Spike Jonze quickly established a well-deserved reputation as an exceptional director with a unique vision through his prolific music video work. Responsible for casting the Beastie Boys as 1970s detectives for "Sabotage" and inserting Weezer into an episode of TV's "Happy Days" as a 1950s teen dream band crooning their hit "Buddy Holly", Jonze displayed an ironic sense of humor and an unparalleled fluency in the relatively new genre. His video work led to the related field of commercials, including quirky spots for denim magnates Lee and Levi's, and he would later mark his feature directorial debut with the star-studded strange comedy "Being John Malkovich" (1999). Born Adam Spiegel (heir to the profitable catalog company) and raised in Bethesda, Maryland, BMX (bicycle and motorcross) enthusiast Jonze moved to Los Angeles following high school to work for the magazine Freestylin', where he began to hone his skills as a photographer and became a major player in the scene, particularly known for his breakthrough action photography of skateboarders. As an admirer of teen magazine Sassy's mild subversiveness, and inspired by his experience in publishing, Jonze sought to make his own lifestyle periodical, aimed at teenage boys. The magazine Dirt was launched as a brother publication to the then buzzworthy Sassy, but didn't go very far. The failure of Dirt didn't spell the end for the young entrepreneur, who was busy with his company Girl Skateboards, and working hard as a photographer and video artist, capturing the action of the burgeoning skater scene.
In 1992, Jonze entered the work of music video with a job as co-director of Sonic Youth's "100%". Here the video artist shot raw skateboard footage that was intercut into the video, co-directed by Tamra Davis. He would go on to work with Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon as co-directors of "Cannonball", a "The Red Balloon"-inspired clip for The Breeders' hit, featuring a rolling cannonball that seems to be following the camera. Through Davis (wife of Beastie Boys' Mike D), Jonze met up with the band with whom his work would prove his greatest breakthrough. His inspired clip for "Sabotage" (1994) cast the trio in a campy 1970s cop actioner, the Beasties donning polyester suits, aviator shades and hideous facial hair while they battle the baddies in this faux opening sequence, complete with incorrect credits and an explosive pop-up title. The song was a big hit, due in no small part to its status as an MTV favorite in heavy rotation.
Jonze followed up that same year with Weezer's "Undone (The Sweater Song)", a visually arresting one-take experimental video, filmed with a specialized camera used by Alfred Hitchcock in "Rope". He reteamed with the Beastie Boys for "Sure Shot" before taking up with Weezer again, directing the acclaimed video for their single "Buddy Holly". Jonze dressed the band as clean-cut 50s teen idols, and placed them onstage at Arnold's, the "Happy Days" hangout, with actual footage from the series mixed in with shots of Weezer. This off-the-wall marriage of current music with nostalgia TV (that was itself nostalgic) made the well-executed video one of the most talked about entries in the medium, and the song became an instant hit. "Buddy Holly" walked away with four MTV Video Music Awards in 1995, including Jonze's Best Direction win. He continued to raise the music video bar with conceptually interesting and visually appealing work like Bjork's Hollywood musical-inspired "It's Oh So Quiet" and R.E.M.'s karaoke-like "Crush With Eyeliner", starring Japanese youth posing as the band. He threw out the idea that music video must be a quick changing collage to grab the viewer's short attention span, instead replacing it with a one-image video as in Wax's "California" which included slow-motion footage of a running man on fire.
In 1997, Jonze proved capable of less stylized and more narrative fare, with the bizarre video for Daft Punk's "Da Funk", following an anthropomorphic dog through the city streets, looking for friends and toting a ghetto blaster that plays the song, which acts as background music. That same year he made the senior prom-set "It's All About the Benjamins (Rock Remix)" wherein Puff Daddy's energetic performance incites the previously sleepwalking students to liven up the dance and wreak havoc on the school. Jonze would again break new ground directing and also appearing in the video for Fatboy Slim's dance track "Praise You". He played the choreographer for the fictional Torrence Community Dance Group, a troupe who puts on a show in front of a movie theater one evening. The clip, shot like an amateur tourist home video, features a real audience that gathered, and ends with the unscripted gem of the theater manager angrily turning off the music. In addition to his vast body of impressive music video work, Jonze can count among his credits memorable commercials for Lee Jeans ("Twister", starring Buddy Lee, Man of Action, heroically braving a tornado to save a kitten) and an operating room-set spot for Levi's Wide Leg Jeans, scored with the 80s electropop hit "Tainted Love".
Jonze made his big screen acting debut with a bit part in Allison Anders' "Mi Vida Loca - My Crazy Life" in 1993. He could next be seen with a cameo role as an EMT in the feature "The Game" (1997), but it was in 1999 that he would have his first featured role, playing goofy Desert Storm US soldier Conrad Vig in David O Russell's acclaimed, action-packed dark comedy "Three Kings". While the affable blonde proved a more than capable actor, and had an enjoyably silly screen presence with a squeaky, nasal voice to match, he would make more of a mark as a director. Before landing on the big screen, Jonze directed segments of the short-lived series "Hi-Octane" (Comedy Central, 1994) starring, produced and written by his future wife Sofia Coppola. Additionally, he created the frenetic title sequence to the short-lived CBS sitcom "Double Rush" (1995) and worked extensively in shorts, from his early 90s skateboard video art to 1995's "Las Nueve Vidas de Paco - 'The Chocolate Movie'". Along with Roman Coppola, he was co-cinematographer of the 1996 short "Bed, Bath and Beyond", directed by Sofia Coppola, Ione Skye and Andrew Durham. In 1998, Jonze's documentary short "Amarillo Morning" screened at Sundance Film Festival. That same year, his work as cinematographer for the concert film of the 1996 Tibetan Freedom Festival entitled "Free Tibet" played on screens. Following an aborted attempt at directing the film adaptation of the beloved children's book "Harold and the Purple Crayon", Jonze landed a development and production deal with Propaganda Films in 1997. He finally made his feature debut with "Being John Malkovich", an appropriately quirky fantasy about a man (John Cusack) who comes upon a room in his office building that leads inside the mind of the titular actor. Being John Malkovich and adopting his perspective becomes an alluring prospect and soon everyone wants in on it. Despite the loopy and abstract concept, the film landed such talent as Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener and Malkovich himself, and quickly created a remarkable advance buzz, supported by rave reviews after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Jonze was rewarded for his efforts with an Oscar nomination as Best Director.
Trading on his long-standing relationship with MTV, Jonze made a side-foray into series television in 2000 as a co-creator, writer, performer and executive producer of the controversial cult hit "Jackass" which featured an edgy troupe of fearless street stunt artists led by Johnny Knoxville who engage in all manner of risky real-life adventures--the stupider, grosser and more painful, the better. While "Jackass" took flack for purportedly inspiring teenagers to mimic its stunts with disastrous and occasionally deadly results, it was one of MTV's most popular shows, made a Hollywood star out of Knoxville and spawned a theatrical spin-off, "Jackass: The Movie," in 2002.
On the big screen, Jonze continued to cultivate a close relationship with screenwriter Kaufman, producing his script "Human Nature" in 2001. In 2002 the pair reteamed for the remarkable reality-bending film "Adaptation," which featured Kaufman himself (portrayed by Nicolas Cage) as the central character, a timid, anxiety-ridden screenwriter struggling a to adapt author Susan Orlean's best-selling novel "The Orchid Thief" into a motion picture script. Inspired, loopily funny, artistic and unabashedly eccentric, "Adaptation" was a work of extreme originality, flip-flopping between fact, fiction and fantasy while depicting both Kaufman's angst-ridden life and major plot elements from the book by Orleans (played by Meryl Streep), which chronicled her encounters with real-life Miami orchid thief John Laroche (Chris Cooper). |
