The best director you've never heard of is going big time
He hangs with Spike Jonze, lays claim to inventing Bullet Time, and shoots music videos for rock stars like Beck and Björk. And he's in the throes of directing a blockbuster starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet that's due next year. So why isn't Michel Gondry a household name? Perhaps the retrospective at Resfest in September and the DVD project he's kicking out in October will finally raise his profile. It's time to take a closer look at this overlooked director.
| 
Courtesy of Partizan From Left: The White Stripes, "Fell in Love With a Girl"; Björk, "Hyperballad"; Michael Gondry, Directors Label DVD
From the Archives First film: The Versailles-born prodigy made a zoetrope that zoomed from outer space to the inner world of atoms when he was 12. (He's 40 now.) Big break: In 1993, Björk tapped the auteur to direct her debut video as a solo artist, "Human Behaviour." Credits include: His 1994 spot for Levi's is listed in Guinness World Records as the most award-winning commercial of all time. The time-freeze technique used in his 1996 Smirnoff ad, "Smarienberg," spawned countless imitators, most famously Bullet Time in The Matrix. He's done music videos for Daft Punk, the White Stripes, and the Rolling Stones, among others.
Now Playing Dream team: Gondry, Jonze, and Chris Cunningham (with Palm Pictures) are producing the Directors Label series of DVDs to showcase their own music videos, shorts, and commercials, and the work of other alternative directors. Gondry's DVD: His disc includes the kaleidoscopic, Busby Berkeley-like video for the Chemical Brothers' "Let Forever Be," plus drawings and a making-of featurette. On sale: October 28. On tour: The Resfest Digital Film Festival (www.resfest.com) screens 16 years' worth of Gondry's music videos and ads, as well as the short Drumb and Drumber. First fest dates: San Francisco, September 18-21; New York, October 9-12.
| 
Courtesy of Partizan From Left: Beck, "Deadweight"; Björk, "Human Behavior"; Daft Punk, "Around the World"
Coming Soon
The blockbuster: Gondry and quirky scribe Charlie Kaufman pair up for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. (The two also collaborated on the 2002 art-house flick Human Nature.) The plot: Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet play estranged lovers who have their memories of each other medically erased. The twist: Mid-procedure, Carrey's character has a change of heart. Desperate to hold on to his memories, "he brings her into places she doesn't belong," Gondry says. "So she starts to be part of memories she was not in, and that creates interesting paradoxes." In theaters: 2004.
| PLAY
| The Bone-Crunching Physics of Half-Life 2
| Dragons, and Slime Molds, and Orcs! Oh, My!
| Being Michel Gondry
| It’s a Surreal World After All
| Reviews
| Fetish
| Test
