SECRET MOVIE CLUB presents
Part of our THE JONZE JONES Series, Friday, January 27, 2023
LOCATION: The Secret Movie Club Theater, 1917 Bay Street, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90021
*Please note entrance/parking is actually in the back of the building. Make a right on Wilson Street, then a right behind the building. We’re the first set of black steps after the big gate.
7:30pm WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (2009, dir. Spike Jonze, Warner Bros, USA, 103mns, 35mm)
9:30pm HER (2013, dir. Spike Jonze, Warner Bros, USA, 123mns, 35mm)
We end our two-night Spike Jonze series The Jonze Jones with his two most recent movies.
First up, we screen Jonze’s ambitious adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are with a screenplay co-written by novelist Dave Eggers.
Jonze set himself up for a particularly thorny challenge here. How do you successfully enlarge and adapt a picture book with a relatively simple story about a boy given to temper tantrums who travels to a magical island full of wild beasts and becomes their king before returning to his bedroom before bedtime?
Jonze and Eggers decided to embrace some of the subtextual clues of the book as well as take on what it’s like to be a child of divorce and single parents.
The result famously startled audiences in 2009 who weren’t quite ready for the mixture of magic and angst, comedy and darkness. The movie underwent numerous re-shoots and special FX revisions (the monsters all voiced by great actors had to be toned down after test screenings discovered children were truly frightened).
While Wild Things may still be the most debated movie in Jonze’s body of work, it is also possibly (along with Her) his most vulnerable, sensitive, and sincere. A fascinating example of a singular voice trying to make something truly great.
We follow this up with Her, a movie that Jonze wrote AND directed in 2013.
A version of Jonze was famously played by Giovanni Ribisi in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation as a kind of easily distracted aloof and somewhat sycophantic man-child. The Coppola-Jonze marriage that ended in divorce was partially shown to the public in Coppola’s movie from her point of view (played by Scarlett Johansson).
Jonze’s Her feels like a kind of unexpectedly soulful, open, melancholic response. In the future, Theodore (played by Joaquin Phoenix) wanders aimlessly through his post divorce life in Los Angeles ghost-writing greeting cards for other people and ruminating about what went wrong in his marriage.
He unexpectedly falls in love with his operating system (voiced by. . .wait for it. . .Scarlett Johansson) who bit by bit coaxes him out of his post-divorce shell. But where will it all lead?
Her surprised everyone (or maybe felt perfectly on form) by being one of Jonze’s best movies but also one of his most human and warm hearted. Far from seeking to retort to Coppola’s portrayal, Jonze here seems to really dig down into what is it in himself that caused the divorce. All the while Jonze finds a way to investigate this while still having a blast representing an eerie near future where everyone seems more and more alone and isolated via their technology.
Join us for the final night of our The Jonze Jones series to celebrate Spike Jonze’s very singular body of work.
Best always,
Craig Hammill
Secret Movie Club Founder.Programmer
*Please note that though we strive to always show titles on 35mm film if advertised, we may have to screen digitally if the print we receive is in such bad shape or if we don't receive the print in time because of a shipping delay. We will do our best to alert the audience. When this does occur, we will offer each ticket holder who chooses not to attend a complimentary ticket to a future event in exchange. (Disclaimer: Good for 90 days – Future screening must have available tickets, cannot be a fundraiser, and must be comparably priced)
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
REFUNDS:
We can offer refunds up to 24 hours before showtime. Please request a refund through Eventbrite and we will process ASAP. After that, no refunds. Sorry.
However if something last minute comes up and you can’t make the screening, for whatever reason, just write to us before showtime: community@secretmovieclub.com and we’ll offer you complimentary tickets to a future screening, good for 90 days. (Disclaimer: Future screening must have available tickets, cannot be a fundraiser, and must be comparably priced)
HELPFUL SECRET MOVIE CLUB (1917 Bay Street, 2nd Floor, LA, CA 90021) THEATER PARKING TIPS:
We recommend that you park just outside our theater. Remember our theater is actually in a beautiful street art alleyway in the back of the 1917 Bay Street building. You get to our entrance by taking a right on Wilson, then a right behind the building. We are the first set of black steps on the right after the big gate.
There is also a parking lot at the corner of Mateo and Violet Street, just 2 blocks from our theater, which costs $7 per car.
HOW CAN WE STAY ON TOP OF NEWLY ANNOUNCED 35MM SCREENINGS, EVENTS, ETC?
You can follow us on Instagram/Twitter: @secretmovieclub or Facebook: @secretmovieclub35mm
You can also subscribe to our weekly email newsletter at secretmovieclub.com or by writing to us at community@secretmovieclub.com and using the header “SUBSCRIBE ME TO NEWSLETTER”.
HOW CAN I CONTACT YOU IF I HAVE OTHER QUESTIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS:
You can always email us at community@secretmovieclub.com with any other questions, concerns, thoughts, recommendations.