Rebecca Miller
Rebecca Miller
Rebecca Augusta Milleris an American independent filmmaker, screenwriter, film director, and novelist, known for her films Angela, Personal Velocity: Three Portraits, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, and Maggie's Plan, all of which she wrote and directed. Miller is the daughter of Magnum photographer Inge Morath and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth15 September 1962
CityRoxbury, CT
CountryUnited States of America
I was an anorexic, beer drinking, class cutting, doodling, shoplifting, skater chick that was into nature, art class, and the beach.
The quality of life decreases with heightened security.
I've always been fascinated by the way that children and animals suffer stoically in a way that I don't think adults do.
Writing is still a bit of a miracle - the whole process: I see the world, filter the world, write down abstract squiggles on a page which somebody is then able to connect with. I'm still amazed by it and think I always will be.
That's one thing I find about having children - it does unlock a door that separates you from other women who've had children.
Nobody is so weird others can't identify with them.
I'm fascinated by what makes up a self, how one becomes a self, how much is it an answer to others and how much is it an essence of self.
I was interested in the mystical element of humor - was humor part of creation? Is God laughing at us, or with us?
I think it's very important to keep being frightened - if you're not frightening yourself, you should take a break. You need to keep experimenting. You also need to take time - that's how you do good stuff - layering and depth of knowledge.
I think one of the great joys of being a writer is you can transcend everything, even your own sex, what century you live in, and how you think. I found it quite natural to think as a male because I actually think that as a female, one often thinks in the mind of a male in terms of eroticism. You think about what the other person feels. So it's not that hard to imagine being that person.
I had a lot of great lakes of ignorance that I was up against, I would write what I knew in almost like islands that were rising up out of the oceans. Then I would take time off and read, sometimes for months, then I would write more of what I knew, and saw what I could see, as much as the story as I could see. And then at a certain point I had to write out what I thought was the plot because it was so hard to keep it all together in my head. And then I started to write in a more linear way.
As much as there are intellectual choices to be made and all the rest of it, a great actor has the ability really, to disappear and lose themself in a kind of mystical fashion. My appreciation and fascination with true acting is really all over the book, definitely.
Writing is a particular kind of frustration, which is why when I was making the structure for the novel I visualized it for myself with a color-coded board so I could see it.
I do think it is a kind of illness in the sense that it sets you apart, it injects you with an endless, unslakable thirst to keep making the thing. The artist has to voluntarily use themselves endlessly.