Music Videos Launched the Film Star

He watched Star Wars eight times before Citizen Kane and his education came on the set of music videos. But today, Spike Jonze is on top of the movie-making game. It turns out this is a precarious position. Jonze is a holdover from an era, in the not too distant past, when major studios lavished attention on independent filmmaking, one that is now being undone by new economic and artistic realities. When Where The Wild Things Are opens on October 16, it will be Jonze’s most widely seen and most difficultly fought for movie yet. Universal didn’t want it. Warner Brothers almost didn’t accept it. In this Sunday’s New York Times magazine, Safi Knafo profiles Jonze and the troubles of his latest movie. He writes, “people who hate the movie will probably say that the story was poorly crafted, and people who like it will praise its childlike quality.”