Spike Jonze and Meryl Streep on the set of Adaptation. 2002. USA. Directed by Spike Jonze. © Brigitte Lacombe.
Starting Oct. 8, the Museum of Modern Art will present Spike Jonze: The First 80 Years, a retrospective of the work of the 39-year-old filmmaker running the gamut from his early commercials and music videos to clips from his upcoming adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children's book Where The Wild Things Are.
New York Press caught up with MoMA's associate curator for film, Josh Siegel, who filled us in on how the museum came to honor the man who directed Jackass: The Movie.
The easiest place to start here would be the beginning. How did you settle on this particular filmmaker?
Spike’s a filmmaker I’ve been following for quite some time, starting with his skate videos and his music videos, and he’s one of the young American filmmakers that I respect the most, and the point of Filmmakers in Focus is to highlight the work of an emerging filmmaker whose made approximately three feature films and however many shorts. It’s a kind of acknowledgment on a filmmaker who is either at the very beginning or in the middle of his or her career, but with the expectation that there’s a lot more to come. That this won’t be the last retrospective that this person will have.
Mid-career, huh? It seems to me like Spike Jonze has been famous forever. Do you think he’s at mid-career? Where the Wild Things Are could change everything.
I like to call this a late-early career retrospective. He’s turning 40 in a few weeks. I assume that he has at least 30 more years to go, so presumably he has many many more feature films to come. But I think what’s not so well known to people is the work that he did before the three feature films and how they are consistent in their themes and in their aesthetic, whether they’re music videos from the whole range of music artists or skate videos. There’s a certain through line through a lot of the work that manifests itself in various ways in the feature films as well, and I think that Where the Wild Things Are may lead to a huge career in Hollywood and it may not, but I don’t think it matters. I think what he’s made is a kind of hybrid of the two and I think that’s what makes it so special.
Can you elaborate on what you see as the thread between them?
What distinguishes Spike’s work is the combination between surreality and physicality. I think he’s smart enough to know to defer to a lot of the people he works with and works with so consistently whether it’s the production designer, the cinematographer or the screen writer, and I think in the case of the films he made with Charlie Kaufman, of course they’re kind of intellectual mind games. But that being said, I think he’s also very in tune with film being a kinetic medium, and he’s interested in movement and the way that people dance, the way that people sing, the way that they leap across the screen, and I think you find that in obvious ways in things like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs music video or in Jackass, which I think harkens back to the slap-stick comedies of the ’20s and an underlying sense of schadenfreude or cruelty in the pleasure of looking at other people’s pain, but I think that combination of the physical and cerebral is bedazzling, and I think that’s why it appeals to an equal range of audiences.
So speaking of Jackass, what kind of thrill do you get getting MoMA to screen Jackass: The Movie?
I don’t know that it’s a thrill. I think that it actually belongs to a long tradition that goes back to the origins of cinema even to the comedies of Lumire; the scene of the guy standing on the hose and then releasing it and letting the water spray in the guy’s face. I mean this is films made in the 1890s that are the origins of the films like Jackass, so I think that we have long acknowledged the importance of slap-stick comedy like the work of Mack Sennet and Harold Lloyd and that’s the tradition to which this belongs, so I don’t think it’s meant to be a kind of perverse, subversive joke in showing it. I think actually my point is to say Spike is part of a tradition.
In putting this retrospective together, how much of his work would you say you watched? How many hours?
As far as I know, I watched almost all of it, and the trick was of course, because short films are very tricky to organize into programs and make sure there’s a kind of rhythm and pace to the program that it doesn’t go on too long because it’s not easy to watch more than 10 short films at a time, so the trick was to work with Spike in hammering out a couple compilations of the short work. There were maybe a few videos I might have included had I had more space, but I’m pleased with the way it turned out. I don’t feel too regretful, but I think that was really the trick. Obviously it was a given that we were going to show the feature films. I was very pleased to learn, which I didn’t know until I began working on it, that Spike had been doing these films about and with Maurice Sendak while he was working on Where the Wild Things Are and it became the obvious opening night program.
Was there work of his that you were asked not to show?
No, I mean there’s certain work that I think Spike doesn’t want to have see the light of day and I respect that. There’s a point at which it becomes almost lugubrious to rifle through somebody’s closet and under his bed to be a completist about it. You have to respect an artist when they’re not comfortable showing certain work because they don’t feel it’s mature enough, and I do respect that. Obviously we do search for gems that have not been shown around.
Do you have a personal favorite?
I don’t have a personal favorite. I’m always amazed at how imaginative his videos are and skate videos and by in large the production values are so low because they understand that’s really not what’s important. I’m sure now they’re getting increasingly expensive despite virtue of the industry, but the crudest music videos can be the most dazzling. I’m waiting for Spike to do a musical. I think he has it in him, and I think he really should do a full-blown musical.
And what about Where the Wild Things Are; you’ve seen the whole thing. How do you think people are going to react?
I haven’t the faintest idea how people will react. I love the film. I think it’s both profound and moving and smart, and I think that it’s true to the spirit of Maurice Sendak’s work, not only Where the Wild Things Are, but the whole of his work. It’s an adult film about childhood and there are some affinities films by Truffaut or even Jean Vigo. I see Jean Vigo in the film in the sense of it being anarchical and tender at the same time, and I think anarchical and tender is a good way to describe much of Spike’s work.
The retrospective Spike Jones: The First 80 Years runs Oct. 8-18
New York Press caught up with MoMA's associate curator for film, Josh Siegel, who filled us in on how the museum came to honor the man who directed Jackass: The Movie.
The easiest place to start here would be the beginning. How did you settle on this particular filmmaker?
Spike’s a filmmaker I’ve been following for quite some time, starting with his skate videos and his music videos, and he’s one of the young American filmmakers that I respect the most, and the point of Filmmakers in Focus is to highlight the work of an emerging filmmaker whose made approximately three feature films and however many shorts. It’s a kind of acknowledgment on a filmmaker who is either at the very beginning or in the middle of his or her career, but with the expectation that there’s a lot more to come. That this won’t be the last retrospective that this person will have.
Mid-career, huh? It seems to me like Spike Jonze has been famous forever. Do you think he’s at mid-career? Where the Wild Things Are could change everything.
I like to call this a late-early career retrospective. He’s turning 40 in a few weeks. I assume that he has at least 30 more years to go, so presumably he has many many more feature films to come. But I think what’s not so well known to people is the work that he did before the three feature films and how they are consistent in their themes and in their aesthetic, whether they’re music videos from the whole range of music artists or skate videos. There’s a certain through line through a lot of the work that manifests itself in various ways in the feature films as well, and I think that Where the Wild Things Are may lead to a huge career in Hollywood and it may not, but I don’t think it matters. I think what he’s made is a kind of hybrid of the two and I think that’s what makes it so special.
Can you elaborate on what you see as the thread between them?
What distinguishes Spike’s work is the combination between surreality and physicality. I think he’s smart enough to know to defer to a lot of the people he works with and works with so consistently whether it’s the production designer, the cinematographer or the screen writer, and I think in the case of the films he made with Charlie Kaufman, of course they’re kind of intellectual mind games. But that being said, I think he’s also very in tune with film being a kinetic medium, and he’s interested in movement and the way that people dance, the way that people sing, the way that they leap across the screen, and I think you find that in obvious ways in things like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs music video or in Jackass, which I think harkens back to the slap-stick comedies of the ’20s and an underlying sense of schadenfreude or cruelty in the pleasure of looking at other people’s pain, but I think that combination of the physical and cerebral is bedazzling, and I think that’s why it appeals to an equal range of audiences.
So speaking of Jackass, what kind of thrill do you get getting MoMA to screen Jackass: The Movie?
I don’t know that it’s a thrill. I think that it actually belongs to a long tradition that goes back to the origins of cinema even to the comedies of Lumire; the scene of the guy standing on the hose and then releasing it and letting the water spray in the guy’s face. I mean this is films made in the 1890s that are the origins of the films like Jackass, so I think that we have long acknowledged the importance of slap-stick comedy like the work of Mack Sennet and Harold Lloyd and that’s the tradition to which this belongs, so I don’t think it’s meant to be a kind of perverse, subversive joke in showing it. I think actually my point is to say Spike is part of a tradition.
In putting this retrospective together, how much of his work would you say you watched? How many hours?
As far as I know, I watched almost all of it, and the trick was of course, because short films are very tricky to organize into programs and make sure there’s a kind of rhythm and pace to the program that it doesn’t go on too long because it’s not easy to watch more than 10 short films at a time, so the trick was to work with Spike in hammering out a couple compilations of the short work. There were maybe a few videos I might have included had I had more space, but I’m pleased with the way it turned out. I don’t feel too regretful, but I think that was really the trick. Obviously it was a given that we were going to show the feature films. I was very pleased to learn, which I didn’t know until I began working on it, that Spike had been doing these films about and with Maurice Sendak while he was working on Where the Wild Things Are and it became the obvious opening night program.
Was there work of his that you were asked not to show?
No, I mean there’s certain work that I think Spike doesn’t want to have see the light of day and I respect that. There’s a point at which it becomes almost lugubrious to rifle through somebody’s closet and under his bed to be a completist about it. You have to respect an artist when they’re not comfortable showing certain work because they don’t feel it’s mature enough, and I do respect that. Obviously we do search for gems that have not been shown around.
Do you have a personal favorite?
I don’t have a personal favorite. I’m always amazed at how imaginative his videos are and skate videos and by in large the production values are so low because they understand that’s really not what’s important. I’m sure now they’re getting increasingly expensive despite virtue of the industry, but the crudest music videos can be the most dazzling. I’m waiting for Spike to do a musical. I think he has it in him, and I think he really should do a full-blown musical.
And what about Where the Wild Things Are; you’ve seen the whole thing. How do you think people are going to react?
I haven’t the faintest idea how people will react. I love the film. I think it’s both profound and moving and smart, and I think that it’s true to the spirit of Maurice Sendak’s work, not only Where the Wild Things Are, but the whole of his work. It’s an adult film about childhood and there are some affinities films by Truffaut or even Jean Vigo. I see Jean Vigo in the film in the sense of it being anarchical and tender at the same time, and I think anarchical and tender is a good way to describe much of Spike’s work.
The retrospective Spike Jones: The First 80 Years runs Oct. 8-18
