➧ From Beastie Boys To Weezer: A Thorough Look At Spike Jonze’s Most Iconic Music Videos Though the 90s didn’t have the honor of being the decade that housed the MTV revolution or music videos like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” that shook the world and announced the arrival of the art form, I’d still argue that that decade, and not the 1980s, stands out as the most important era in the history of music videos. The 90s saw the continuing popularity of music television, the slight rollback of parental puritanism (because who could weather the deluge?), the ascension of hip hop into the mainstream, the brief grunge takeover of pop with its heavier messages, the explosion of powerful singer/songwriters, and a generation of filmmakers who brought a hunger and a sense of creative ingenuity to the medium. Filmmakers like F. Gary Gray, Michel Gondry, David Fincher, and Spike Jonze. Of those filmmakers, only Jonze has continued to walk in both worlds on a somewhat regular basis, but while he has found immense success on the big screen with films like Being John Malkovich and Her, it’s still hard to think of him as a feature filmmaker first thanks to his long list of iconic music videos in almost all genres that elevated the form. Beastie Boys – “Sabotage” With The Beastie Boys signed on as willing accessories, Jonze gave in to narrative ambition and turned a solid rap/rock song into an homage to gritty 1970s cop dramas. This is the video where we start to see Jonze transition from a great music video director to a great filmmaker and visual storyteller. The video also has bonus content in the form of the Jonze directed Ciao LA. Though Jonze still directs the occasional music video, it’s doubtful that his relationship with The Beastie Boys, which lasted from 1992 to 2011’s “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win” action figure opus (that nearly got its own slot on this list because of how awesome it is), will ever be matched in terms of longevity or impact.
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 18:53:08 +0000
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