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 respect people that are die-hard film people, but I started on video. I started on Hi8 video and mini-DV, and I made skate videos. So, I love film, and I love the way it looks, but I also love the way crappy video looks, or VHS. I've always been a fan of whatever the look is that's appropriate for what the feeling is.
I remember when MySpace came out. It did do something pretty incredible - which was unite people around the world with common interests and common tastes.
There are a lot of kids in the world. People seem to keep having them.
I don't know what life was like 1,000 years ago, but I imagine there was the same struggle: people trying to connect with each other.
I love people that willfully defy what you're supposed to be and create their own definition of their selves.
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 definitely enjoy getting to know people I find inspiring.
You make a movie that is about what you want it to be about and let people have their reaction to it.
The things that are really out of control, and scary, are emotions - of people around you, that are unpredictable, or those in yourself which are unpredictable.
I like hiring people based on a feeling - this person gets it - rather than what they've done in the past.
I think the way Win Butler writes, I really identify with it. He writes very emotionally and very cinematically, and I just connect with his sensibility.
I think there is something about... unless you come from a really evolved family that allowed you to talk about your feelings and felt like a safe environment, then you aren't really prepared to do that when you grow up.
Is an audience open to seeing a film that isn't what they expect when they see a film that's been adapted from a children's book?
I think if something's emotionally real - and I'm not even talking about in movies or in art, but in life - you can't really argue with that, even if your intellectual mind might know differently.