Spike Jonze; fasten your seatbelts: the director of Being John Malkovich is back with Adaptation

Interview, Dec, 2002 by Aaron Meza

Spike Jonze was an established music video director in 1993, when he and some friends started a company called Girl Skateboards. I was hired to film their team of skaters for promotional videos. My peers thought I'd hit pay dirt. "You're hooked up!" they'd say. "Spike can get you a job working in the movies!" Well, the Hollywood gravy train, which everyone seemed to believe Spike was driving, passed me by. In the meantime his body of work grew rapidly from videos to commercials to films, receiving accolades all along the way.

Recently I received a call from Spike. Before I could imagine myself on a movie set, he asked if I'd be interested in interviewing him for this publication. I drove to an editing studio in Venice Beach where he was working on a video for Bjork's song "It's in Our Hands." We talked about the skateboard video that jump-started his career, Blind Video Days; his first film, Being John Malkovich; and his most recent picture, Adaptation, which has Nicolas Cage playing opposite himself, Meryl Streep stoned out of her mind, and Chris Cooper as a toothless botanist. The editing studio was one block away from the Venice skateboard park--it seemed fitting.

AARON MEZA: Do you ever get tired of working all the time?

SPIKE JONZE: [laughs] Well, doing music videos is sometimes kind of a break. We edited our movie Adaptation for so long that it was nice to make something so simple. It took a while to get it down to working size. This Bjork video was fun, getting to do something simple and visual. I shot it on a mini DV camera in the woods, and it was really just the two of us. I mean, we had a small crew, but there weren't any lights or anything like that. I've always liked to work that way.

AM: Growing up in Maryland. were you itching to come to California?

SJ: Yeah. I was really into Freestyling magazine [a skateboarding magazine], and they started giving me writing assignments in high school. Then they offered me a job out here.

AM: Do you still feel connected to skateboarding?

SJ: Definitely. I have some friends that are involved in it, and it's such a big part of my life.

AM: Mark Gonzales. a legendary skater and artist, is one of your friends. He was also featured in a Nissan commercial you directed a few years ago. How difficult was it to get him to sit still?

SJ: [laughs] That was hard. Before that we did a short film that was based on a short story he wrote, and the Blind video before that. He's amazing. Whatever he's doing, he's so creative, whether it's drawing or skateboarding or just walking down the street. His way of looking at the world is totally inspiring.

AM: You mentioned the video, Blind Video Days. That, of course, lead to your working on Sonic Youth's "100%" video.

SJ: Yeah. The reason that I got to shoot part of "100%" is because Mark Gonzales saw Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore in a parking lot outside a show one night and gave them the Blind video, which was my first experience of doing anything beyond working with a Hi8 video camera. Tamra Davis directed it ["100%"], but she let me shoot the skateboard footage and watch the whole thing get made. She was very cool, and it was a good crash course in music video.

AM: Do you think your career has been a string of great opportunities feeding into one another?

SJ: Yeah. I always liked doing skits with my friends and taping them on the camcorder in junior high and high school. I was interested in film, but I didn't really think it was a possibility for me. Then I got to work on one video, and then another, and I saw it as a possibility. So, yeah, one thing definitely led to another.

AM: Do you feel that directing is the end of the journey for you?

SJ: I hope not! I hope that whatever is interesting and fun and exciting and I haven't done before, I could always try. Just to learn new things.

AM: Looking back, did you feel you were prepared going into Being John Malkovich, not having any experience with feature-length films?

SJ: I knew that I had to focus on the acting, since I hadn't yet worked with actors in a really indepth way, digging into the dialogue. Even so, we got into the editing room and I was like, "Oh, that was a bad choice" or "I didn't see that," and I'd have to figure out how to fix my mistakes.

AM: Was making Adaptation any easier?

SJ: In some ways I felt a little more confident working with the actors, but at the same time I was still intimidated, because I was working with Meryl Streep. But she's so good and so smart, and I got comfortable with her. I would give her direction, and she'd say, "That's good! Let's try that." And I was like "Oh, OK!" She'd make me feel relaxed, and I ended up having a lot of fun working with her.

AM: In both of your movies a number of your actors play real people. Are the characters anything like the people they're based on?

SJ: [pause] What was the question? [both laugh]

AM: John Malkovich playing himself, Nicolas Cage playing the screenwriters Charlie and Donald Kaufman ... Are they pretty close in real life to what we see onscreen?