10 Insane Ways Directors Appeared In Their Own Movies

Former skateboarder, music video director and Jackass co-creator Spike Jonze is nothing if not eclectic in his appearances in front of the camera, even when writing and directing thoughtful near-future sci-fi romances about the potential of artificial intelligence.

In 2013, for example, he combined acting gigs in Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (playing an old lady visiting a sex therapist in a scene cut from the theatrical release but returned to the DVD) and prestige Martin Scorsese drama The Wolf Of Wall Street (as the boss that introduces Leonardo DiCaprio to trading penny stocks) with his direction of the aforementioned A.I. romance, Her.

For his own appearance in Her, Jonze created a whole plausible near-future video game concept with digital artist and short filmmaker David O'Reilly, and then used it simply to hurl childish, sweary abuse at the movie's star: Joaquin Phoenix.

A great deal of world-building planning went into imagining how such a game might work, making the not-too-distant futuristic environment of Her feel real but offbeat and indie. Jonze and O'Reilly created a hologram-style visual with multiple projectors and nested perspective in which Phoenix's controller-free hands and fingers guided an alien through a lush landscape.

All of this served simply to lead to Jonze, voicing a bobble-headed alien child that knocks out the player character, turning to Phoenix's Theodore and telling him in no uncertain terms: "F*ck you, sh*thead, f*ckface, f*ckhead. Get the f*ck out of my face!"