Rebecca Miller, writer & filmmaker

The Ballad of Jack and Rose

Jack (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his 16-year-old daughter Rose (Camilla Belle) live in paradisical isolation on a beautiful island off the East Coast of the United States. Rose has been completely sheltered, educated, and created by her father. As he puts it, “Decline and rot, my Angel. That’s the way of the world. Except for you. You are exempt.” But when Jack begins to fear he’s falling in love with his own daughter, he invites his mainland girlfriend (Catherine Keener) and her two teenage sons (Paul Dano, Ryan McDonald) to live with them as family. Rose’s first exposure to society—and sexuality—ignites a psychological combustion that Jack is unable to control.

As one of her new step-brothers says to her, “Innocent people are just dangerous, I guess.”

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Watch the trailer below

“The Ballad of Jack and Rose” on imdb.com

DVD at amazon.com

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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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