Spike Jonze had everyone’s attention after his music video for “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys (see part 1). He had directed Weezer’s first video for their song “Undone – The Sweater Song” in 1994, but it was his follow-up Weezer video for the song “Buddy Holly” that would become his next big hit in 1995.
I always assumed there was some kind of digital trickery going on that inserted the band into an old Happy Days episode, but actually it was a set faithfully recreated to look like Arnold’s Drive-in that was cleverly mixed in with footage from the show.
Also in ’95, Jonze directed a video for the otherwise unforgettable L.A. punk band Wax (sorry guys) for a song called “California” off their second album. This one featured a man on fire running in slo-mo toward Sunset Boulevard, and MTV would only play it after something like ten o’clock at night. Something about that seems quaint. The young girl at the end is Gia Coppola, niece of Sofia Coppola, who (Sophia not Gia) would go on to get married to Spike Jonze in 1999 and divorced from him in 2003.
He directed a second video for Wax where the band drove around Los Angeles in a van while playing their song “Who is Next,” ending up in what I’m fairly confident is L.A.’s 2nd street tunnel.
Here are a few other notes from his videos in 1995.
Elastica’s video for “Car Song” was filmed in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo.
Ween attempted to steal the Liberty Bell from Independence Hall in Philadelphia in the video for “Freedom of ’76.”
Björk’s “It’s Oh So Quiet,” another big hit for him that year, was filmed at a Goodyear tire store in San Fernando Valley.
I’d like to know where R.E.M.’s video for “Crush with Eyeliner” was filmed, so please leave a comment if you have any ideas.
As far as I know, he only had one video in 1996 which was for the song “Drop” by the Pharcyde. It’s my favorite Spike Jonze video and what started my interest in documenting locations from his videos in the first place. Pharcyde worked with a linguist who spelled the song out for them phonetically in reverse, and they memorized that so they could lip sync as they walked backwards through Los Angeles starting at St. Vincent Court, walking past the Los Angeles Theatre on South Broadway and ending in an alleyway across from the Alexandria Hotel.
Watch a making of the video here:
More to come in part 3