Spike Jonze To Direct New Weezer Video

Posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 by Peter Sciretta

As you probably know, before directing Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze was a music video director. In 1994 and 1995, Jonze directed some of the most memorable music videos of all time.

It has been six years since Jonze last collaborated with Weezer on Island in the Sun, and now comes word via the Dallas Observer that Jonze is tentatively set to direct the band’s next video “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived”.

But for now lets take a look back at Jonze’s video for Buddy Holly, which saw the band digitally inserted into Arnold’s Diner from Happy Days. An impressive feat at its time, winning four MTV Video Music Awards, including Breakthrough Video and Best Alternative Music Video, and two Billboard Music Video Awards.

Comments 

 

Related Posts

Tags

Television Commercials by Big Directors, ,

  • Nish
    Gah! Why, Spike, Why? Weezer are a crap band, turn your attention to someone like Deerhoof or the Flaming Lips.
  • RageTreb
    Which Island In The Sun video did Jonze direct? The one with the animals or the one at the Mexican wedding?
  • Christopher Marc
    that amazing video is just a reminder of how bad music videos have become since the end of the 90's...with the death of MTV, MUCHMUSIC and other major music video channels...opting to play mind numbingly stupid reality shows...if you want to know why popular music sucks it's because it has to marketed to the idiots who watch reality TV....people have to sift through myspace or music blogs to find quality stuff nowadays...

    but there are still a few decent looking music videos coming out regardless of this...thanks to people like Jonze who still love the "art" of the music video
  • My wife loves that song. She plays it constantly in the car... I don't mind it, its one of the better ones on the Red album, but the last minute or so of the song...he just repeats "I am the greatest man who ever lived" over and over again.. It gets annoying pretty quick.
  • lefthandedpanda
    I didn't know until recently that he directed the "Big Brat" music video for Phantom Planet just a few years back. Zombies falling in love + intestine eating = great music video.
  • Anders
    As far as I know there's not one shot in that video that digitally inserts the band into old Happy Days-footage. It's all just clever editing. The only Happy Days-character you see in the same frame as the band is Al. And that's not old footage, that's footage shot for the video.
  • Stu
    As the huge Weezer fan I am, I feel I must point out that there was no digital trickery. They used old happy day footage to make it look like they were watching the band. They also either used the old set, or recreated it. And that is in fact the real Arnold.


    Also Spike directed the animals Island in the sun video.
  • @ragetreb:
    the one with the animals. the same guy who directed the hash pipe video did the one with the mexican wedding.

    -former weezer nerd
  • Dr.Doc
    this is great news!

    Weezer is a great band! i recently saw them live and it was incredible!

    i love Weezer and Spike Jonze is a great director (i cant wait to see Where The Wild Things Are!!!)

    cant wait for this!!! go Weezer!!! woo hoo!!!
  • John
    "Greatest Man" is one of the more inspired songs of the new Weezer album. I'm happy they're making a video of it, and Spike Jonze is the right man for the job. I'd like the see Spike infuse some of his "Being John Malkovich" surreality into it, breathing an added kick of attention to the band.
  • prophecy_projectz
    I dont see how this can be a bad thing. Jonze was one of the most creative music video directors ever (love what he did with Pharcyde's Drop), plus his collabos with Weezer have been great in the past. I can get behind this.
  • Alex
    Love the song and since the album's release I've been waiting to see what they would do with a video. When I heard Brian say Spike would be doing it, something just felt right in the world again.
  • They should use a funny political theme for it.
  • KC
    don't mean to be pedantic but Weezer were not "digitally inserted" into Happy Days clips.
    rather al's diner was recreated on a sound-stage which the bands performance took place on and cuts from episodes were inserted in the edit.
    this is why there are no clips of weezer which also feature any of the cast of happy days in the same frame bar two examples.
    one is a shot of "fonz" dancing from behind - this was not henry winkler but rather someone dressed in a similar fashion.
    the only cast member there was Al Molinaro who reprised his role as "Al Delvechio" to introduce the band and for the video's final clip.
    just thought i'd point this out as it shows spike jonze has greater craftsmanship than simply "digitally inserting" the band.
  • Birt
    The Buddy Holly videoclip is the only reason why Windows 95 was any good, the inclusion of the video clip of Buddy Holly to showcase the multimedia features of Windows 95 was genius.

    Great to hear Spike is going back to his roots.
  • sideshowRaheem
    Hmm, let me add this becasue from this post it seem like you guys might think this was the first music video Spike Jonze has done in years. But he did infact direct the video for Kanye West's "Flashing Lights" earlier this year. It was one of 3 differnet video's released for that song: http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEccxPPwXmI
  • Dr. Handsome
    Spike Jonze is one of my favorite directors and 'The Greatest Man' is a really fun song so I'm not complaining. Still, he could be doing the video for a new Barry Manilow single and I'd still be excited.

    If you haven't seen his videos (and commercials and short) I've actually done my best to aggregate them all on YouTube:

    http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8F8F70F...
  • Cheese & crackers I remember that vid with Win95, man that brings back memories, haha,
  • I predicted this the first time I listened to TGMTEL. I'm very happy to be right on this occassion.
blog comments powered by Disqus
gorilla nation

/Film

Copyright © 2009 /Film. Web design by Pro Blog Design. Logo Concept by: Illumination Ink

All names, trademarks and images are copyright their respective owners.