Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze
Spike Jonzeis an American director, producer, screenwriter and actor, whose work includes music videos, commercials, film and television. He started his feature film directing career with Being John Malkovichand Adaptation, both written by Charlie Kaufman, and then started movies with screenplays of his own with Where the Wild Things Areand Her...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth22 October 1969
CityRockville, MD
CountryUnited States of America
I started directing videos at the same time that Michel Gondry was starting to direct videos, and I watched what he'd do. They all seemed to be pushing some new visual effects idea, but never just for spectacle. They all captured a feeling.
I knew I could write infinitely about relationships. That's the most beautiful, most confusing, most rewarding, most heartbreaking thing in our lives - and not just romantic relationships: that's all relationships.
I like people that define their own values. I am much more interested in somebody who has their own definition of what they value, their own definition of what success is, their own definition of what love is.
I like Kanye, and I care about him.
The best videos were the ones where I became friends with the artists first.
The Beastie Boys are guys I loved before I met them, and when I got to know them, we started a magazine together, and we started making videos together, and a lot of it came out of us just cracking ourselves up, like going to the fake mustache store and buying fake mustaches.
The thing I remember most about having a tantrum is not the rage during the tantrum, but the being freaked out afterwards, and embarrassed, and guilty. It's scary to lose control of yourself.
I want to make films without a single clear message, and films that are as close as possible to what it feels like to be alive. At least to me.
I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot.
I met Arcade Fire on their first record, 'Funeral.' I loved that record, and it was a record I was listening to while I wrote 'Where the Wild Things Are.' Those songs - especially 'Wake Up' and 'Neighbourhood' - there's a lot of that record that's about childhood.
I love when me and my friends don't know how to make something - there's that risk of failure, which should be there. If it's guaranteed not to fail, it's something you already know how to do.
I'm fortunately not, like, typecast. I don't have to just do one kind of thing; I can do all kinds of things that reflect different parts of me.
I guess a lot of things I make are relationship movies. Maybe all movies are relationship movies, because they're all about how we relate to each other.
I never knew how to do anything before I did it, really.