A biography for Spike Jonzehasn’t been written yet.
“The strengths and failings of a relationship depend entirely on your ability to talk about your feelings.”
“You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.”
“We can empathize as deeply as we can empathize.”
“I'm fortunately not, like, typecast. I don't have to just do one kind of thing; I can do all kinds of things that reflect different parts of me.”
“Big emotions that are unexplained are really scary. At least to me.”
“I love when me and my friends don't know how to make something - there's that risk of failure, which should be there. If it's guaranteed not to fail, it's something you already know how to do.”
“I think because I'm not a parent, my most immediate connection to childhood is my memory of my own childhood.”
“If I can make one generalised statement, and generalised statements are never entirely true, nobody wants to be talked down to, kids included.”
“It's fun when you start a movie, because it's kind of like you get to go Christmas shopping... you get to make your wish list and you start thinking about what each character needs.”
“I worked at this bike shop called Rockville BMX, and I started going on this summer tour with this one company. One summer, we ended up in California, and I got to hang out with the guys who made 'Freestylin' - Andy Jenkins and Mark Lewman.”
“I always aspire to that, where it feels like the film was made by the characters as opposed to the filmmakers. I try to be invisible.”
“I like hiring people based on a feeling - this person gets it - rather than what they've done in the past.”
“I like naps. I don't drink coffee.”
“I guess a lot of things I make are relationship movies. Maybe all movies are relationship movies, because they're all about how we relate to each other.”
“Me and my friends had BMX magazines and skate magazines, and I was a photographer who made skate videos.”
“I'll still make movies for studios, but my editing process will be much further removed from the studio system. Because I don't understand it. I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies. So if that's how they do it, then I don't think I want to do it.”
“I met Arcade Fire on their first record, 'Funeral.' I loved that record, and it was a record I was listening to while I wrote 'Where the Wild Things Are.' Those songs - especially 'Wake Up' and 'Neighbourhood' - there's a lot of that record that's about childhood.”
“Whenever I start writing, I try to put together songs that feed the feeling of the movie.”
“I'm always amazed when any actor can decipher my direction.”
“After 'Where the Wild Things Are,' I guess I felt more confident as a writer.”