Judd: No tennis player or baseball player has ever directed a good movie. I mean, it is interesting when you think about how many filmmakers and artists come out of skateboard culture and zero come out of football, baseball, tennis, soccer. It’s not part of any other sport.
Spike: I think it’s—there’s a number of things. One is that you’re not told how to skate. In other sports, somebody’s telling you: “This is the way to do things.” There’s a discipline to it. In skateboarding, you create your own discipline. You’re in a bank parking lot with your friends at night and you keep throwing yourself down a set of stairs trying to land a trick. Your friends are skating, too, and you are all supporting each other, but you keep slamming and getting up because you want that feeling of mastering it and rolling away. There’s no coach. Also, and this is in other sports, too, when you’re trying to land a trick, the methodology of getting that—it’s like this sort of OCD thing, where you’re getting closer and closer every time you flick the board. The way you’re sort of visualizing your body doing it. I remember being about seventeen or eighteen and there was this kid Matt Hoffman, who is this amazing BMXer. We are great friends and used to travel together and shoot photos a lot. He’s probably one of the most notable BMX guys. He invented so much. He was the first guy to ever think of building a mega-ramp and almost killed himself learning to ride it. He told me about the idea of visualizing a trick and he never read it anywhere, he just discovered it. He realized that he had to start picturing in his head what he was going to do because he was inventing stuff that no one had ever done. Once you see somebody else do it, you can do it. But if no one’s ever done it before, you don’t know it can be done. You have to do it in your head and imagine it can be done.
Judd: That’s like thinking you can do a video with a man running on fire that’s shot in twelve seconds and then slow it down and that’s a video. That’s visualizing something that hasn’t been done before.
Spike: We never asked permission.
Judd: Studios today are in a weird position because they want to do the thing that will make the most money but they also know that they need innovation and they have to have something new and exciting for the audience to get them into the theaters.
Spike: And they have a fiscal responsibility to the people giving them the money to make movies. I don’t want to rail against the studios here, because I’m so fortunate and I have friends that work at the studios and I get to work with them and they are real friends and collaborators. But I see what their jobs are and understand the situation they’re in. When I did Where the Wild Things Are, I had so much trouble getting that movie through when I was editing it because it was so not—you know, I think they were expecting a “family film.”
Judd: They thought you were going to do The Grinch.
Spike: Yeah, maybe.
Judd: And when did they find out that they weren’t getting The Grinch?
Spike: About ten months after we shot, I showed them a rough cut, and that’s when they were like, Oh shit. We have to put this in front of an audience right away. I could tell there were things that they were worried about. If somebody’s going to give me money to make a movie, I’m going to be very collaborative with them and listen to their concerns, but it’s also my job to protect the idea of the film because, without that, we’re all lost.
Judd: When you were making it, did you think, like, Oh, if I do this correctly it will connect in some deep way and reach a certain amount of people, or did you think, I have this idea and I’m lucky enough to be able to do it, so let’s go?
Spike: I want the studio to make their money back and I want to be able to make movies in the future. And when I’m making a movie, I want to be responsible and listen to the concerns of the people who gave me the money. But at a certain point, I have to put that all out of my mind because it’s not the responsibility of that movie. That movie’s responsibility is to be true to itself. If I don’t get to make another movie, I’ll make something else. I’ll make a movie for a million dollars. I’ll go write a short story. I’ll go write a book. I believe that. I mean, if I’m put to the test, I hope it’s true. I hope it’s not just a romantic idea.
Judd: That approach frees you up to be as creative as possible because you’re not completely reliant on Hollywood or the studio system to keep you working.
Spike: With Where the Wild Things Are, there was a point where I was told, during the editing process, that they were worried about what the movie was and the problem was also it was financed by multiple companies, so—
Judd: They all wanted their say?
Spike: They were all nervous about—
Judd: Isn’t that the worst, when you can sense that jobs are on the line? I’ve made movies and then the next year people have been fired and it’s not necessarily because of your movie, but you’re definitely a part of what brought down the administration. When we did The Cable Guy, Sony had had a few bad movies in a row and then, suddenly, everybody was gone.
Spike: I feel like even if they’re going to lose their jobs they can’t possibly care about the movie as much as I do. And they can’t possibly go to the lengths that I’ll go to protect it. With every film, I’m so grateful that they made my movie and I will extend myself to keep the conversation open and hear their thoughts. But with Wild Things, there was a point where it started to feel abusive. There was a point where I said to somebody at the studio that I was working with, whom I’m actually close friends with now, I was like, “If I came to you and talked to you about your child the way you’re talking to me about my movie right now, you wouldn’t listen to me. If I came to you and said, ‘Man, your kid is fucked up. He’s a problem child and he is freaking me and everyone out. I think you should put him on medication. You know, he’s really a fucked-up kid,’ you’re never going to listen to me because I’m judging your kid and I clearly don’t like or get your kid. But if you came to me and said, ‘Your kid is really special. I see how special he is. I sat and talked to him the other day and what he was talking about was amazing. But there’s a school that might be better for him than the school that he’s in right now and I’ll go visit it with you if you want…,’ that’s a different thing. I’ll listen to you.”
Judd: It takes a long time to find the people who get what you do. The first half of my career, I was always at war with people. We would fight and scream and curse and cry and I was a terror because people didn’t understand what I was trying to do. They were so mad at me, like I was letting them down. Because Freaks and Geeks didn’t have more viewers or The Ben Stiller Show wasn’t beating 60 Minutes. But The Ben Stiller Show was up against 60 Minutes at seven-thirty on a Sunday! It was an edgy sketch show but they, you know, you get into these battles because either they feel you’re unimportant or they feel like you’re not doing what they want you to do. And then finally you find someone that gets your joke and so you make Superbad and then you say, “Hey, I’ve got another one. Do you want to do Pineapple Express?” and they say, “Yeah.” And suddenly you’re in this great rhythm with a studio because they get your tone. They got the joke. With comedy, as soon as you succeed, you have some credibility and then they trust you more. It must be much more extreme with you because you’re doing things that are always very new to the studio. You have a track record of succeeding doing something that’s completely original, but yet it must also scare them because you are reinventing the wheel every time out.