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ReFocus: The American Directors Series

ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze

Edited by Kim Wilkins and Wyatt Moss-Wellington

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£105.00

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About this book

Examines how the work of American filmmaker Spike Jonze crosses boundaries between genre entertainment and experimentalism


ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze is the first collection of essays on this important and original contemporary filmmaker. It looks at his ground-breaking work in both features and short forms, exploring the impact of his filmmaking across a range of philosophical and cultural discussions.
Each of Jonze’s feature films, from Being John Malkovich (1999) to Her (2013), is discussed at length, focusing on issues of authorship, narration, genre and adaptation. As well as the textual aspects of Jonze’s feature films, the contributors consider his work in music videos and shorts – investigating his position as a filmmaker on the blurred boundaries between studio and independent modes of production.

Reviews

Spike Jonze excels at coloring inside and outside the lines, working as producer, writer and director – and performing as stuntman, skateboarder and dancer, too. Wilkins and Moss-Wellington’s insightful anthology studies his feature films, music videos, commercials, and shorts. A welcome addition to scholarship, it speaks to everyone interested in transmedia production and innovative authorship.
Table of contents

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Jonze Between the Lines; Kim Wilkins and Wyatt Moss-Wellington

PART I: Authorship and Originality

1: Adaptation in Adaptation in Adaptation in Adaptation; Wyatt Moss-Wellington

2: "I’ll eat you up I love you so." Adaptation, Authorship, and Intermediality in Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are; Eddie Falvey

3: Converging Indiewood: Spike Jonze, Propaganda Films and the Emergence of Specialty Film Giant USA Films; Yannis Tzioumakis

PART II: Psychology, Identity and Crisis

4: "You can be John Malkovich." Celebrity, Absurdity, and Convention in Being John Malkovich; Kim Wilkins

5: "I can’t sleep. I’m losing my hair. I’m fat and repulsive." Crises of Masculinity and Artistry in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation; Julie Levinson

5.5: Spike Jonze’s Screenwriting: The Screenplay; Wyatt Moss-Wellington

PART III: Her

7: "Are These Feelings Even Real?" Intimacy and Authenticity in Spike Jonze’s Her; Peter Marks

8: Machinic Empathy and Mental Health: The Relational Ethics of Machine Empathy and Artificial Intelligence in Her; Frances Shaw

9: The "tedious yammering of selves": The End of Intimacy in Spike Jonze’s Her; Richard Smith

PART IV: Beyond the Feature

10: Spike Jonze Shorts Stories; Cynthia Felando

11: Spike Jonze, Propaganda/Satellite Films and Music Video Work: Talent Management and the Construction of an Indie-Auteur; Andrew Stubbs

12: Spike Jonze’s Abbreviated Art of the Suburbs; Laurel Westrup

About the contributors

Kim Wilkins

Kim Wilkins is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Screen Cultures at the University of Oslo. She is the author of American Eccentric Cinema (2019) and co-editor with Wyatt Moss-Wellington of Refocus: The Films of Spike Jonze (2019). She has published widely on American indie cinema, German film, and television in numerous journals and edited collections.

Wyatt Moss-Wellington

Wyatt Moss-Wellington is Associate Professor in Media and Culture at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He is the author of Cognitive Film and Media Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2021), Narrative Humanism: Kindness and Complexity in Fiction and Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and co-editor with Kim Wilkins of ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). Moss-Wellington is also a progressive folk multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, and has released four studio albums: The Kinder We (2017), Sanitary Apocalypse (2014), Gen Y Irony Stole My Heart (2011) and The Supermarket and the Turncoat (2009).

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