Spike Jonze: ​‘I try to make every­thing I make personal’

Spike Jonze is known for his colour­ful, melan­cholic, immac­u­late­ly-edit­ed direc­to­r­i­al style which he for­mu­lat­ed by mak­ing music videos for the likes of Bjork, The Beast­ie Boys and REM. He has long since grad­u­at­ed to the world of inven­tive nar­ra­tive cin­e­ma. In Jonze’s pre­vi­ous key offer­ings (Being John Malkovich, Adap­ta­tion., Where the Wild Things Are) he toyed with the line between exter­nal real­i­ties and the depth of human imagination.

In Her, the voice in lead­ing man Joaquin Phoenix’s head is arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence itself, mak­ing this film an ambi­tious explo­ration of the place where love meets future tech­nol­o­gy. When LWLies sat down to catch up with Jonze recent­ly, we found the writer/​director in a refresh­ing­ly can­did mood.

LWLies: Rewatch­ing Adap­ta­tion recent­ly, I paused it to make cof­fee. While doing so I start­ed hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion in my head with a man I am inter­est­ed in. And then I joined the dots. Your films are about exact­ly that: the neu­rot­ic, fan­tas­ti­cal voice in our heads. Is that a fair assessment?

Jonze: I’ve nev­er thought about it like that but I love it. It’s more than fair, and it makes me aware of some­thing I thought we all did any­ways. I assumed we all live par­tial­ly in our fan­ta­sy world or in the con­ver­sa­tions we’re hav­ing in our head or the anx­i­ety loops we get stuck in. Is that not true?

I would say so.

Well, at least there’s two of us then.

Do you think it’s pos­si­ble to fall in love with some­body based pure­ly on their per­ceived intelligence?

Of course, yeah. I don’t think there’s any def­i­n­i­tion, I mean there are soci­etal def­i­n­i­tions of love and rela­tion­ships but those are lim­it­ed by soci­ety and change. The fact that there’s not gay mar­riage right now is absurd. In 100 years it won’t cre­ate the bat of an eye­lid. In the past there have been soci­eties where gay rela­tion­ships weren’t looked at any dif­fer­ent­ly so a lot of it has to do with what forces in soci­ety want us to believe is a rela­tion­ship or not a rela­tion­ship. Harold and Maude is one of my favourite love sto­ries. I love that movie. Is it wrong for this teenage boy to be in love with an 80-year-old woman? No, because it’s love.

Her seems very philo­soph­i­cal about love.

Philo­soph­i­cal in what way?

Amy Adams’ char­ac­ter says ​“Love is a social­ly accept­ed form of mad­ness” and it seems Her is say­ing every­one who loves is mad, not just Theodore.

What did that make you think?

It made me won­der whether that was my inter­pre­ta­tion or your belief. Do you think love is madness?

Yeah but I don’t think that’s nec­es­sar­i­ly a neg­a­tive thing. It’s irra­tional, like insan­i­ty, but it’s part of being alive in the best pos­si­ble way.

Con­ver­sa­tions between Theodore and Saman­tha feel inti­mate even though she is just a voice. How did their inter­ac­tion work on a tech­ni­cal level?

Ini­tial­ly a dif­fer­ent actress, Saman­tha Mor­ton, was play­ing Saman­tha. She was on set with us the entire time in a box in anoth­er room and spoke in Joaquin’s ear and he was in her ear. We didn’t shoot it like a spe­cial effects movie. We shot it like a love sto­ry between these two peo­ple who weren’t in the same room. So Saman­tha gave Joaquin every­thing to react to. Then in post-pro­duc­tion we realised what Saman­tha and I had done wasn’t work­ing for what the char­ac­ter need­ed so we end­ed up unfor­tu­nate­ly and very painful­ly hav­ing to let Saman­tha go which was hard because she’s an old friend of mine and we’ve worked togeth­er before. I love her and we’ll work togeth­er again. She’s one of the best actress­es in the world.

Did you call the char­ac­ter Saman­tha in tribute?

No, that was kind of a coin­ci­dence. Amy — Amy Adams’ char­ac­ter — is named Amy so that was a coin­ci­dence too. Or I’m psy­chic? But any­ways, in post, we end­ed up hav­ing to make that change which wasn’t fun at all. And then we found Scar­lett [Johans­son].

How did you go about putting Scar­lett into it all?

Months and months of record­ing. Noth­ing I do is straight­for­ward. I don’t know how to paint so this metaphor might be hor­ri­ble but, imag­ine if you’re paint­ing and try­ing to find the right colour. You add pale green then sit and watch it and you’re like, ​‘This needs more shad­ing’ and add this dark­er colour. Then you realise, ​‘This colour’s too close to that colour’ so you have to dark­en the land to be dark­er than the ocean. You have to keep touch­ing it and step­ping back and touch­ing it and step­ping back. That’s what we do and that’s why our movies take a year to edit. I work very inti­mate­ly with my edi­tors Jeff Buchanan and Eric Zum­brun­nen. We’re togeth­er 12 hours a day going through scenes and finess­ing and fig­ur­ing out. We rewrite the dia­logue all the time. That’s become part of edit­ing, espe­cial­ly if you have a char­ac­ter that’s all voiceover.

So the imme­di­a­cy between the char­ac­ters is an illu­sion cre­at­ed by editing?

No because it wouldn’t work if Joaquin wasn’t con­nect­ing with Saman­tha on set to begin with and then six months lat­er in a record­ing stu­dio Scar­lett was con­nect­ing to Joaquin. The con­nec­tion is there. But all of film­mak­ing is a manip­u­la­tion. As soon as you decide where to put the cam­era or where to cut out of a scene or to put a sound effect in the back­ground that enhances a cer­tain feel­ing. It’s manip­u­la­tion but as long as it’s an hon­est manip­u­la­tion. That’s my goal at least.

How do you ​‘hon­est­ly manipulate’?

Through all of that, the movie’s find­ing itself and you’re find­ing it and I try to be open to it chang­ing. But the thing I nev­er waver about is what the movie’s about to me and the feel­ing I start­ed with. Some­times I just need to close my eyes and get qui­et or close my eyes and go for a walk to remind myself, ​‘What’s this scene about’? ​‘What’s this moment about?’ ​‘What’s this movie about?’ We might be in the mid­dle of set with 100 extras and it’s real­ly loud or we might have done a scene 50 times. I’ll just need to recon­nect to what I start­ed the movie with and why I’m doing it then I can always go back to exact­ly what the scene should be.

On that note, what is the movie about and why did you make it?

I don’t know if I can answer that! I guess maybe because I nev­er answer that… And it’s usu­al­ly not one thing. It’s many things. To me usu­al­ly those are the most per­son­al ques­tions, like, if I was to answer them hon­est­ly they’d be too personal.

I love personal!

I’m sure you do! I do too! Of course I wan­na ask you… you’re very reveal­ing of your­self so I wan­na just ask you more per­son­al questions.

I thought if I was per­son­al­ly reveal­ing then you might be per­son­al­ly revealing…

Yeah, that’s the hope as a jour­nal­ist that you want that to happen.

It’s not just jour­nal­ism. I write about films because they give life meaning.

I can tell! And I don’t think you’re being manip­u­la­tive. I don’t think you’re insin­cere at all. I wasn’t say­ing that. And I real­ly appre­ci­ate and can feel how sin­cere about every­thing you are… The sto­ry you were telling about what you thought as you made your cof­fee, I love that. I love that…

Could you give some­thing like that back as a rec­i­p­ro­cal thing?

I’ll try, I’ll try, it’s just a dif­fer­ent thing. It’s not quite the same because… I don’t know if you…

Shall I steer things back to eas­i­er ground?

Yes, I want to be help­ful! I guess I’ve always been pri­vate. I love mak­ing things and I love try­ing to find things and fig­ure things out. I try to make every­thing I make per­son­al but I’m not as com­fort­able or real­ly as inter­est­ed in reveal­ing the stuff that hap­pens out­side of my work.

Under­stood. Going back to…

…But I would ask all the same ques­tions if I were you so it’s not like you’re doing any­thing wrong.

Is it right that Her is inspired by the first mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tion you had with a piece of technology?

Sort of. I saw a link to a web­site where you could IM with an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gent sys­tem, it might have been Alice­bot. For the first 20 sec­onds I had this ban­ter back and forth. I said, ​‘Why are you so fat?’ And she was like, ​‘Well that’s not very nice to say.’ And I was like, ​‘Well, it’s true’ and she kept giv­ing back to me and I was like ​‘Wait a sec­ond!’ I had this buzz of her being fun­ny and got a lit­tle excite­ment in the mid­dle of my day. So that was an idea for a movie but it wasn’t real­ly. It wasn’t until a cou­ple of years lat­er that I thought about it again and start­ed think­ing about it as a rela­tion­ship movie. That’s when it went from being like a para­graph that would sit on my hard dri­ve for­ev­er to being a real thing that I could actu­al­ly write about.

How did you scout Shang­hai and LA as loca­tions and decide how your future world would look?

The ini­tial idea was to make a very warm, colour­ful soft world where every­thing just feels nice. Los Ange­les can be real­ly easy in a lot of ways because the weather’s always nice and there’s great food and the ocean and moun­tains are there and you go over to people’s hous­es for bar­be­cues. But in a world where every­thing feels like you should be hap­py and you’re still lone­ly, it hurts that much more. We’re cre­at­ing this pop melan­choly and that was sort of the premise for the look of the movie.

Her is ded­i­cat­ed to Har­ris Savides. How has he influ­enced you?

I’ve known him for a long time. When I first start­ed mak­ing music videos, anoth­er direc­tor asked me to come onto a com­mer­cial to shoot some sec­ond unit and Har­ris was the DP and that was the first time I was ever on a job, ever had a walkie-talkie. Har­ris was warm. I was just some kid, like 22, and he was very unpre­ten­tious and wel­com­ing and he always had the same spir­it. I knew him for 20 years and he always had the same spir­it. I got the most out of him the last time we worked togeth­er. It was two years ago and we did this video for Kanye West and Jay‑Z. It was one of those last-minute things.

Kanye West called me and said ​‘We wan­na do this next week’ and I was focused on work­ing on my script so I didn’t know. I talked to Har­ris and he was like, ​‘Yeah, I think we could do it. It could be fun’. And he taught me this term called wu wei. It’s a Chi­nese term. Wu wei is basi­cal­ly the art of know­ing when to take action and when not to take action, of know­ing when to push and when not to push which is very Har­ris. He had such a vision with­out an ego. It’s a rare thing. When­ev­er he would push it wasn’t out of ego, it was fight­ing for the idea, the idea being this thing that doesn’t real­ly have a voice of its own. He was very pro­tec­tive of the idea.

What is it about Arcade Fire that draws you to work with them repeatedly?

For one I just love their music. From their first record, ​‘Funer­al’, I felt some inher­ent aes­thet­ic bond to how they were. In fact their first record was about child­hood and I was writ­ing about child­hood. I wrote Where the Wild Things Are to ​‘Funer­al’ and end­ed up using ​‘Wake Up’ in the trail­er. As we were edit­ing, I used it to cut to and it’s nat­u­ral­ly part of the film’s music. Then on ​‘Neon Bible’ I shot a bunch of their shows in a church and since then we real­ly got to know each oth­er a lot bet­ter. The way Win But­ler writes is very cin­e­mat­ic and it’s also very emo­tion­al. Even though he’s com­ing from music and I’m com­ing from film, I think we both aspire to sim­i­lar things.