ALEXANDER BISLEY

SPIKE JONZE

FRIENDLY SPIKE JONZE IS EASILY CONNECTING UNLIKE HIS LEAD CHARACTER IN HER WALKING ROUND ME AND A GROUP OF JOURNALISTS.
ITS THE DAY before Hers World Premiere at the New York Film Festival, and Jonze is relaxed and earthy talking to us about his intensely personal new movie. Frequently dubbed the hippest middle-aged man in Hollywood, Jonze unlike Kanye West and Jay-Z who he directed the brilliant Otis video for doesnt show signs its gone to his head. Hes directed great music videos for Kanye (Flashing Lights), Arcade Fire (After Life), and Weezer (Island in the Sun). Not to mention Daft Punk, LCD Soundsystem, Bjork, The Beastie Boys, R.E.M, Fatboy Slim, and the Notorious B.I.G. Hes created terrific, inventive films Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Where the Wild Things Are, and Her. Hes the creative director of Vice snaring fascinating lines (People think Im cocky for the things I say. You should hear the things I think, Kanye). Hes got a sharp cameo in Martin Scorseses demented The Wolf of Wall St. He will win the Golden Globe for Best Script, and Hers going to be nominated for five Oscars: best picture, best screenplay, best original score (by Arcade Fire), best original song, and best production design. But Jonze is happy to be open about how this moving, funny love story reflects his own life: Spike has a hard time [with intimacy], too, he says wryly. In Her Joaquin Phoenix plays a lonely writer, Theodore Twombly, who becomes very isolated after breaking up with his beautiful wife Catherine (Rooney Mara). He falls in love with his computer operating system, voiced by the scorchingly sultry Scarlett Johansson. Amy Adams (Golden Globe for American Hustle), who plays Theodores close friend Amy, suggests the film is inspired by Jonzes break up with Sophia Coppola. I feel like Joaquin just really bares his soul in this film. It feels like such a personal story for Spike and I feel like that bled over to all the actors. We all really took to heart how personal a story this was. Phoenix gestures dramatically toward his fetching co-stars: There are these three ladies that are so smart and beautiful and cool and I feel like we should talk to them. Indeed, all three actresses have insightful comments to make on Jonze. Adams was blown away by his script. It was at a time when I was really busy, and I had just had a baby, and I thought, I dont have it in me to do a film right now. But every time I met with Spike I couldnt say no because his vision was so beautiful. It was in line with the kinds of issues I was dealing with. Thats the great thing about this film; I think everyone finds a piece of their own issues in it. And so I couldnt say no and I just had to work with Spike. (Phoenix interjects that she could have said no. Adams responds: No. He looks really sweet, but you know, hes very insistent. Jonze concludes: No it was more that Id pretend I was about to cry if youd said no and you felt too guilty.) For her part, Mara had to audition hard. Theres nobody like Spike. Hes just so fucking talented and magical, hes fantastic. He thought I was too young to play it. The part is really small but I just loved the script so much. It was one of my favourite scripts that Ive ever read. It was so beautiful and so powerful. So I had to go and audition for him, and convince him to hire me. He just creates such a fantastic world in all of his movies. I thought the world that he created was such an interesting and realistic take on what the future might be like. Catherine is the only one who criticises

Theodore for his relationship with Samantha, arguing he has a reductive view of women. 44-year-old Jonze, who amusingly cameos as a foulmouthed alien, decided not to render Samantha as an avatar: I like the idea of her existing more in the ether, more in his heart and psyche. Olivia Wilde (Drinking Buddies), who plays a woman Twombly goes on a bad blind date with, further explains: She then becomes your ideal. That it becomes your own experience. Even if people may be familiar with Scarletts voice and imagine her as an actress, I think it transforms. She becomes whatever you want her to become. If you [Jonze] had attempted to define her, you would have stopped people from being able to create that for themselves. So thats one cool effect of it. Her initially sparked when Jonze instant messaged an online AI (Artificial Intelligence) a decade ago. I had a little exchange. I had this buzz of, Wow, Im talking to this thing. This thing is listening to me. And then quickly it devolved. You could tell it was just parroting things it had heard before and it wasnt intelligent, but rather it was a clever program. Eventually I thought about the idea of a man having a relationship with an entity like that; with a fully formed consciousness. I thought about the idea of what would happen if you had a real relationship and I used that as an idea to write a relationship movie and a love story. For all Hers ideas and qualities (content and form), it is most powerfully a love story. All of those ideas sort of became background to me, to the bigger, more pressing idea of what is real and what is love, what we bring into relationships, and our need for intimacy and our inabilities in ourselves that prevent us from intimacy. And technology is certainly a part of that, it is one of the things we

use to prevent ourselves from feeling certain things. Arcade Fire, particularly Win Butler, lived with Jonze for a lot of the year he was filming Her, and wrote an atmospheric score specially, including Supersymmetry (I know youre living in my mind/Its not the same as being alive). These songs were played on set to create mood. Woody Allens Crimes and Misdemeanours is another inspiration. That script is so incredibly well written. The man who had a 2009 retrospective at New Yorks Museum of Modern Art manages to maintain his idiosyncratic creative identity, from music videos to films. Seeing if something felt inauthentic to me and learning from those mistakes. Trying to stay on the things that feel more true to me as opposed to me trying to be somebody else. He wants to explore the idea that people take different interpretations from intimate conversations, like when Wildes character tells Theodore hes a creepy dude. I think that was inherent in everything we did; is what youre actually hearing when somebody is speaking to you? Not necessarily hearing what they say, but hearing what you think they mean. Working with longtime production designer K.K. Barrett, Jonze crafts a detailed near-future world, fusing Los Angeles and Shanghai. We were playing off of the fact that our world is getting nicer and nicer to live in. We wanted to show that in L.A., where the weather is so nice, and theres great food, and you have the mountains and oceans, but even in that setting you can feel very isolated and lonely... I guess to feel lonely in that setting is even worse because its a world where you should be getting everything you need, seemingly.
HER IS IN CINEMAS THU 27 FEB

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RIPITUP.CO.NZ

RIPITUP.CO.NZ

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