Spike Jonze at MOMA
October 8th, 2009 by
Today the Museum of Modern in New York opens: Spike Jonze: The First 80 Years
October 8, 2009-October 18, 2009
MOMA press release below:
Continuing its Filmmaker in Focus series, MoMA’s Department of Film presents the first-ever retrospective of Spike Jonze (b. 1969, Rockville, Maryland), celebrating his work as a director, producer, cinematographer, writer, actor, choreographer, and sometime stuntman. Few filmmakers can claim to have earned the undying love and respect of skateboarders and rappers, a beloved children’s book author, and scholars of Lacan and Derrida. But Jonze’s reputation as one of the most imaginative, intelligent, and daring filmmakers working today was established early on with his legendary skateboard videos, music videos, and commercials, and has since been cemented by three features: Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Where the Wild Things Are (2009). The mind games in Jonze’s films-the existential puzzlements and feats of narrative deconstruction-are bedazzling, to be sure, but so is the exuberant physicality of his work, from the graceful (the Dance of Despair and Disillusionment in Malkovich, the skateboarding films that recall the gravity-defying acrobatics of Douglas Fairbanks and Harold Lloyd, the Björk, Pharcyde, and Fatboy Slim videos that pay homage to Hollywood’s golden age of musicals); to the anarchical (Jackass: The Movie, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s "Y Control" music video, the Gap “Pardon Our Dust” commercial); to the endearingly awkward (the stylings of the Torrance Community Dance Group and the silent pantomime of Maurice at the World’s Fair). “Spike’s a meshuggener,” Maurice Sendak observes, “a really crazy kid who is willing to be independent and get his way ... kind of goofy, adventurous, whacked-out, but dramatically gifted.” On October 8, Jonze, who came up with the exhibition’s wry title himself, participates in an opening-night discussion with Maurice Sendak and exhibition curator Joshua Siegel.
RELATED FILM SCREENINGS & EVENTS
In Cahoots: Maurice Sendak and Spike Jonze
Thursday, October 8, 2009, 8:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1 (Followed by a conversation between exhibition curator Joshua Siegel, Maurice Sendak, and Spike Jonze)
Sunday, October 11, 2009, 4:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Adaptation
2002. USA. Directed by Spike Jonze. Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, Donald Kaufman, based on The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. With Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper. Sure to end up on many Ten Best of the Decade lists, Adaptation is, “simply” put, a film based on a book based on a magazine article about the frustrated attempts of a journalist (and her successor, a screenwriter) to create a drama out of the true story of an obsessive horticulturist who steals rare ghost orchids from the Everglades, and to fathom the profound implications this has for our own capacity to adapt, love, and create something beautiful and mysterious without selling out. Hopscotching back and forth in time and place, with disorienting detours of plot and quicksilver swings of mood, Adaptation intricately interweaves the lives of the orchid thief, the reporter, and the angst-ridden screenwriter at war with his primordial inner demons and his crass and fearless twin brother/doppelganger. Courtesy Sony Pictures Repertory. 114 min.
Friday, October 9, 2009, 4:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Saturday, October 10, 2009, 8:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Spike Jonze: Award-Winning Music Videos and Short Films, Part 1
Friday, October 9, 2009, 8:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Sunday, October 18, 2009, 2:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Spike Jonze: Award-Winning Music Videos, Short Films, and Commercials, Part 2
Saturday, October 10, 2009, 2:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Monday, October 12, 2009, 8:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Being John Malkovich
1999. USA. Directed by Spike Jonze. Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman. With John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, John Malkovich. Somewhere between the New Jersey Turnpike and the 7 1/2-floor offices of LesterCorp lies the hidden portal to being John Malkovich-to dining as him, having sex as him, and perhaps best of all, ordering bathtowels as him. For Craig Schwartz, a tragically misunderstood, out-of-work puppeteer, and his frumpy, sexually confused wife, it’s a chance to not-so-vicariously enjoy fifteen minutes of fame-and someone else’s neuroses for a change. Jonze and Kaufman were themselves catapulted to stardom with this ingenious feature film debut, bringing a measure of melancholy and compassion to a metaphysical screwball comedy that twists and turns, Möbius-like, into a profoundly touching and disturbing meditation on the Big Questions of human nature and consciousness. Courtesy NBC Universal. 112 min.
Saturday, October 10, 2009, 5:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Monday, October 12, 2009, 4:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
The Black Stallion
1979. USA. Directed by Carroll Ballard. Screenplay by Melissa Mathison, Jeanne Roseberg, William D. Wittliff. With Teri Garr, Mickey Rooney, Kelly Reno. An enchanting yet rarely seen film adaptation of Walter Farley’s beloved 1941 book, about an American boy and an Arabian stallion who forge a nearly mystical bond of love and empathy when they are shipwrecked and forced to take refuge on a deserted Mediterranean island. “As soon as we started working on the script for Where the Wild Things Are, The Black Stallion was the first movie Dave Eggers and I watched. It was our aspiration to capture what Carroll Ballard had: a boy on an island finding his way with wild creatures and the camera trying to tag along-not to get in the way, but to capture the beauty of it all” (Spike Jonze). New 35mm print courtesy Academy Film Archive. 118 min.
Sunday, October 11, 2009, 1:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Friday, October 16, 2009, 4:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Heavy Metal in Baghdad
2008. USA/Canada. Directed by Suroosh Alvi, Eddy Moretti. Produced by Shane Smith, Spike Jonze. An intense and fearless documentary portrait of the Iraqi underground metal band Acrassicauda (Latin for “black scorpion”), seriously passionate musicians who seriously risk their lives-and those of their families and fans-as bombs rain down on wartime Baghdad, death threats brand them as worshippers of Satan and degenerate Western culture, and hellish conditions force them to flee their homeland. “Both a stirring testament to the plight of cultural expression in Baghdad and a striking report on the refugee scene in Syria, this rock-doc like no other electrifies its genre and redefines headbanging as an act of hard-core courage” (Nathan Lee, The New York Times). Courtesy Vice Films. 84 min.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009, 4:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Saturday, October 17, 2009, 4:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Collaborators
2009. USA. Directed by Lance Bangs. A portrait of Spike Jonze and his longtime moviemaking partnerships. New York premiere 10 min.
Spike Jonze’s Award-Winning Commercials
USA. Directed by Spike Jonze. Spots for Nike, Adidas, the Gap, Levi’s, Nissan, and Ikea. 5 min.
Jackass: The Movie
2002. USA. Directed by Jeff Tremaine. Produced by Tremaine, Spike Jonze, Johnny Knoxville. In the first of two movies based on the wildly popular MTV series (co-created by Jonze), Johnny Knoxville leads his Loony Tunes band of misfits, miscreants, and degenerates through a gauntlet of sadomasochistic stunts and pranks-textbook cases of arrested development and schadenfreude, and a throwback to the inventively cruel humor of silent-era slapstick comedy. Courtesy Paramount Pictures. 87 min.
Friday, October 16, 2009, 8:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Saturday, October 17, 2009, 2:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
