Spike Jonze
Before taking his name from the great bandleader, Spike Jonze was born Adam Spiegel in 1969, and lived for the first part of his life in Potomac, MD, being raised along with his younger brother Sam by his single mom. He began working in the skateboarding industry as a filmmaker, and acquired much success, especially after co-founding Girl Skateboard with Rick Howard. As well as directing he has also been an actor. He got his name 'Spike Jonze' when he was skateboarding. It was his alter ego.
He began his print career in about 1987 working as an editor, writer and photographer on Freestylin', Go, and BMX Action, all BMX/freestyle magazines, and Homeboy, which was into BMX, music, skateboarding, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
In 2001, at the age of 32, he directed the video for Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice." This video contains 32 cuts.
He is known for being one of the best Music video directors. He has collaborated with artists such as Bjork, Kanye West, Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers and Sonic Youth.
He has directed commercials as well as music videos and films. One commercial he directed is one done for Ikea.
He Was offered the opportunity to direct the movie The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), but declined. He also considered directing 'Memoirs of a Geisha' but was already in the middle of directing 'where the wild things are' in which he was also a voice for one of the characters. Also before George Lucas decided to make the movie himself he was in talks to direct 'Star Wars Episode ll - Attack of the Clones'.
One of my favourite things i found out about him is that he is the writer and producer of Jackass. I found this particularly interesting because i love Jackass.
- My ideas so far is to either go down the Jackass route and either create my own start sequence or to include skateboarding/bmxing into some kind of art form inspired by Jackass.
- Another idea is to look in more depth at his music videos and to create my own in the style of his. For example if i looked at his video of Fatboy slim, i could use the idea of having someone dance crazily through a abandoned or very posh place.
I love what Knate said about his conversation with Ryan in Europe. I had a similar night with him when we were all on the hotel roof down in San Diego after the Comic Con party. It was a perfect night: it was warm, we were all so happy to almost be done with the movie, the screening of the clips from the movie couldn't have gone better. Trip [Taylor] was talking about how crazy it is that we had been doing it for ten years and telling stories of the first season. I think a lot of us were feeling a little emotional because the movie was coming to an end, and Ryan was sitting there on a stool happy as a bear. He was talking about all the things he was working on and he talked a lot about Angie and how she had stuck with him through his dark years. When he spoke about her, he was so in awe that she was with him. I wish I could remember his exact wording, because he was always so damn funny with how he spoke, but in that great self-deprecating Ryan way he said something to the effect of "What is she doing with an ugly idiot like me?" He laughed and I could feel how much he loved her and how grateful he was that she was in his life. He had a real peace about him.
The other thing I think of when I think of Ryan is how big his heart is and how thoughtful he is. I think he helped give our group and everything we made a lot of its heart, too. When someone was hurt, he was always right there, seeing how he could help. Especially with Bam. You could feel how much love Ryan had for him.
—Spike Jonze
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