If you want to catch director Spike Jonze’s upcoming sci-fi-ish romance drama “Her,” starring the awesome cast of Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Scarlett Johansson, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde and Chris Pratt, you’re going to have to wait until January 10, 2014 (unless you live in a major city during its limited release run on December 18th). But if you want to catch Jonze’s imaginative handiwork sooner, you can tune into the YouTube Awards on Sunday (on YouTube, where else?).
Jonze will be directing the entire show and for the various musical performances, and the production will be shooting “live music videos.” Performers include Lady Gaga, Tyler, the Creator, Eminem and Jonze himself will of course be shooting the performance of Arcade Fire’s “Afterlife,” a track off their latest album Reflektor (watch the album stream here). This band stands out of course, because Arcade Fire (along with collaborator Owen Pallet who also contributed original music) scored Jonze’s “Her” (a couple songs from Reflektor are also featured in the movie including the closing credits track, “Supersymmetry”).
“It’ll be really interesting to try and pull it off,” Jonze told NME recently about the YouTube awards. “We have a whole handful of directors, we’re mixing the music video film world in with the live broadcast world and trying to make live music videos” (famed video director Chris Milk and Jonze are collaborating on the Lady Gaga performance as well).
The entire endeavor sounds like it has a seat-of-its-pants quality to it, and spontaneity is definitely something missing from awards shows these days. “I’m totally nervous, we have no idea, none of us have ever done this live,” he said. “When you do a regular music video you have control but here there’s a large room for error and things we can’t control so we’re trying to embrace it. That is what a YouTube video is. The best YouTube videos are totally creative but totally spontaneous.”
Hell, we’ll watch, that sounds interesting. In the meantime, some new photos and behind the scenes photos of “Her” have surfaced online and will whet your appetite for the film that we called in our NYFF review, “Jonze’s most mature work…. [and] deeply perceptive and attuned to the risks, fears, surprises and wonders of intimacy.” We named the picture one of our top 5 films of the entire NYFF festival, and you can watch the entire 30 minute Q&A conversation with Jonze and the cast here. “Her” opens December 18th in limited release and January 10, 2014 in wide release. The YouTube Awards are hosted by actor Jason Schwartzman and air 6 p.m. EST on November 3rd. [Behind the scenes photos via FilmStage]
