SS: The themes of the film (i.e. loneliness, looking for a connection in an age of apparent disconnect, nostalgia for childhood innocence, etc.) seem to echo the themes of other contemporary filmmakers' work - everything from LaBute's Your Friends And Neighbors to Zach Braff's Garden State, or even Wes Anderson's Rushmore or the recent Crash.  Can you comment on who some of your influences are?

MJ: I'm not a super film buff, but Agnes Varda is one.

SS: What made you feel that, in your first foray into feature-length filmmaking, you had to star in this movie?

MJ: I've been in all my work, so it would just be sort of inconsistent to not do it now, just because it was a feature as opposed to a short or a performance.  I mean, to me, that was the most familiar part of it, and I'm definitely looking to make the experience as comfortable as possible; so many other things are unknown.

SS: That sort of leads into my next question: you work in many different media - do you have a specific artistic process for each medium?

MJ: Thematically, it's not that different in the different mediums, but obviously some of them are intensely collaborative ultimately, and others are done to be done in a day, alone.  But I guess as far as the ideas and how the feeling comes forth in me, it's really kind of the same thing.

SS: You worked with a lot of child actors in the making of this movie - is it harder to write parts for much younger or much older characters, or is it all (as you seem to suggest in the film) an extension or manifestation of the same basic human emotions and longings?  Is there a difference as far as age in who you write for?

MJ: It's easier to write for the kids I think - there's a way in which the kids can be really unfiltered and sort of direct.  In adults, it's like their filters are really important to who they are, so it gets more layered with an adult.

SS: How important to you is the visual experience of the film, and how do you go about cultivating what you want?

MJ: I had a lot of these amateur found photos - you know, snapshots - that I showed to Chuy Chavez, my DP, and what I liked about those I think is that the person taking the picture didn't have a lot of ego, it was just about the subject, and I think Chuy gets that instinctively.  That's sort of the kind of DP he is.  And I also acted out the whole movie for him over the course of three days, just so that we could go scene by scene, and I could talk about it, and I could really elicit in him the emotional response that we needed to get across together.

SS: What did you shoot this on - is it digital?

MJ: On HD, yeah.

SS: So much of the film is grounded in the technological age - despite the chat room moments, etc., could you have written this script 10-15 years ago, or would you have?  Is it something you've been kicking the tires on for awhile, or did it evolve in recent years as a response to the digital culture?

MJ: I don't really think of it as that much - I mean, it is definitely set in now - but I'm not super interested in the current technology.  I mean, I wrote a play when I was 16 about a girl, based on myself, who had a pen pal who was in prison - a man she'd never met who'd murdered someone.  In a way that had a lot of the same themes as the chat in Me And You.  And I think the idea of children reaching outside of their world to a stranger is kind of timeless - I'm not surprised there are so many movies out now that have internet chats on them, because it has a certain quality that works well with film.  But I think most of the time it's being used, it's getting at something that's actually not that new.

SS: The moment in the film from which the title's derived seems so perfect a metaphor.  How did you come upon this metaphor of the "DOS art" (if that's what it's called)?

MJ: Yeah, I think that's called Aski Art, or maybe it's DOS art.  I kept looking at that stuff and looking for good ones, and I had them making the tiger.  I sort of had an idea that everyone in the movie should make something.  And it was like, "well, what should he make," and it seemed obvious that it should be one of those things.  I think it was just kind of like I was playing around, and realized how hard it was to make anything like that, and that more likely [Peter would] come up with something else; then it could kind of reveal something about him that he had this sort of very long view, this bird's eye view.  Because he's a very empathic character, just kind of watching.

SS: Why did you feel that you wanted all of your characters to make something?

MJ: Well I'd never had a character in anything I've done who's an artist, and I kind of cringed a little bit at that, but at the same time I felt like it's better to kind of implicate myself than to just be like, "Look, here's the real world," and artists exist outside of that documenting it - of course that's not true.  And of course artists are not any better suited to connect than anyone else.  And so in doing that I kind of felt that to reflect my view of art, it was important to just not have her be the only one who's creative and inventive.  Because I'm self-taught - I'm not actually much of a part of the art world - but I'm definitely someone who's been inspired by the world around me and sees amazing things that people make every day [even though] they're not really taking on the mantle of being an artist.  That just kind of reflects my world view.

SS: Tangential to that, how did you pick the professions of your two main characters, the Eldercab driver and the shoe salesman.  Do those have any special significance?

MJ: With the Eldercab driver, I didn't have that job, but I had a job unlocking car doors for people when they were locked out of their cars when I was 23, and I had a magnet like that on the front of the car, and a vest, so I kind of borrowed the aesthetic of that.  But [I] still wanted her to be - it's a very lonely job - [to be in a job] that would throw her into connection with someone, into a relationship.  And actually Richard's job, John Hawkes' character, his whole character is based very loosely on a couple different people that I know, one of whom has that job, or at the time did work in the shoe department of a department store.  So that's where I got that from.

SS: What effect did winning the Cannes award, the Camera d'Or Award, have on you or your work, if any.

MJ: Well I guess it's just very encouraging - it's a culture that takes film SUPER seriously.  That festival and just that awards ceremony was way more serious - it had all the pomp and ceremony of the Academy Awards but none of the showy, flashy part of it.

SS: A more serious self-congratulation vibe?

MJ: Just taking film very seriously and not having to have everything be entertainment.  It's just a different culture there.  My film was actually like, if there was any dispute about it, was like, "Can something that's funny be good?," you know?  So different from America - they love things to be dark and disturbing, and that sort of means it's quality.  So for that reason, the jury members who voted for it felt like they were being kind of radical in a way, to want something that was hopeful.

SS: What's next in store for you?

MJ: I'm working on my next movie script - it'll be the next movie I direct and perform in - and working on some stories.  I like to recover from this whole thing by doing the other things I like to do, but at the same time it does seem really appealing to move right into it.

SS: Do you plan on working with a lot of the same people in your next film?

MJ: I don't know yet.  I'm not thinking about casting at all - I'm going to try and hold off and just get this done.

Me And You And Everyone We Know opens in New York on June 17, 2005.

Sarah Scott is a film critic and writer in Hollywood.

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