ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze

Kim Wilkins is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Screen Cultures at the University of Oslo. She is the author of American Eccentric Cinema (2019) and co-editor with Wyatt Moss-Wellington of Refocus: The Films of Spike Jonze (2019). She has published widely on American indie cinema, German film, and television in numerous journals and edited collections. Wyatt Moss-Wellington is Associate Professor in Media and Culture at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He is the author of Cognitive Film and Media Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2021), Narrative Humanism: Kindness and Complexity in Fiction and Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and co-editor with Kim Wilkins of ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). Moss-Wellington 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).

Spike Jonze excels at coloring inside and outside the lines, working as producer, writer and director – and performing as stuntman, skateboarder and dancer, too. Wilkins and Moss-Wellington’s insightful anthology studies his feature films, music videos, commercials, and shorts. A welcome addition to scholarship, it speaks to everyone interested in transmedia production and innovative authorship.

• List of FiguresNotes on ContributorsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Jonze Between the Lines; Kim Wilkins and Wyatt Moss-WellingtonPART I: Authorship and Originality1: Adaptation in Adaptation in Adaptation in Adaptation; Wyatt Moss-Wellington2: "I’ll eat you up I love you so." Adaptation, Authorship, and Intermediality in Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are; Eddie Falvey3: Converging Indiewood: Spike Jonze, Propaganda Films and the Emergence of Specialty Film Giant USA Films; Yannis TzioumakisPART II: Psychology, Identity and Crisis4: "You can be John Malkovich." Celebrity, Absurdity, and Convention in Being John Malkovich; Kim Wilkins5: "I can’t sleep. I’m losing my hair. I’m fat and repulsive." Crises of Masculinity and Artistry in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation; Julie Levinson5.5: Spike Jonze’s Screenwriting: The Screenplay; Wyatt Moss-WellingtonPART III: Her7: "Are These Feelings Even Real?" Intimacy and Authenticity in Spike Jonze’s Her; Peter Marks8: Machinic Empathy and Mental Health: The Relational Ethics of Machine Empathy and Artificial Intelligence in Her; Frances Shaw9: The "tedious yammering of selves": The End of Intimacy in Spike Jonze’s Her; Richard SmithPART IV: Beyond the Feature10: Spike Jonze Shorts Stories; Cynthia Felando11: Spike Jonze, Propaganda/Satellite Films and Music Video Work: Talent Management and the Construction of an Indie-Auteur; Andrew Stubbs12: Spike Jonze’s Abbreviated Art of the Suburbs; Laurel Westrup