Spike Jonze is quickly becoming a film making great. I’ve been a fan of his for many years now. I think my earliest memory of his work was the phenomenal music video, ‘Sabotage’ by The Beastie Boys. After the success of that he went on to make many more amazing videos. Many of which you will have seen without necessarily knowing it was Spike including; ‘Da Funk’ by Daft Punk, ‘Praise You’ & ‘Weapon of Choice’ by Fatboy Slim, ‘Electrobank’ by The Chemical Brothers, ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’ by Bjork and ‘Buddy Holly’ by Weezer. There are many many more, for a full list, check Wikipedia here. There was also a boxset released in 2003 showcasing all of his best music video work – The Work of Director Spike Jonze.
After the success of his music videos, he went into making big budget feature films. Among the most notable and successful are Adaptation and Being John Malkovich.
His most recent piece of work, was the adaptation of the childrens book Where the Wild Things are by Maurice Sendak. It has received much acclaim. Spike actually wrote a lot of the screenplay himself in order to create enough content to turn the short story into a full length film.
And so, to his latest project. In association with ABSOLUT vodka, a short film about robots in love – I’m Here. Recognizing consumers are pretty tired of having brands shout at them ABSOLUT, rather than utilising a print or TV ad campaign, took that budget and gave it to Spike to create a short film based loosely on their brand ideals, their creative history and where they want to go. Its not about product placement (although the bottle shape slips in at one point) but more about creating a meaningful collaboration that will position ABSOLUT where it sees itself – within the creative and art communities.
“It was a pretty incredible opportunity,” says Jonze. “They (ABSOLUT) didn’t give me any requirements to make a movie that had anything to do with vodka. They just wanted me to make something that was important to me, and let my imagination take me wherever I wanted. And it wasn’t like working with some huge corporation where I had to meet with committees of people. It was just a small group, and it seemed like creativity and making something that affected them emotionally was the only thing that really mattered to them. I got to make my first love story. It’s about the relationship between two robots living in Los Angeles”.
The film was globally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21st, UK premier is on February 25th. If you’re interested in finding out some more about the project, you can visit the I’m Here website…
