11 November 2010 (Movie Interview)

Mark 'Lenny' Linehan

I'M nervous. Being John Malcovich and Adaptation are two of my favourite movies. After digging around on the interweb, I find that he rarely gives interviews. One (article) said that he begrudgingly accepts them, but just for kicks he can then arrive dressed in disguise and jump at you when you least expect it. I also read that he doesn't like it when the interviewer refers to their written questions... The door opens.

"Hey man, how are you?" I nod and we make pleasantries. I look around for any traps. It's safe. The only thing I have to worry about is the excessive cups of coffee I consumed earlier, I feel the caffeine coming up. He then slumps on a sofa and reflects, "In Dublin they really like to drink a lot and stay out. I love the people. I have friends that are Irish so I knew what to expect when I got here." It seems jetlag and good ol' Oirish hospitality has taken the edge off the spike. "I think you guys are the real inspiration for Jackass." Clearly, he's been following the misfortunes of our current government. There are plenty of people who would pay money to see Brian Cowen forced to sit in a poo-filled portaloo and bungeed 100 feet into the air.

"We grew up watching The Three Stooges, Tom and Jerry, and Roadrunner. These are things that we really enjoyed and influenced us. Knoxville watches Tom and Jerry and often quotes scenes verbatim. He sees life like a cartoon and when he comes with ideas like firing out of a rocket or something we say man you can't do that, but then he arrives with a rocket and proves us wrong!" Spike Jonze has been producer on all three Jackass movies, but I'm more interested in his directorial work. After a lengthy babble that Dave Fanning would be proud of (I'm officially off my head on caffeine) and I declare that what I just said was a statement (we both laugh) I finally spout my question: "If Knoxville sees life as a cartoon. How do you see life?" (long pause)

"I don't know. That's a good question, man. I'm just not sure." I try to fill the silence, "How does your creative process work? (longer pause) The jetlag-induced hangover is taking its toll, but that's not the only reason. Spike Jonze is one of the most prolific people in the visual art business today. Director, writer, producer, photographer, editor, actor, artist, dancer, this man has so many roles he can't even pin himself down. So while we await his answer here's an introduction to his career to date:

He's 41 years old but has a trendy youthful veneer that belies the age. The highly ambitious and emotionally distant photographer in Lost in Translation is rumoured to be based on him. He had a well-publicised marriage to its director, Sofia Coppola, who still remains a close friend. Once reported to have jumped out of the backseat of a moving car, just because - according to a friend - "he felt like it," his predilections to becoming a stuntman started early in life. An addiction to BMX and skateboarding brought him vaulted acclaim from many magazines, and the expert trick-style magician was making a name for himself not only as a fearless champion skater/biker, but also as a cameraman willing to get anywhere in the line of fire to get the perfect shot. Publications like Freestylin' and Transworld Skateboarding were witnessing the evolution of a board punk into a respected photographer.

His work progressed into film, and he is credited with pioneering a form of skateboard video that coupled a daring new method of camera technique alongside and a  whiplash editing style. He also subverted the music soundtrack that let sail the old standard punk rock tracks and welcomed more reflective sounds that morphed the antics from mere stunts into an art-form. Since then, Spike Jonze (real name Adam Spiegel, he got the nickname from work colleagues taken with his gravity defying hair) has cultivated the realm of bona-fide filmmaker. He has directed music videos for acts like Sonic Youth, Weezer, Bjork, R.E.M., Beck, Daft Punk, but most notably the Beastie Boys (his award winning video for Sabotage would have cost peanuts if he didn't insist on wrecking two $85,000 cameras; one dropped from a moving van, the other in an underwater shot using only a Ziploc bag as protection). And his video for Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice featuring a dancing Christopher Walken was voted the greatest ever in a VHI poll.

He has also directed big budget campaigns for Adidas, Nike, The Gap, Absolut, and Ikea, receiving an Outstanding Achievement in Commercials Award from the Director's Guild in 2005. Further critical endorsement came for his first full-length feature Being John Malcovich in 1999, then in 2002 with Adaptation, and most recently with Where The Wild Things Are. In between all this he still had time to produce and direct numerous short films, documentaries, skateboard videos, and get a retrospective at the prestigious New York Museum of Modern Art for Outstanding Contribution to the art of video. Phew.

Where were we? Oh yeah: "There's got to be an answer here! Well, I suppose I have to be more specific. When I was working on Where the Wild Things Are I wanted to portray what it was like inside the mind of a 9-year-old child. When I get an idea, it's a feeling, an instinct. At some point something clicks and I know exactly what it is and what I want to do. That gives me permission to do it. It always starts with a feeling. We have an idea, turn up on set and see if it works something might spark and then it works. I have to feel it's an organic process." WTWTA, at $100m, is the largest budget Jonze has had in his career to date. 300 people were involved in the post-production and it was riddled with a battle with the studio over final cut - he won. "It is so different from working with Warner Bros. on a project like Where The Wild Things Are, which was a big, long project. A movie like that is a huge commitment from my life. There is far more spontaneity working on a production like Jackass, a skate movie, or a short."

How does he flip from fart to art? I throw in some blurb about the 'existential angst' that features strongly in his feature films. He looks at me, furrows his brow, smiles and then says, "From Jackass to John Malcovich. It's just things that excite different parts of me. We don't analyse what we do. That's for other people." Jonze is mostly concerned about having fun, especially in his short videos. Whether he's perfecting the shooting backwards technique (The Pharcyde - Drop) extracting empathy for a lamp (IKEA), charting the melancholic journey of an injured boombox-loving dog (Daft Punk) he twists viewer's expectations, alternates reality and challenge's pre-conceptions, but all with his tongue firmly in cheek.

The coffee begins to wear off, but before I leave I inform him that there's a spire in Dublin named after him. "Oh cool. Thanks man." I jitter out the door. He probably fell back on the sofa wondering who the babbling maniac was and thankful for the silence. I console myself with fact that he is used to mentallers; let's face it he's worked with Bjork.

Spike on Charlie Kaufman:
"Yes, we love working together it would be great to get a project together again with him. He is a great writer I love his work it's amazing. After directing Synedoche, New York I think he's focusing on doing more like that. Next thing he writes he'll probably direct again."

Spike On Fellow Visionary Director Michel Gondry:
(At this point he becomes more intensely animated leans forward perched on the sofa)
"The first video I saw of his was Bjork's Human Behaviour, and I recognized something special. I wanted to know who he was. A lot of the language he used I recognized. His work is so organic, but so complicated at the same time. I've been on set when I produced his first film Human Nature. His stuff is so geometrically and physically complicated but he can see it and he tries to help everyone else see what is in his head and how to transfer that to a feasible shot...We were staying in London for a while and we did an 'exquisite corpse' (adding a line to a drawing without seeing the previous attempt) on film. He would do the first scene and would show me the last frame from that. It could be a bottle being grabbed (picks up a bottle on the table) and then it would be my job to create the next scene, which could end with someone screaming, and then HE would pick it up from there." It's like movie tennis. The tape is somewhere in my house I'll find it sometime!"

Most Recent Watched Movie:
"I recently watched Hunger…it was amazing."

Favourite Spike Jonze Music Video:
"Ha, ha, I love them all. That's like asking me to choose between my kids man. They're all my little babies!"

Future Projects (any more acting?): "I had a small cameo in David Cross' show The Increasingly Poor Decisions Of Todd Margaret. I got stuff with Arcade Fire and am working on a book adaptation. So I hope to get that turned into a movie soon. I got stuff to keep me busy!"

Check out 'Lenny' the movie man on KC at Night on TodayFM every Thursday 10pm to 12.
 

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