Spike Jonze’s Beast­ie Boys doc­u­men­tary is set for release this spring

Hey ladies in the place, I’m call­ing out to ya – as well the gen­tle­men, and any­one invest­ed in the work of Spike Jonze or the cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry of hip hop. The skate kid-turned-film­mak­er fell in with the Brook­lyn rap group just around the point when his first career piv­ot­ed into his sec­ond, set­ting off a decades-long col­lab­o­ra­tion that most notably brought us the mas­ter­piece that is the Sab­o­tage music video.

Now, the close bond between these men – their ranks sad­ly reduced by one, RIP to MCA – has brought us a fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary, as announced in a press release yes­ter­day. Jonze direct­ed the upcom­ing film enti­tled Beast­ie Boys Sto­ry, now set for a the­atri­cal debut in April before head­ing to Apple TV+, and it sounds like the most in-depth and reveal­ing look into this cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non yet.

A sort of cin­e­mat­ic com­pan­ion to the com­pre­hen­sive Beast­ie Boys Book released in 2018, the film will exam­ine the rise of the New York trio and their larg­er sig­nif­i­cance in the rise of DIY aes­thet­ics, indie film, skate­board­ing, and of course, hip hop. They did every­thing dif­fer­ent­ly and became instant leg­ends for it, dar­ing to be eso­teric and goofy and stu­pid at a time when gangs­ta rap reigned as king.

Jonze con­tributed a typ­i­cal­ly tongue-in-cheek sound­bite to the offi­cial press release: ​“I owe Beast­ie Boys a lot. One time, they pulled me out of a burn­ing ship, and anoth­er time they helped me cheat on my col­lege exam to get into Flori­da State. So, it was a real priv­i­lege to get to reunite with them and help them tell their story.”

One can only hope that this undoubt­ed­ly deep back­log of incred­i­ble and ques­tion­ably true anec­dotes will get plen­ty of play in the film.

Jonze and liv­ing Beast­ie Boys mem­bers Mike D and Ad-Rock have all cul­ti­vat­ed long and illus­tri­ous careers for them­selves, but for a time they were the most excit­ing over­grown kids in the world. The film will hope­ful­ly cap­ture that spir­it, of being young and unsu­per­vised and free to make the weird art you felt like making.

Beast­ie Boys Sto­ry comes to cin­e­mas in the US on 3 April, then to Apple TV+ on 24 April.