Rebecca Miller Issue #37

Why is this debut novelist better known for what she wore to the Oscars than her fiction? We tell you everything you need to know about the multi-talented Renaissance woman

By Eryn Loeb
Published: September 1st, 2008 | 10:09am

Even if you’re not familiar with Rebecca Miller’s work as a writer and filmmaker, you may remember what she wore to the Oscars earlier this year. Topping “Worst Dressed” lists everywhere, her gothic-ly festive dress — picture a black velvet bodice, a huge, sparkly brooch-like ornament, paired with black-and-white striped shoes — was shamelessly eccentric.

At least it wasn’t boring. And given the originality of Miller’s writing and film direction, this is definitely not surprising. “I just figure you do what you’re interested in and hope that maybe someone will want to read it or watch it,” Miller says of audience reactions to her work. “I’m not a very pragmatic person in that way.”

Forget the dress. The real scandal is that Miller isn’t better known for her fiction. Miller’s short-story collection, Personal Velocity, was published in 2001. The stories, each titled after its female protagonist, are filled with witty, pointed observations wrapped in direct, simple sentences that pack a mean punch. The story “Delia” begins: “Delia Shunt was twenty-nine. She had fine, dirty-blond hair and a strong, heavy ass that looked perfect in blue jeans.”

Miller later served as screenwriter and director of the book’s film adaptation. Starring Parker Posey and Fairuza Balk, it won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2002.

After that, there was The Ballad of Jack and Rose, a 2005 film, which Miller again wrote and directed, about a father and teenage daughter who live on a former island commune. Though it quickly disappeared from theaters, its intense, lyrical images and sensitive portrayal of a teenage girl’s relationship with her father won critical notice — if not critical acclaim.

Despite these accomplishments, Miller’s personal life — her marriage to Daniel Day-Lewis and the fact that her father is the late playwright Arthur Miller — sometimes overshadows her own talent. A recent article in the Independent dwelled almost exclusively on her relationship to her husband, under the headline, “Life Without Daniel Would Be Devastating.” Please, we can do better than that.

Hopefully, Miller’s latest project will attract less tabloid attention and more critical praise. Her debut novel, The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee, again focuses on a title female character, the younger wife of a powerhouse publisher who prematurely follows her husband to a retirement home. The novel is a clear evolution from Personal Velocity. Where all the women in that earlier book are at turning points in their lives, Velocity encompasses the different stages of one woman’s life. It’s a portrait of a woman still trying to find herself alongside others who are at the end of their lives.

“I think age just creeps up on people,” Miller reflects. In her 40s, she’s a woman who seems comfortable with herself. She lives with Day-Lewis in Ireland, along with their two young boys, Ronan and Cashel. “All of a sudden I can relate to things that I couldn’t relate to previously, that many people understand,” she says of aging and becoming a mother.

As she speaks over the phone on a Sunday morning in June, Miller comes off as well-spoken without being rehearsed. The conversation is punctuated with a few laughs at her own statements. She’s serious about her work but definitely not self-important.

Miller will also direct the film adaptation of Pippa Lee, and she has no problem with stepping on her own novel. “If something has to be changed, I change it,” Miller says. “Pippa in the novel is one person, Pippa in the film is another variation. One is not erasing the other, or instead of the other, or imitating the other. It’s another version of the same series of thoughts.”

The fact that Miller’s films have always been driven by such complex, fully developed female characters hasn’t made them an easy sell. “I’ve been very kindly advised by very terrific filmmakers: ‘Look, if you could just make films with male protagonists, you’d have like 70% easier time getting money,’” she confides. “In the end, I will probably have made fewer films because of this. On the other hand, at least I know they have a kind of purpose.”

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THE WHERE, WHAT, AND WHY
Hometown: Roxbury, Connecticut
Favorite book as a kid: Animal Farm by George Orwell
Least favorite word: Flax. “It just gives me the willies, I can’t stand it. [laughs] It grosses me out and depresses me at the same time.”
Describe the plot of something you’ve written that was never published: “I once tried to write a long story about a woman who had her tongue cut out, but I really got stuck on the dial ogue. I got so bored, because she couldn’t say anything.”
Sample from The Private Lives of Pippa Lee: “Handing me back to the flabbergasted doctor, she launched herself off the delivery table, her legs still rubbery from the anesthetic, and ran down the hall, slipping on her own blood and screaming, ‘I had a monkey!’”
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