Spike Jonze

It was while working at a Maryland convenience store that highschool boy Adam Spiegel first earned the nickname Spike Jonze and thus began his long career as an unassumingly cool guy who always seems to have something interesting going on.

Spike Jonze is jazzed. He's finally wrapped on post for "Jackass 3D," a Tabasco-flavored tongue-in-cheek folly featuring obscene (yet undeniably funny) stereoscopic stunts by Johnny Knoxville and friends.

"I've been stuck in LA for six months straight finishing it up," quips Jonze as he winds his way toward LAX for some R&R in Hawaii. "We just decided out of nowhere to go shoot something insane a few days ago and drop it into the film. It's liberating to go shoot something new at the drop of a hat."

Jonze is all about spontaneity these days following arduous work on "Where The Wild Things Are." His latest feature film was a colossal labor of love that began years before its completion, the product of an almost decade long collaboration with book author Maurice Sendak. "That was by far one of the hardest projects I've ever completed," says Jonze.

Lest we forget, Spike Jonze has remained a permanent fixture on the creative landscape since his subversive skate days back in the '80s, a photographic trend-wise warrior weaving his way through street-cred 'zines before a career in music videos beckoned. Promos such as "Sabotage" for the Beastie Boys - an amusing low-rent homage to '70s cop shows such as Starsky & Hutch - made Jonze a '90s sensation.

The zenith of Jonze promo career peaked in 1999 while nestled at now-defunct Satellite Films when his foot-fancy alter ego Richard Koufey shaped the hypnotic "Praise You" for Fat Boy Slim. This immensely popular clip collected awards for Best Direction, Breakthrough and Best Choreography at the MTV Music Video Awards. Koufey was, of course, there in person to collect the awards along with the fictional members of the Torrance Community Dance Group.

It wasn't long before Jonze found himself directing in Hollywood on long-form work. First came the release of his own (and Charlie Kaufman's) psyche on the big screen in the form of "Being John Malkovitch," and exquisite ride before "Adaptation" caught our attention a few years later. That nabbed Chris Cooper an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and firmly cemented Jonze place in the dizzying heights of Hollywood.

2006 saw Jonze receive more nods of approval from the Director Guild of America for "Outstanding Achievement in Commercials," nominated for visually powerful spots that included the dreamy "Hello Tomorrow" for Adidas, the comedic "Lamp" for IKEA, and the anarchic "Pardon Our Dust" for The Gap.

Jonze has continued working with unrivaled passion since "Where The Wild Things Are." He has produced content and directing shorts including the tender robot love story "I'm Here" and "We Were Once a Fairytale," a chilling look at Kanye West's celebrity in a West Hollywood nightclub. Both of these short films are a welcome diversion from his experiences on "Where The Wild Things Are."

"That project was so thoroughly planned out, so utterly big budget, so very complicated technically and tonally that I needed to open up to what was in my mind," admits Jonze. "It was important for me to keep it simple and real."

However, it wasn't until Jonze found himself at the tail end of 1500 effects shots at Framestore on "Where The Wild Things Are" that fresh ideas finally began to sprout. One idea Jonze began shaping was the aforementioned romantic sci-fi short "I'm Here," a poignant love story between two robots living in a world where humans and robots co-exist.

The lead robot is Sheldon who works in a library and falls for the anime-inspired Francesca (played by Sienna Guillory), a clumsy femme fatale who trips to the ground soon after they meet. Sheldon quickly repairs her damaged knee with his toolkit and they begin to date, sleeping together at night and sharing the same rechargeable cable.

Time passes before Francesca badly damages her arm at a nightclub. Sheldon fixes her again by transplanting his own arm and transplants it onto her. More time passes before she stumbles home, this time without a leg. Despite her protests Sheldon donates his leg. It seems Francesca is chewing up life at her own risk, creative and free to a fault and requiring a true yet innocent love to fix her follies.

Finally, Sheldon receives a call from the hospital where he discovers Francesca completely torn apart on an operating table. He ponders the situation and decides to donate the rest of his body, leaving only a functioning head that Francesca cradles in her lap as she is discharged from the hospital. As emphatic as Shakespeare yet subtle as Spike, "I'm Here" revels in its own time. The 30-minute love story premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year to rave reviews.

"I began writing something that really felt honest and real, and it grew from there," says Jonze on creating the project. "Then Absolut approached me saying they'd like to return to sponsoring creative people. They wanted to make short films, so I shared my idea with them. We didn't have much time to prep and write but agreed on a start date. We all trusted that the pieces would fall into place. There were no vodka themed requirements that had to be in the story so I worked on the concept to let it evolve."

Jonze shaped a 20-page script then brainstormed on talent. With no solid leads Jonze turned to fellow director and trusted friend Mark Romanek (who happened to be in town soon after wrapping his feature "Never Let Me Go.")

"I was still letting the project evolve when I saw Mark," Jonze explains. "It began to grow and grow but I really needed to cast. Mark suggested British actor Andrew Garfield for the male robot. Andrew happened to live close by and biked over to meet us. We all played Frisbee in the park and I knew right then he'd be perfect for the part."

"I'm Here" succeeds in delivering a contemporary yet sci-fi mythology, due in no small part to the robot outfits. Distinctly lo-fi designs are shaped out of old computer parts, shrewd visual cues that symbolize the robot's menial place in the world:

"They are utilitarian and not meant to appear beautiful," explains Jonze. "They do menial tasks like shelving books at the local library and such so I went for a boxy, old-school Apple look."

Jonze wanted each character to be completely believable. "I wanted to have the actors cast in the robot costumes to do the character voices," adds Jonze. "That was important. I felt it was necessary to keep the reality there. Andrew also used to be a gymnast when he was younger so physically his performance was strong."

Music and sound design also play a part thanks to Jonze brother Sam Spiegel who wrote the score. The song "There Are Many Of Us" by Aska Matsumiya also became a key mood piece during production: "It was music I was listening to at the time," admits Jonze. "I shot and edited to it."

Jonze also began working on another short project with Kanye West following "Where The Wild Things Are." Jonze had previously teamed up with the Grammy-winning rapper on his "Flashing Lights" single, a slo-mo tease featuring Playboy model Rita G. stripping down to her lingerie with shovel in hand to murder a tied-up and gagged Kanye in the trunk of a classic Ford Mustang.

Their second collaboration on "We Were Once a Fairytale" is even more provocative, classic Jonze storytelling that paints a poignant tale of celebrity and success in the dizzying heights of LA.

Kanye plays himself, drunk and disoriented at a fancy Hollywood nightclub. He becomes overwhelmed with excitement when his music begins playing on the dance floor. Kanye wanders around the club telling everyone that his song is playing. He flirts with women who are initially starstruck - then repulsed by his lewd and obnoxious behavior.

Kanye attempts dancing to his beats, but is so heavily lubricated that he wanders off and stumbles into an empty side room. A beautiful woman robed in a leopard print dress approaches, comforting him as he cries. They begin having sex before Kanye completely passes out.

Kanye wakes up with his pants down, lying on a sofa covered with leopard print pillows. Startled and nauseous he finds the bathroom and vomits red rose petals. Kanye then spots a bowie knife and viscously cuts open his stomach. A torrent of petals pours out of him to the porcelain floor below as he pushes his hands deep into his stomach where he yanks out a small rodent-like creature (named "Henry" in the credits).

He cuts an umbilical chord connecting the creature to his stomach and places it down in front of him. He then hands over a miniature bowie knife that the critter takes. A Kanye nod sadly as Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor begins to play. The creature then commits suicide seppuku-style, slowly dying while gasping for air.

"When I began writing the concept for this video it really didn't lend itself to traditional methods," says Jonze. "It was all about loss and at first Kanye wasn't so sure about it. He thought the idea was more about me than his music, but the concept was actually about Kanye so I proposed it as a low budget experimental film. As soon as we discussed that he gave himself over to me completely. He really committed himself to the role."

Jonze shot over two days in West Hollywood. "It really was about making this idea work, making it in less than a week without thinking about it too much," says Jonze. "For me I feel something is successful when it becomes a reality, when it's the closest possible rendition of the feelings and thoughts that I had when I first conceived it. Everything I thought about creating, all that I wrote it in the first place, it all has to be in there in some way."

Along with notable short films and music videos Jonze has also exec-produced features including "The Lazarus Effect," a documentary focused on antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) in Africa and the positive effects ARVs can have on its communities.

Over 29 million people are living with HIV or AIDS today in sub-Saharan Africa, but Jonze and director Lance Bangs shine the documentary lights on a few individuals to underline the issues at hand; an HIV positive woman who has lost all three of her children to AIDS and now desperately struggles to stay alive, an 11-year-old orphan, a father who is struggles to stay healthy and a woman with HIV who is about to bring her child into the world.

"It's good to see these kind of issues that seems completely hopeless and depressing suddenly become uplifting," says Jonze on the doc. "Antiretroviral drugs are quietly making headway over there. It's bringing people back from the brink of death."

Jonze also keeps busy as creative director of New York-based VBS.tv, an online television news and culture site owned by Vice media. Jonze and the VBS.tv gang create original, short-form, documentary-style content on subject matter ranging from humanitarian issues to music and news.

"We have small resources and it's not like we're Viacom or CNN," says Jonze. "It's an indie news organization and we do whatever we want. That was the concept: to create something new, to go out there and reporting on whatever subjects we happen to be curious about."

With Jonze about to board his plane to Hawaii I had one more question to ask: What makes good advertising in today's ever-expanding media universe? Jonze maintains it is still about the creative:

"Agencies know more than ever it's about an idea and a story more than it's about advertising," he says. "If you're just advertising something no one's going to care and nobody will forward links to their friends. I think that's always been the case with the best advertising, and I think it always will be."