Spike Jonze

Adam Spiegel (born October 22, 1969), known professionally as Spike Jonze, is an American filmmaker, actor and photographer.

His work includes films, commercials, music videos, skateboard videos and television.

Jonze began his career as a teenager photographing BMX riders and skateboarders for Freestylin' Magazine and Transworld Skateboarding, and co-founding the youth culture magazine Dirt.

Adam Spiegel was born on October 22, 1969, in New York City, the son of Arthur H. Spiegel III and Sandra L. Granzow.

His father was of German-Jewish ancestry.

Jonze is the grandson of Arthur Spiegel and the great-great-grandson of Joseph Spiegel, founder of the Spiegel catalog.

Arthur H. Spiegel III was the founder of a healthcare consulting firm.

Jonze's parents divorced when he was a young child and his father remarried.

Jonze was raised by his mother in Bethesda, Maryland, where she worked in public relations, along with his brother Sam "Squeak E. Clean" Spiegel, who is now a producer and DJ, and his sister Julia.

While studying at Walt Whitman High School, Jonze spent much of his time at a Bethesda community store, where owner Mike Henderson gave him the nickname "Spike Jonze" in reference to the satirical bandleader Spike Jones.

While in high school, Jonze was close friends with future Jackass co-creator Jeff Tremaine.

They became friends through their shared interest in BMX.

A keen BMX rider, Jonze began working at the Rockville BMX store in Rockville, Maryland, at the age of 16.

A common destination for touring professional BMX teams, Jonze began photographing BMX demos at Rockville and formed a friendship with Freestylin' Magazine editors Mark Lewman and Andy Jenkins.

Impressed with Jonze's photography work, the pair offered him a job as a photographer for the magazine, and he subsequently moved to California to pursue career opportunities in photography.

Jonze fronted Club Homeboy, an international BMX club, alongside Lewman and Jenkins.

The three also created the youth culture magazines Homeboy and Dirt, the latter of which was spun off from the female-centered Sassy and was aimed towards young boys.

While shooting for various BMX publications in California, Jonze was introduced to a number of professional skateboarders who often shared ramps with BMX pros.

Jonze formed a close friendship with Mark Gonzales, co-owner of the newly formed Blind Skateboards at the time, and began shooting photos with the young Blind team including Jason Lee, Guy Mariano and Rudy Johnson in the late 1980s.

Jonze became a regular contributor to Transworld Skateboarding and was subsequently given a job at World Industries by Steve Rocco, who enlisted him to photograph advertisements and shoot promotional videos for his brands under the World Industries umbrella.

Jonze filmed, edited and produced his first skateboarding video, Rubbish Heap, for World Industries in 1989.

Jonze's filmmaking style made him an in-demand director of music videos for much of the 1990s, resulting in collaborations with R.E.M., Sonic Youth, Beastie Boys, Ween, Fatboy Slim, Daft Punk, Weezer, Björk, Arcade Fire and Kanye West.

Moving into filmmaking, he began shooting street skateboarding films, including the influential Video Days (1991).

His following video project was Video Days, a promotional video for Blind Skateboards, which was released in 1991 and is considered to be highly influential in the community.

The video's subject, Gonzales, presented a copy of Video Days to Kim Gordon during a chance encounter following a Sonic Youth show in early 1992.

Impressed with Jonze's videography skills, Gordon asked him to direct a music video featuring skateboarders.

The video, co-directed by Jonze and Tamra Davis, was for their 1992 single "100%", which featured skateboarding footage of Blind Skateboards rider Jason Lee, who later became a successful actor.

Jonze co-founded the skateboard company Girl Skateboards in 1993 with riders Rick Howard and Mike Carroll.

In 1993, Jonze co-directed the "trippy" music video for The Breeders song "Cannonball" with Gordon.

Along with Rick Howard and Mike Carroll, Jonze co-founded the skateboard company Girl Skateboards in 1993.

The following year, he directed the video for the Weezer song "Buddy Holly", which featured the band performing the song interspersed with clips from the sitcom Happy Days.

The video became immensely popular and was shown frequently on MTV.

Also in 1994, Jonze directed the videos for the Beastie Boys' songs "Sure Shot" and, more famously, "Sabotage".

Jonze began his feature film directing career with Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002), both written by Charlie Kaufman; the former earned Jonze an Academy Award nomination for Best Director.

He was a co-creator and executive producer of MTV's Jackass reality franchise.

He has worked as an actor sporadically throughout his career, co-starring in David O. Russell's war comedy Three Kings (1999) and appearing in supporting roles in Bennett Miller's Moneyball (2011) and Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), in addition to a recurring role in comedy series The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret (2010–2012) and cameo appearances in his own films.

Jonze co-founded Directors Label, with filmmakers Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry, and the Palm Pictures company.

He is currently the creative director of Vice Media, Inc. and its multinational television channel Vice on TV.

Jonze later began directing films based on his own screenplays, including Where the Wild Things Are (2009) and Her (2013); for the latter film, he won the Academy Award, Golden Globe, and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay, while receiving Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Song ("The Moon Song").

A 2013 Rolling Stone readers' poll ranked it as the tenth best music video of the 1990s.