Before Spike Jonze was the extremely reputable filmmaker we know today, one of his assignments in the '90s was to shoot photographs of Beastie Boys for Dirt magazine. The result of that shoot was a close bond between himself and the three MC's, Mike "Mike D" Diamond, Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz and Adam "MCA" Yauch.
With that friendship, they worked together again when the Beastie Boys asked him to direct their '70s cop inspired video for "Sabotage" in 1994, which turned out to be a huge hit, bringing in many awards, which undoubtedly put Jonze on the map. The success of the video led the four guys to actually come up with a feature-length film idea called We Can Do This.
"The four of us wrote a script together," Jonze told Indiewire. "It was called We Can Do This because it had ... it was so surreal and out there and [Adam "MCA" Yauch's filmmaker alter ego] Nathanial Hornblower was a character as the director. One of the characters from 'Sabotage', Sir Stuart Wallace, was a character. Both played by Yauch and it just would've been ridiculous and fun ... There were no 1970s cops in it, but it was definitely in the same spirit."
Unfortunately the film never came to fruition, but Jonze did direct the 2011 video for "Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win."
"They've been a big influence on me my whole life," Jonze added. "Getting to work with them was a big influence on me. Horowitz is starting to act again. He did a movie this year [Noah Baumbach's "While We're Young"] and that guy is good on screen. So charismatic."
Check out the video for "Sabotage."
