You know you could become the next Spike Jonze when Spike Jonze himself singles you out (on his blog, no less) as one of his favorite new directors. That's what happened to Ray Tintori (above left), the 26-year-old Brooklyn filmmaker who became a cult hero on YouTube last year for two high-concept music videos he made for psych-rockers (and college buddies) MGMT. The clips, for "Time to Pretend" and "Electric Feel," feature the duo surfing through prismatic wormholes, riding Godzilla-sized cats, and rocking out with a band of animatronic bears.
Tintori's dreamlike aesthetic is catching on. His work on Chairlift's "Evident Utensil" was nominated for a Breakthrough Video Award on MTV, and his video for the Killers' "Spaceman" has been in heavy rotation. "I've gone from totally DIY, shooting the Chairlift video in a friend's swimming pool, to shooting the Killers with a giant budget that got us a helicopter, a bunch of trains, and an assistant director with a megaphone," Tintori says. "It's surreal."
After earning acclaim for a series of short films (a New York mag blogger described the low-budget flick Jettison Your Loved Ones as "the most hypnotic and strange six minutes you'll ever spend staring at a computer screen"), Tintori won an honorable mention at Sundance for his dark comedy Death to the Tinman. Next up: his first feature, Light Boxes, an adaptation of a novel about an endless winter — produced by none other than fan turned collaborator Spike Jonze.
