Spike Jonze, the director with the childlike imagination, and the actor Max Records. (Jonze is the one without a wolf suit.)

Spike Jonze, who is 39, has directed just two feature-length films, “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation.” Both were critical and commercial successes, praised for their originality and absurd humor, and yet they represent only a small fraction of the work that Jonze’s fans admire. He is part of the first generation of filmmakers to come up through the music-video world — in the seven years between 1995 and 2001, he was named best director three times at the MTV Video Music Awards — and his inventive, adventurous style is evident not just in the Hollywood movies he has worked on but also in his videos, skateboard-company promos and TV commercials for companies like Ikea, Nike and the Gap. These miniatures, which Jonze considers to be of no less artistic merit than his longer works, will be celebrated next month as part of a 10-day retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, an unlikely honor for a filmmaker with his background. He never went to film school — or, for that matter, to college. When “Star Wars” had its first run in the movie theaters he went to see it eight times, but he didn’t see “Citizen Kane” until he was well into his 20s, he told me, and he has never seen a single movie by Howard Hawks or John Ford.

Jonze avoids Hollywood, preferring to stick close to the fashionably scruffy neighborhoods where he lives and skateboards (Los Feliz in Los Angeles and the Lower East Side in New York). Even so, the Hollywood establishment has largely embraced him. In 2000, “Being John Malkovich” was nominated for three major Academy Awards, including best director. Two years later, Jonze was an executive producer for “Jackass: The Movie,” a desultory collection of stunts and pranks that was made for just $5 million and became an unexpected hit, ultimately grossing more than $79 million at the box office. In 2003, “Adaptation” garnered four more Academy Award nominations and one Oscar (Chris Cooper’s, for best supporting actor). Jonze, it seemed, was that rare breed, an American filmmaker who had managed to find mainstream success without doing anyone else’s bidding. And then, that summer, he decided to make his first big studio movie.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06jonze-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1