Spike Jonze Biography

On October 22, 1969, in Rockville, Maryland, Jonze grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, with his father, Arthur Spiegel III, founder of the worldwide health care consulting business APM Management Consultants, and his mother, Sandy Granzow, a communications consultant in underdeveloped nations and author of Our Dream: A World Free of Poverty. Jonze met Andy Jenkins and Mark Lewman, the founders of the iconic BMX magazine Freestylin', while attending Walt Whitman High School. He traveled to Los Angeles to work as an editorial assistant at Freestylin', where he further polished his photography abilities and became recognized for his groundbreaking action photography of skateboarders. Following spells taking images for BMX Action and the short-lived Homeboy, Jonze co-founded Dirt, a semi-subversive lifestyle magazine aimed at adolescent males, with Jenkins and Lewman in 1991. Though the magazine did not survive long, the teenage entrepreneur persevered, forming the Girl Skateboard Company with professional skateboarders Rick Howard and Mike Carroll, which mostly supported skateboard decks but also marketed a variety of boarding products. In 1992 Jonze joined the music video market as the co-director of Sonic Youth's 100 percent on which he filmed raw skateboard footage that was intercut into the video by co-director Tamra Davis. He went on to co-direct the music video for The Breeders' single Cannonball, which featured a rolling cannonball that seemed to follow the camera, alongside Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon. Jonze met the Beastie Boys through Davis, the wife of Mike D, and directed their landmark video Sabotage (1994), which proved to be a breakthrough for the director. Jonze clothed the Beasties in campy polyester suits aviator shades and phony wigs while employing whip pans rack focusing and freeze frames to portray them hunting down various bad men across Los Angeles. The song was a tremendous smash for the Beasties, owing in large part to MTV's frequent rotation of the music video. He also collaborated with the Beastie Boys on their visuals for Sure Shot and Ricky's Theme that year. Jonze also worked with Weezer on Undone (The Sweater Song), a visually striking one-take experimental video shot with the same camera that Alfred Hitchcock used in Rope (1948).

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