(continued)

HEAD FOR THE MILLS Mike Mills shooting MJ for forthcoming Blonde Redhead video

What about your Web project, Learning to Love You More—is that still going on? [July gives creative assignments to ordinary people—things like "draw the news" and "write the phone call you wish you could have."]
Yeah—in fact, we have a book coming out in the fall. I love that project. It's easy to feel like I'm just a fan of it!

You seem to have faith in the creative ability of everyday people.
For the book I just looked at every single assignment on there—we had to pick all the best things, and there's a lot. You're like: Wow! And you're from where?

"I assume that not everyone is trying to be a famous artist.... Life is easier if you don't"Does it get depressing at the same time? Like Christine in Me and You and Everyone We Know trying to break into the establishment of the gallery world. Why haven't some of these people "made it"?
I assume that not everyone is trying to be a famous artist, and I look at the site as "these are people doing what they are doing. They did this today, they made this." I don't assume that anyone's in a particularly pitiful situation. I think there's wanting to make things, and then there's this sort of other thing, of desperately needing to be seen and acknowledged. Life is easier if you don't have the latter. I know a lot of artists who have that to a lesser degree than me—and it's amazing, a little calmer. Their work's getting out there, but it's not compelling their every move in a way that I feel like it oftentimes is for me ... that kind of loneliness that's making me really need to keep putting myself out there.

You wrote a short that appeared on the first Wholphin DVD magazine, in which John C. Reilly asks passersby, "Are you still the favorite person of anybody?"
That came from me talking with a friend.... I was saying to that friend, isn't it amazing that everyone you see is someone's favorite person? That guy, that person. My friend was like: "But are they? Maybe some people aren't anyone's favorite person." That was sort of so devastating, and that's what led to that. I think I'm my boyfriend's favorite person.

So is that an open secret?
It seems like people know that.

Well, it's on Wikipedia. How's that going?
He's waiting for me, in fact.

Okay, last question then: A) Do you think you'll be most remembered as the woman who wrote "pooping back and forth, forever?" and B) Why do you think that resonated with people the way it did?
If that's what happens, that's a pretty good thing. It's so specific. Some newspaper here, there was a plug for the performance and it said: "Beware, she might have more )) < > (( up her sleeve!" I was like, God, do people really know what that is? That they could do that and not translate it—

The )) < > (( T-shirts sold out!
If the sexuality of a 6-year-old could be something we can acknowledge exists, that would be a really great achievement—in a way, the best achievement of the movie. That space is so fraught—child sexuality. If it can be okay, and even funny or warm ... After I wrote that, I remember thinking, This needs a symbol like Coke has a symbol. It needs this thing so that people can consume it. I remember telling a friend that this is like the Nike swoosh, but it's back and forth, pooping back and forth forever. And she's like: I will be really impressed if that happens.

Photo of MJ with Mike Mills by Fernando Cardenas