This is the part of my blog that I pick a director and take a few minutes to examine his career. This month I will take a look a one of Hollywood's coolest people, Spike Jonze. Why?? Because I said so.
Spike started his career in the skateboarding industry shooting promotional skate vids. Later, he would co-found Girl Skateboard with Rick Howard. He went on to raise the artistic bar when it came to traditional skate videos with one he directed called Mouse. Here is an clip which features pro skater, Eric Koston as Charlie Chaplin in a moment of discovery.
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
His most recent video for Lakai shoes was titled Fully Flared. Here is by far the coolest intro to a skate video ever.
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
He has also had a very accomplished career as a music video director. His work with The Beastie Boys, Bjork and Fatboy Slim has been critically acclaimed. Everyone remembers the Beastie Boys' "Sabatoge" video and who could forget Christopher Walken's dance moves in the hotel lobby in Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice"
His most popular video may still be the amature dance recital for Fatboy Slim's "Praise You" video. My personal favorite is this gem from the mid-90s. Remember that Jack Johnson video a couple of years ago that featured him singing the entire song backwards. Well, it had allready been done. Here's Spike's video for The Pharcyde's "Drop"
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
OK, enough of this. I'm a movie guy, let's get onto his film career. In 1998 he made his first full-lenth feature, Being John Malkovich. This film featured John Cusack, Catherine Keener, Cameron Diaz and of course John Malkovich. More importantly, it featured an incredible screenplay by writer Charlie Kaufman about a secret portal into the mind and soul of a New York actor. This combined with the semi-surrealistic camera style of Jonze created an incredibly memorable film. I recall watching this film and thinking that I had never seen a concept as inventative as this one.
A few years later, Jonze and Kaufman would colaborate again in 2002's Adaptation. I recall reading the synopsis of this movie when it was still in post-production and thinking that it had to be the most original concept for a movie since Being John Malkovich. This is a movie... about a screenwriter, writing a screenplay.... for the movie that you are currently watching, which is supposed to be an adaptation of a popular book. Charlie Kauafman played by Nicolas Cage is the film's main character. In one of it's most brilliant moments, Kaufman reveals to his twin brother (also played by Cage), "I've written myself into the movie." Jonze's direction was spot on in this one. It was much more of a strait shot film than BJM because most of the trickery lied within the script.
Spike is currently working on an adaptation of the super-popular, Where The Wild Things Are. The screenplay was co-written by himself and first-time screenwriter, David Eggers. This is going to be a live action version of a short story. The news I've read about it is very concerning. Apparently, the attempt to animate the character's mouths onto the film is proving very technically difficult. I even read somewhere that Warner Bros. may be asking for a complete reshoot. A move that would more than likely kill the project entirely. Here is a leaked test shoot of the film.
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
I really hope this one gets released. I think it's got great potential to be, if nothing else, a very fun movie.