Rebecca Miller, writer & filmmaker

Personal Velocity

Three very different women—in terms of class, character, and attitude—set out to change their lives.

Delia (Kyra Sedgewick) escapes from an abusive husband. Greta (Parker Posey) risks her marriage on a new career. And Paula (Fairuza Balk) takes flight after a tragic accident. These women must overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles that confine them. But are they really on their way to making new lives—or are they just making new mistakes? As Greta’s father says, “Everyone has their own personal velocity.”

Personal Velocity won the Grand Jury Prize and Cinematography Award (Ellen Kuras) at Sundance in 2002, as well as the Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirt Awards of that year.

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Goodbye to Erland Josephson

Erland Josephson has died. He was a great Swedish actor of Jewish extraction. He was in Fanny and Alexander and Hour of the Wolf by Ingmar Bergman, among many other films (I think 40 collaborations, including theater). Also he was in Andre Tarkovski’s The Sacrifice. He was a great actor.
I met him when I was [...]

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Queer

I just read “Queer” by William Burroughs. It’s an astonishing book, a glimpse into such vulnerability, so direct. The emotional descriptions are what I liked best about it. Communicating precise feeling. Also the total transparency, the willingness to be truly seen–not that this isn’t fiction; it is of course, but you can see down through [...]

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A friend of mine

recently said it’s important to do something badly but in a dedicated way. I thought about this. At first I thought, I do nothing without a goal. But then I realized I have been doing yoga since I was seven, not all the time–not enough at all– but in a regular way, and I still [...]

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on memory

yes to you who mentioned Eudora, in response to my bog about her. How when memory flows through a person the living and the dead co-mingle. I am sorry not to be able to respond more exactly to those of you who have asked me questions. I don’t know, is the truth of it, I [...]

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i am alive

This is indeed a living blog, though it has been hibernating for a while. I have been writing this book every spare second. But I will try now to write a little something more regularly. I have been teaching once a week at NYU, a course called Directing the Actor. My students are undergraduates. I [...]

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