Being Spike Jonze
By Scott Tobias
 With an impressive list
of credits that includes the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage," Björk's
"It's Oh So Quiet," Dinosaur Jr's "Feel The Pain," and
Fatboy Slim's "Praise You," Spike Jonze has directed some of the
most conceptually inventive music videos ever made. But the transition to
his feature-film debut, Being John Malkovich, raised obvious
concerns about his ability to sustain a story over three minutes in length
while handling an assortment of seasoned performers. At a recent press
roundtable, The Onion asked the cast about working with Jonze.
The Onion:
What was Spike Jonze's approach with regard to performance?
John Cusack:
I knew we had a great script and I knew we had a great cast, so the only
question mark for me was Spike. So I talked to John [Malkovich] in Paris,
and he said [Jonze] was really smart, so I met with him. Immediately, he
started talking about character and tone. He didn't say, "Oh God,
there's going to be all these really cool visuals, and the camera's going
to come down here..." He didn't talk about style; he talked about
substance and how [the film] has to be character-driven. And then you have
to do all that other stuff, too. You have to make it visually interesting.
But [after hearing] of his obsession with character, I thought, "I'm
in." ... Spike's a stubborn guy, and stubborn in a good sense,
because he's got a strong vision for what he wants to do. But he knew that
it was his first time [as a feature director], so he deferred to [the
actors] a little bit and took our input. But it's a collaboration; you
create a character with the director. It's not going to do you or him any
good if you don't meet on common ground. Then it's just going to be him
pushing you one way and you pushing him another way, and you're not in
sync. The only thing I would have done differently was I wanted to look as
thin and little as possible, so I thought I should wear these really tight
jeans, like this late-'70s David Copperfield look. I thought I looked too
big and I wanted to look smaller. That was pretty much our only argument.
I think in the long run, it was probably a detail no one would leave us
sweating over.
O: Was there anything notably peculiar about Spike Jonze's
directing style? Anything that sets him apart from others you've worked
with before?
Catherine Keener: Quite the opposite, actually. There's nothing
peculiar about him. He's a little conservative, which is odd, and he
doesn't give you a lot of leeway. I don't mean to say he's a cold person,
but you feel okay around him; you know that you're going to be all right.
Cameron Diaz: You trust him because of his body of work. The way he
approaches it is very direct.
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