For those of you who may not be aware, this week, KLM has been actively celebrating the work of Spike Jonze. Arguably one of today’s most iconic filmmakers, Jonze has innovated a format, style and eccentricity that has not been matched by any of his peers. To commemorate this past weekend’s release of Beastie Boys Story on Apple TV+, we held a multi-day celebration of his work, spanning from music videos to feature films. The main attraction was a full day marathon of his feature film work, where several site writers and other special appeared to talk about his work and its personal impact. Below are recordings of our livestreams hosted by yours truly.
Shorts
For this teaser event, the evening before the marathon, we were joined by Brett and Tristan to discuss the non-feature work of Spike Jonze. We spoke about the impact and creativity of his music video work, the innovative nature of his short-form content, and the platform he creates to let collaborators like Maurice Sendak and Aziz Ansari to open up in an emotionally vulnerable way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3lQvKmUfaw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqfAJpS9kP0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-SlDoxuEVI
Being John Malkovich
For the first feature film of the marathon, we were joined by Jaime Rebanal of Cinema From The Spectrum to discuss Jonze’ debut feature, Being John Malkovich. The major topic here was Jonze’ ability to balance surrealism and philosophy in such a poignant way, and essentially used the platform to gush about our love for the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TpbUzm-OD8
Adaptation
We were once again joined by Jaime Rebanal of Cinema From The Spectrum to discuss Adaptation, Jonze’ sophomore film. Here we discussed his particular ability to adapt the work of others, no matter how insane or stylistically singular, as well as how the film fit into the origins of meta film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6PSgZl2eEw&t=256s
Where The Wild Things Are
We were joined by Jaime Rebanal of Cinema From The Spectrum, Brett, Tristan and David from On The Clock to discuss Jonze’ third feature, Where The Wild Things Are. We once again spoke about his ability to adapt other writer’s work and its unique stance as a children’s film, highlighting its incredible production design, music and nostalgic appeal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGMKUZ9Y1J8
Beastie Boys Story
We ended the night with a nearly two-hour conversation on Beastie Boys Story with Brett, Tristan, Jaeden, and once again David from On The Clock. We had a lot to say about this one. Some of the highlights included Spike’s relationship with his collaborators, the unique format of the film, and how it contributed to various other aspects of its presentation as well as the group’s potential for a major resurgence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01f7ggATp6M
Spike Jonze is absolutely one of the most talented active filmmakers today, and throughout this day, a lot of his particular talents were emphasized, and excitement was rampant for Beastie Boys Story, a film that mary very well be the best of the bunch. Thanks to all who watched along with us, and for those who are only coming across this now, be sure to check out Beastie Boys Story on Apple TV+ which is likely the best film of 2020 thus far.
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