After I saw Tron: Legacy, I couldn’t get the Daft Punk soundtrack out of my head and, of course, any time I think about Daft Punk, I end up thinking about the plight of lonely dog named Charles, trying to make it on his own in the big city.
I’m referring, of course, to Spike Jonze’s brilliant short film, Big City Nights. Often mistakenly considered to merely be a music video, it is instead a satire of the conventions of pop culture that also works as an affectionate homage to every fish (or dog) out of water story ever told. Daft Punk’s Da Funk just happens to be playing in the background.
I think I was either 11 or 12 when I first saw it, at which time I think I just thought it was kind of funny and kind of weird and not much else. Fortunately, I was able to rediscover it when I bought a wonderful little DVD called The Works of Director Spike Jonze.
Anyway, like most works of brilliance, the art speaks for itself…
(Sorry, clicking on the embedded video here will cause another link — leading to the actual video on Youtube — to come up. Which sucks! But the link is safe and the video is worth watching.)
Through the Shattered Lens 
Very cool video, Spike Jonze is awesome. Liked the one he did for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but did not realize he did so many music videos.
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Oh, like David Fincher (waits for Lisa Marie to comment on David Fincher) Jonze got his filmmaking chops doing lots of music videos.
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True, David Fincher did get his start in music videos and so did Brett Ratner for that matter. But I think the work of Jonze and Mark Romanek make up for any of the missteps of other music video graduates.
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All I know is that SPike Jonze did one of the best music videos ever: Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage”
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Oh, you should get the Best of Spike Jonze video b/c it has all of his music videos on there. I like Sabotage b/c they’re all so cute with their fake mustaches but my personal favorites of the videos on the DVD are Cannonball (which he did for the Breeders) and then the one he did for the Chemical Brothers with Sofia Coppola as the gymnast. Oh! And the one where Christopher Walken is like dancing. I love that one too. OH! And speaking of dancing — Praise You, the one where the dance troupe is dancing outside the theater.
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Yeah, after “Sabotage” my second favorite Jonze video is “Weapon of Choice”
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