Miranda July dreams up a con family in ‘Kajillionaire’

Miranda July doesn’t seem to have fair-weather fans. “I’ve never really had an auteur director be like, I was thinking of you when I wrote this.” Wood had a particularly challenging role in Old Dolio, the heart of the film, who has only ever functioned as a part of her parents’ scams and is starting to realize there might be life outside. Wood, she said, had just “showed her spiritual cards.” She challenged her actor with exercises designed to “narrow her emotional bandwidth” but the unusual low voice was all Wood’s idea. “After they yelled cut, she was like, ‘Are you really doing that?’ And I said, ‘Yeah that’s Old Dolio!’ She just started cracking up.” Aside from the surprises, the experience was profound for Rodriguez who found July to be exacting and mystical. “We’re all strange versions of Old Dolio right now.” “Kajillionaire” is July’s first film in almost 10 years and the first since she had a child in 2012.