Spike Jonze at MOMA

It seems like it’s taken 80 years for Spike Jonze to bring WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE to life. And to celebrate that movie’s release on October 16th, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is doing a Jonze retrospective… cheekily called “Spike Jonze: The First 80 Years.”

From the press release:

As part of its ongoing Filmmaker in Focus series, MoMA presents the first-ever exhibition to focus on Spike Jonze, celebrating his work as a director, producer, cinematographer, writer, actor, choreographer, and sometime stuntman. The early mid-career retrospective – which inspired Jonze to come up with the exhibition’s wry title – runs October 8th through 18th, 2009, in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters.

The exhibition covers Jonze’s entire filmmaking and television career. Included are Jonze’s first two feature films, Being John Malkovich (1999), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director, and Adaptation (2002), as well as two films that he co-produced: Jackass: The Movie (2002), based on the popular MTV show he helped create, and the documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad (2008).

Also presented are Jonze’s celebrated music videos for Björk, Fatboy Slim, Weezer, Beastie Boys, Wax, The Notorious B.I.G., and many others, as well as his award-winning commercials. Among his short films are How They Get There (1997); his recent collaboration with Kanye West, We Were Once A Fairytale (2009); and his documentary portraits of Al Gore, the musician Fatlip, and a posse of Texas Panhandle rodeo boys (Amarillo by Morning, 1997).

For the full details and schedule (which includes bits from WTWTA), you can download the complete press release RIGHT HERE.