Who is Spike Jonze?
A life lived in the spotlight is what every ordinary person wants. Movie stars, famous musicians, and TV personalities don the big screens but what is often forgotten are those working behind the scenes. From producers in both music and movies, to editors, screenwriters, and directors, the world of the entertainment “elite” goes vastly unnoticed.
In movies alone, actors receive a large portion of the cinematic value, while the individuals who conceptualize the movie from start to finish, composing a visual canvas riddled with motifs and symbolism, are forgotten. There are countless tirelessly working behind the scenes but one of the most noteworthy is Spike Jonze. By acknowledging workflow alone, Jonze has become one of the most influential Film Directors/Producers/Screenwriters and everything in between over the last 20 years.
Adam Spiegel was born in 1969. A storeowner in his native Maryland gave him the pseudonym Spike Jonze after famous musician Spike Jones. As a young adult, Jonze attended the San Francisco Art Institute in the mid 80’s and got his first job as a photographer for Freestylin’ Magazine. The rest is history.
Since his first creative spell in the late 80’s Jonze has since become a part owner of Girl Skateboards, co-creater of Jackass, creative director of Vice media, winner of numerous awards for films "Her," "Being John Malkovich," "Adaptation," and "Where The Wild Things Are," actor in a number of films, and has worked on creative projects with Kanye West, Beck, The Pharcyde, Fatboy Slim, and Notorious B.I.G. That’s Spike in a nutshell, but not even that extensive compilation of his works comes remotely close to doing him justice. What is most surprising is he excels at virtually everything he does, especially his movies.
My first real experience with Jonze was with his Academy Award for Best Picture movie, "Her." Up to that point the only Jonze work I had seen was "Jackass" and as I watched "Her" for the first time I was confused. If you haven’t seen "Her," its set in a futuristic utopia where Theodore Twombley, a greeting card writer, falls in love with a human-like operating system (Jonze actually came up with the premise of the movie from a conversation he had with an artificial intelligence online years prior). Jonze notes on "Her," “...we were trying to create a world where everything felt warm, and comfortable, easy, accessible, but even in a world where you seemingly have everything you’d want, there’s still loneliness and longing and the need to connect”.
Although he has done his fair share of work, his knack for a continuously streaming flow of creativity and entertainment is unmatched and frankly unlike anything else in the entertainment business right now. Jonze has created such an eclectic and sizable sample of work that he’s etched his own spot in the entertainment elite, and something so simply amazing as that, should never go unnoticed.
