Sent from My Slimy Brains

During the lockdown in 2020, trapped inher house, movie work at a halt, Ana Lily Amirpour began to excavate heriPhone. 

Aside from the thousands of photos and videos and screen grabs,she had also written hundreds of "notes" to herself, personal thingslike dreams that she would quickly write down in the middle of the nightbefore they'd evaporate, and then analyze their meaning the...
More Description

During the lockdown in 2020, trapped inher house, movie work at a halt, Ana Lily Amirpour began to excavate heriPhone. 

Aside from the thousands of photos and videos and screen grabs,she had also written hundreds of "notes" to herself, personal thingslike dreams that she would quickly write down in the middle of the nightbefore they'd evaporate, and then analyze their meaning the nextday. Some notes were about films she was working on, story ideas,character ideas, thoughts for actors, or production. Some were intimateand personal, like venting the frustrations of an argument with aboyfriend, or venting about a film experience, or agonizing about thedeath of someone close. Tons of other notes were just weird, randomthings: thoughts, quotes, movie recommendations, books, grocery lists. She had email threads with herself digging into unresolved questions andanswers about filmmaking-questions about why she made a film or what itmeans; questions that are always difficult to answer in a livingmoment.  So there she was in lockdown, reading these notes andemails-personal things that were never meant to be shared-and realizingshe was looking at her digital diary, looking through a window at timepassing, at who she is as a person and as an artist, in a direct andpsychedelic way. 

There was something exciting about thefact that she was talking to herself in a frank, unfiltered manner. Itwas imperfect but honest. "If I die tomorrow," she thought, "all thisstuff I wrote, all these intimate thoughts and ideas will go to mygrave." So she resolved to harvest the entries, some going as far backas 2016, when she was finishing her second film, The Bad Batch, and all the way through 2021, when she was releasing her third film Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon during the pandemic. 

This book is the result of that personal archaeological digital dig. Personal might even be an understatement given it's the actual stuff inside her phone. Imaginehow it feels when someone has your phone-you feel utterly exposed. Withthis book, Ana Lily has decided to share something shenever imagined she'd share. Artists are always exposing themselves inone way or another. As Ana Lily would put it, "The bottom line is I wantto dance like no one is watching, and to write like no one is reading,because then what comes out is naked. It's you." This is the stuff thatlives inside her slimy brains.  Hence the title, and the signature onher emails... "Sent from my Slimy Brains".