve never had before. It was so new that I couldn’t even tell if it was a good feeling or a bad one. It took all day to realize I just wasn’t used to being seen so clearly.”
The piece called “Enter Planet Miranda July” begins inside the director’s bedroom of her Echo Park home and talks about how the quarantine has shaped her perceptions, including discussing “missed connections, Instagram lovers and of course, poop.” The cover photo is of July in a Mickey Mouse sweater standing in her narrow hallway, and on Instagram, she shared a cellphone video of herself in the same outfit dancing and rocking out to “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” by The Slits.
“How is it done? How do you juxtapose just the right details to form something not sewn-up — like a theory — but open, like a living person? I still feel a little light headed. What will I do with my thick skin? The zero fucks I planned to give? Just toss them out and live free with a trusting heart? Heh,” July added. “Anyway, I know I’m not the first person to feel this way (your Michaela Coel profile floored me) and you’re probably already talking to someone new who I’ll get to read about soon. But for now, for today, I’m walking around like a kid with brand new shoes, trying not to look down at them every second. Feel like a #kajillionaire.”
In fact, July even posted a second time later on Wednesday, which she admits is an “un-chill” thing to do, and her response even prompted a mini discussion on Twitter about what makes a good profile if the subject enjoys it as much as they do.
Check out Vulture’s profile here, and July’s post below. Her latest film “Kajillionaire” opens on September 25.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CEozRpdjDin/