Sent from My Slimy Brains

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

Aside from the thousands of photos and videos and screen grabs,
she had also written hundreds of ＂notes＂ to herself, personal things
like dreams that she would quickly write down in the middle of the night
before they’d evaporate, and then analyze their meaning the next
day. Some notes were about films she was working on, story ideas,
character ideas, thoughts for actors, or production. Some were intimate
and personal, like venting the frustrations of an argument with a
boyfriend, or venting about a film experience, or agonizing about the
death of someone close. Tons of other notes were just weird, random
things: thoughts, quotes, movie recommendations, books, grocery lists.
She had email threads with herself digging into unresolved questions and
answers about filmmaking-questions about why she made a film or what it
means; questions that are always difficult to answer in a living
moment. So there she was in lockdown, reading these notes and
emails-personal things that were never meant to be shared-and realizing
she was looking at her digital diary, looking through a window at time
passing, at who she is as a person and as an artist, in a direct and
psychedelic way.

There was something exciting about the
fact that she was talking to herself in a frank, unfiltered manner. It
was imperfect but honest. ＂If I die tomorrow,＂ she thought, ＂all this
stuff I wrote, all these intimate thoughts and ideas will go to my
grave.＂ So she resolved to harvest the entries, some going as far back
as 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. Imagine
how it feels when someone has your phone-you feel utterly exposed. With
this book, Ana Lily has decided to share something she
never imagined she’d share. Artists are always exposing themselves in
one way or another. As Ana Lily would put it, ＂The bottom line is I want
to 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 that
lives inside her slimy brains. Hence the title, and the signature on
her emails... ＂Sent from my Slimy Brains＂.