MoMA The Museum of Modern Art (Venue Partner)
11 W 53rd St
212.708.9400
This event has passed.
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From Adaptation. 2002. USA. Directed by Spike Jonze. Pictured: Nicolas Cage. Courtesy Photofest
- When
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Oct 8, 2009 – Oct 18, 2009
Daily (schedule)
- Where
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- Price
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Free with museum admission. Film-only tickets: adults $10; seniors $8; members and children under 16 are free; member friends $5. Please visit our website for more details.
- Links
“Just before the release of Where the Wild Things Are on October 16, Spike Jonze gets his first retrospective, and with an appropriately cheeky title, too. From his early work with skate and music videos (who can forget the Torrance Community Dance Group) and commercials, to his inventive feature-length films Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002), everything is celebrated here. Following the first night's screening is a conversation between the exhibition's curator and Jonze.”
Jessica Kramer, Flavorpill
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.” Jonze, who came up with the exhibition’s wry title himself, introduces the opening-night screening.
