Spike Jonze

Jonze began directing in 1992 but really hit his stride in 1994 when he was responsible for some of the most well-known music videos of all time including Buddy Holly and Undone by Weezer, Divine Hammer by The Breeders, and Feel the Pain by Dinosaur Jr. But arguably the most significant was Sabotage by The Beastie Boys, which he also wrote.

An homage and parody of 1970s crime-drama television series like Hawaii Five-O and Starsky and Hutch, the music video for Sabotage is presented as the opening credits of a 1970′s-style police show in which the members of the Beastie Boys appear as the show’s characters. Nominated for five award categories at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards, the video went home empty-handed but has since been considered one of the best music videos of all time.

Weezer-Buddy Holly

Weezer-Undone

The Beastie Boys-sabotage

Following his work music videos for bands such as R.E.M., Bjork, The Pharcyde, and The Notorious B.I.G., Jonze created the first of two music videos for Fatboy Slim that are among his most popular music videos: Praise You, and Weapon of Choice. The first of the two, Praise You, is probably Jonze’s best-known music video and stars Jonze under the pseudonym Richard Koufey as he dances with a fictional dance group 'The Torrance Community Dance Group' in front of a movie theater. Shot using a documentary-style and shot on location without need of permission, the video cost approximately $800 to produce, which went towards the boom box and feeding the cast and crew.

'Praise You' went on to win three major awards at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards: Breakthrough Video, Best Direction, and Best Choreography. The video is often polled as one of the most popular music videos of all time and Jonze worked with Fatboy Slim two years later on the music video for 'Weapon of Choice', which featured actor Christopher Walken dancing in an empty hotel.

Fat Boy Slim-Praise You

Fat Boy Slim-Weapon of choice

Jonze’s feature-film debut came in 1999 when he directed the comedy-fantasy 'Being John Malkovich', written by Charlie Kaufman; starring John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, and John Malkovich (playing a fictional version of himself) the film tells the story of a puppeteer who inadvertently discovers a portal leading into Malkovich’s mind.

With a budget of $13 million, 'Being John Malkovich' was clearly successful, as it went on to earn $32 million at the box office and was later nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Director for Jonze, Best Original Screenplay for Kaufman, and Best Supporting Actress for Keener. Roger Ebert called the film the best film of 1999, writing, “Rare is the movie where the last half hour surprises you just as much as the first, and in ways you’re not expecting. The movie has ideas enough for half a dozen films, but Jonze and his cast handle them so surely that we never feel hard-pressed; we’re enchanted by one development after the next.”.

Due to his roots in the world of professional skateboarding, Jonze was approached by his friend Jeff Tremaine and Johnny Knoxville to try and get the stunt reality series 'Jackass' on TV. Serving as executive producer along with Tremaine and Knoxville, Jonze was one of the key creative figures in the series’ immense success on MTV and he has taken producing roles on each of the 'Jackass' films, including the most recent film 'Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa'. Jonze is also occasionally featured as a member of the show involved in pranks.

Jonze’s talent in short film projects got the attention of the commercial world, and in 2002, the director’s TV advertisement for IKEA pushed him to the top of the list of commercial directors. His advertisment, entitled 'Lamp', tells the story of a red IKEA lamp that is thrown away.

Jonze used the situation to shape a touching story that makes the viewer empathise with the lamp as it suffers curbside in the rain. But just then, a narrator enters the picture and says, “Many of you feel bad for this lamp. That is because you’re crazy. It has no feelings. And the new one is much better.”

Suddenly, the commercial seems twice as funny and twice as memorable. According to IKEA, the advert caused a significant rise in furniture sales during the period in which it ran and the advert later earned the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, which is considered the most prestigious award in the advertising business.

IKEA commercial-The lamp

For Jonze’s second feature film, he reunited with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman on 'Adaptation' (a semi-autobiographical meta-drama of sorts. Loosely based on Susan Orlean’s non-fiction book 'The Orchid Thief').

Adaptation stars Nicolas Cage (playing twins), Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, and John Laroche.

Again, Jonze experienced a relatively successful box office with $32 million earned on a budget of $19 million and was later nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor for Cooper (which he won), Best Actor for Cage, Best Supporting Actress for Streep, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Kaufman.

Jonze-directed another commercial for Adidas sneakers, entitled 'Hello Tomorrow'. Meant to advertise Adidas' new self-adjusting “intelligent” sneakers (which have since been discontinued) the commercial maked great use of Jonze’s imaginative talent .Taking place in a dream world, the actor within the commercial experiences a dizzying array of increasingly intricate scenarios that are reminiscent of 2010′s 'Inception', but precedes it by five years.

For a director famous for taking chances, 2009 was the riskiest undertaking of Jonze’s career, as his fantasy-drama 'Where The Wild Things Are' (based on the 1963 children’s book of the same name by Maurice Sendak) hit theaters. Starring Max Records and the voices of James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, Lauren Ambrose, Forest Whitaker, Catherine O’Hara, and Chris Cooper, buzz was huge leading up to the film’s release after a series of trailers had taken the Internet by storm.

When 'Where the Wild Things Are' finally arrived in theaters, the film was viewed as a slight disappointment. Critical reception for the film was fairly mixed, although it certainly leaned towards the positive, the film’s mature content led to a lot of internal discussions at Warner Bros. leading up to release as the studio’s marketers decided to bypass children’s marketing altogether in order to focus on adults. But this seemingly led to a lot of viewer confusion as to who the film was really for.

All in all, the film earned $100 million on a budget of $100 million making the film a significant loss for Warner Bros. when marketing and distribution fees are factored in.

Where the Wild Things are trailer

Adidas commercial-Hello Tomorrow

Whether Jonze felt like going small after the rough experience of 'Where the Wild Things Are', or simply had a smaller story to tell, the filmmaker’s next project was a 30-minute sci-fi romance short entitled 'I’m Here' that debuted at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The short tells the story of two robots living in Los Angeles where humans and robots co-exist and is loosely based on Shel Silverstein’s 'The Giving Tree'. The fascinating and beautiful short, which was funded by, and is a promotion for Absolut Vodka, seems to hint at many subjects that Jonze would later explored in 2013's 'Her'.

Short film-"I'm Here"

Jonze was asked to be the creative director of the first ever YouTube Music Awards and subsequently created some of the year’s finest musical material. The best was a live music video of Arcade Fire’s 'Afterlife', which featured Greta Gerwig dancing through an apartment and a stylized wooded area before coming out onto the stage of the award ceremony and dancing with a group of children. Seemingly a reference to some of Jonze’s earliest work like 'Praise You'.

Arcade Fire-Afterlife live at the YouTube music awards

Jonze’s newest film, 'Her', entered wide release in January 2013 the film appears poised to become both the director’s most critically acclaimed film, and perhaps most successful. With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 93%, the film continues to get high praise from critics and viewers alike and it wasn't hard to imagine that 'Her' would continue to gain momentum as the Academy Awards were announced later that month.

“This is a movie you want to reach out and caress, about a man who, like everyone else around him in this near future, has retreated from other people into a machine world,” writers Manohla Dargis of the New York Times. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times writes, “Acerbic, emotional, provocative, it’s a risky high dive off the big board with a plot that sounds like a gimmick but ends up haunting, odd and a bit wonderful.”.

'Her' official trailer

1994-Weezer Buddy Holly	1994-Weezer Undone	1994-The Beastie Boys-Sabotage
Fat Boy Slim-Praise You	Fat Boy Slim-Weapon of choice	IKEA 'lamp' commercial
Adidas 'Hello Tomorrow' commercial	Where the Wild Things are	I'm Here
Arcade-'Afterlife' live at YouTube music awards	Her