ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze 6101_Wilkins and Moss.indd i 08/07/19 4:47 PM ReFocus: The American Directors Series Series Editors: Robert Singer and Gary D. Rhodes Editorial board: Kelly Basilio, Donna Campbell, Claire Perkins, Christopher Sharrett and Yannis Tzioumakis ReFocus is a series of contemporary methodological and theoretical approaches to the interdisciplinary analyses and interpretations of neglected American directors, from the once- famous to the ignored, in direct relationship to American culture—its myths, values, and historical precepts. The series ignores no director who created a historical space—either in or out of the studio system—beginning from the origins of American cinema and up to the present. These directors produced film titles that appear in university film history and genre courses across international boundaries, and their work is often seen on television or available to download or purchase, but each suffers from a form of “canon envy”; directors such as these, among other important figures in the general history of American cinema, are underrepresented in the critical dialogue, yet each has created American narratives, works of film art, that warrant attention. ReFocus brings these American film directors to a new audience of scholars and general readers of both American and Film Studies. Titles in the series include: ReFocus: The Films of Preston Sturges Edited by Jeff Jaeckle and Sarah Kozloff ReFocus: The Films of Delmer Daves Edited by Matthew Carter and Andrew Nelson ReFocus: The Films of Amy Heckerling Edited by Frances Smith and Timothy Shary ReFocus: The Films of Budd Boetticher Edited by Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Singer ReFocus: The Films of Kelly Reichardt E. Dawn Hall ReFocus: The Films of William Castle Edited by Murray Leeder ReFocus: The Films of Barbara Kopple Edited by Jeff Jaeckle and Susan Ryan ReFocus: The Films of Elaine May Edited by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Dean Brandum ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze Edited by Kim Wilkins and Wyatt Moss-Wellington edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/refoc 6101_Wilkins and Moss.indd ii 08/07/19 4:47 PM ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze Edited by Kim Wilkins and Wyatt Moss-Wellington 6101_Wilkins and Moss.indd iii 08/07/19 4:47 PM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organization Kim Wilkins and Wyatt Moss-Wellington, 2019 © the chapters their several authors, 2019 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun—Holyrood Road 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13 Ehrhardt MT by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 4762 1 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 4763 8 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 4764 5 (epub) The right of Kim Wilkins and Wyatt Moss-Wellington to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 6101_Wilkins and Moss.indd iv 08/07/19 4:47 PM Contents List of Figures vii Notes on Contributors viii Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Jonze Between the Lines 1 Kim Wilkins and Wyatt Moss-Wellington Part 1 Authorship and Originality 1 Adaptation in Adaptation in Adaptation in Adaptation 15 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 33 Eddie Falvey 3 Converging Indiewood: Spike Jonze, Propaganda Films, and the Emergence of Specialty Film Giant USA Films 46 Yannis Tzioumakis Part 2 Psychology, Identity, and Crisis 4 “You can be John Malkovich”: Celebrity, Absurdity, and Convention in Being John Malkovich 67 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 86 Julie Levinson 5½ Spike Jonze’s Screenwriting: The Screenplay 105 Wyatt Moss-Wellington 6101_Wilkins and Moss.indd v 08/07/19 4:47 PM vi CONTENTS Part 3 Her 7 “Are these feelings even real?” Intimacy and Authenticity in Spike Jonze’s Her 139 Peter Marks 8 Machinic Empathy and Mental Health: The Relational Ethics of Machine Empathy and Artificial Intelligence in Her 158 Frances Shaw 9 The “tedious yammering of selves”: The End of Intimacy in Spike Jonze’s Her 175 Richard Smith Part 4 Beyond the Feature 10 Spike Jonze Shorts Stories 195 Cynthia Felando 11 Spike Jonze, Propaganda/Satellite Films, and Music Video Work: Talent Management and the Construction of an Indie-Auteur 213 Andrew Stubbs 12 Spike Jonze’s Abbreviated Art of the Suburbs 231 Laurel Westrup Index 248 6101_Wilkins and Moss.indd vi 08/07/19 4:47 PM Figures 4.1 Craig and Maxine on the 7½ floor 72 4.2 “Being” John Malkovich as he orders bathmats 76 5.1 The glum Charlie with his cheery doppelgänger, Donald 95 5.2 The overstuffed brain of Charlie Kaufman confronts the blank page 98 10.1 I’m Here: Sheldon 205 10.2 I’m Here: Sheldon and Francesca 206 6101_Wilkins and Moss.indd vii 08/07/19 4:47 PM Notes on Contributors Eddie Falvey completed his AHRC-funded Ph.D. project on the early films of New York at the University of Exeter, where he taught in the department of English. Since finishing his Ph.D., Eddie has been a lecturer in contextual studies at Plymouth College of Art, specializing in animation. He is co-editor of a forthcoming collection on contemporary horror and has incoming chap- ters and articles on horror, animation, and fandom studies. He is currently working on developing his thesis into a monograph. Cynthia Felando graduated with a Ph.D. in Critical Studies from the School of Theater, Film and Television at UCLA, after which she worked as an art house and film festival programmer. Now a member of the faculty in the Film and Media Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, her primary teaching and research interests include American film history, youth culture and media, women and film, and the history and criticism of short films. In addition to several journal and anthology publications, her book, Discovering Short Films: The History and Style of Live-Action Fiction Shorts, was published in 2015. Julie Levinson is Professor of Film and Chair of the Arts and Humanities division at Babson College, USA. She is the author of The American Success Myth on Film, editor of Alexander Payne: Interviews, and co-editor of Acting, which is part of the ten-volume Behind the Silver Screen film history series. Her publications in journals and edited collections focus on a wide range of topics including genre and gender, documentary film, metafiction, and narra- tive theory. She has been a film curator for arts institutions including Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the New England Foundation for the Arts, and 6101_Wilkins and Moss.indd viii 08/07/19 4:47 PM NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix the Boston Film/Video Foundation. She has served as an editorial consultant for many documentary films and as a panelist for such organizations as the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Peter Marks is Professor of English at the University of Sydney. His books include George Orwell the Essayist: Literature, Politics and the Periodical Cul- ture (2011), Imagining Surveillance: Eutopian and Dystopian Literature and Film (2015), and Literature of the 1990s: Endings and Beginnings (2018). Wyatt Moss-Wellington is Assistant Professor in Media and Communica- tion Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He is the author of Narrative Humanism: Kindness and Complexity in Fiction and Film (Edin- burgh University Press). Moss-Wellington received his Ph.D. from the Uni- versity of Sydney in 2017. He 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). Frances Shaw is a researcher and writer based in Tasmania, Australia. She is a social theorist and qualitative researcher in the area of media and technol- ogy, with a background in media studies and politics. More recently her work has focused on the ethics and politics of social media and mobile device inter- ventions for mental illness, with a particular focus on surveillance and con- sent, algorithmic accountability, and the allocation of moral responsibility in mHealth and eHealth. She conducted this research as a postdoctoral researcher in applied ethics with the Black Dog Institute. Previously she researched the expression of emotional distress on social media at the University of Edin- burgh, and how trust and empathy is established in online spaces. Her primary research interests include digital ethics, social media cultures, digital methods, health cultures, digital embodiment, and the self. Richard Smith lectures in the film studies program at the University of Sydney, Australia. Richard’s current research interests include cinematic time, transnational and global cinemas, national cinemas, and the new philosophies of film. Richard is currently supervising doctoral dissertations in topics ran- ging from online film criticism, to the reappraisal of apparatus theory, to the concept of “trash cinema.” Andrew Stubbs is Lecturer of Film, Media and Communication at Stafford- shire University.