in the magazine

Is Miranda July Your Favorite Person?

If Miranda July ever kept a sticker book as a child — and we suspect she did — it was no doubt meticulously organized according to color or scent or puffiness, because that’s how the author-filmmaker-artist approaches everything: with a mix of discipline, girlishness, and neuroticism. Those qualities are what make her idiosyncratic new short-story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You, so endearing — and as Kimberly Cutter points out in this week’s issue of New York, they’re also what makes July such a polarizing force. Check out the four-minute film she wrote for The Good Girl director and ex-boyfriend Miguel Arteta. In “Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?” John C. Reilly approaches three people on the street and asks them the titular question, with mixed results. Precious? Cloying? Watch and discuss. —Phoebe Reilly

Is Miranda July Your Favorite Person?