Sam> I can’t pinpoint exactly when it all clicked that this was the same person until about the mid-2000s. LBB> If it’s someone you personally know, how did you get to know him and how has your relationship evolved over the years? If you don’t know him, how did you go about finding to learn more about him and his work? I distinctly remember seeing his Levi’s Flyweight Jeans commercial from 2002, but like his skateboarding and music video work, I didn’t know Spike worked on it. While many reading this may be familiar with his venerable commercial work, I wasn’t exposed to it until I discovered the advertising industry in the late 00s. The Invisible Board from Yeah Right!, the Chaplin sequence from Mouse, and the Fully Flared intro stand out to me. His co-directed skits with Ty Evans and Rick Howard are imprinted on my brain as pure expressions of the feeling that comes from skating. As I was falling into skating myself, I was equally enamoured with his work for Girl Skateboards (later Crailtap Distribution). I feel a kinship with Spike as both our teen years were spent skateboarding (or BMX’ing) and using that as a way to explore filmmaking. But then, even as a little gay kid, the Björk video for It’s Oh So Quiet was a little world of drama and performance. Or the Beastie Boys Sabotage video for its epic parody of 70’s crime dramas. There is such a range but also a consistency of joy, fun, and subversiveness that reflecting makes sense, like “oh, of course, that’s a Spike Jonze video,” but back then, it was like did you see you that Fat Boy Slim video with the weird dance troupe? But, as a teenager, I had no idea who or what made this work. As I was growing up in the 90s/00s, his music videos were all over MuchMusic (the Canadian MTV), and it was always the kind of work that stuck with you. Sam>I loved Spike’s work before I knew it was Spike. LBB> How long has he been important to you and what are your first memories of meeting him or coming across his work? Sam> Like many, my heroes can jump from reference to reference, but one that has quietly built an impact on me over my life has always been Spike Jonze. LBB> Who would you say is your creative hero? He’s a fierce proponent of we versus me and volunteers with PrideAM, an organisation dedicated to promoting and celebrating LGBTQ+ people in the advertising and marketing industry. Nowadays, his intentions are similar, making cool stuff for brands and marketers that want to stand out and please a crowd. He spent his teen years running the streets with a skateboard and camera in hand in pursuit of creating cool stuff. Sam Archibald is a creative director for Shortstop, based in Halifax, Canada.
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