“Well,” he says, “when we got together, we weren’t directors. But we sort of grew up together, in a way, from our early twenties to our early thirties.”

And was that a big influence on you?

“Definitely. Yeah. She was a big part of my life and a big part of forming who I was.”

I mention the common belief that Lost in Translation—in which Scarlett Johansson’s character’s husband is a photographer waylaid by work and other distractions—is a coded version of their marriage, and say that he must be aware of that perception.

“Yeah, I am,” he says. “But, you know, all I will say is that’s somebody who I was with for ten years. That’s not really how one would represent somebody.…” This sentence also trails off, and it feels like he’s caught between refuting what he considers an obvious absurdity and his distaste at having found himself, momentarily, even caring. If so, the latter wins out. “That’s all,” he says. “You can write whatever you want, but I won’t participate in that one, either.”

jonze may make other movies like Where the Wild Things Are, but he is clearly determined never to make another movie in the way he made Where the Wild Things Are. However proud he feels of the final result, and however much he succeeded in digging in his heels well and long enough to preserve his creation, it has surely taken a toll. “You know, I’ll certainly never be in a situation…” he begins. “I’ll still make movies for studios, but my editing process will be much further removed from the studio system. Because I don’t understand it. I don’t understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies. So if that’s how they do it, then I don’t think I want to do it.”

I ask three members of the cast what they think Jonze’s new movie is about.

“It’s about real life,” says Max Records. “It’s about childhood. It’s about not talking down to kids.”

“It’s about all these different points of view,” says Catherine Keener, “and maybe how a family can be together and still be so distant, but want to be close and keep trying to be close. This real sense of yearning for love and closeness.”

“Trying to find a safe place,” says James Gandolfini, “in this fucking chaos we have created for ourselves. I think the movie shows that it’s not really anywhere. You’ve kind of got to maybe do the best you can, I guess.”

at musso & frank, Jonze tells me that he is late for an appointment, but I carry on asking and asking for as long as I can.

Why, I ask him, do you make movies

“I gotta go,” he repeats. “Why do I make movies? What a crazy question.”

Seriously, I say.

“I don’t know. I love making things. I just love making things.”

He appears relieved; it seemed an impossible question, but he found an answer.

Why, I ask, do you like making things?

For a second or two, I’m wondering whether, maybe, we’re stumbling toward a deep pool of the most intrinsic, majestic truths.

Spike Jonze looks at me, disbelieving. Answer a question, all you get is a worse one.

“Fuck!” he says.

chris heath_ is a gq correspondent. He wrote about Larry King in the June issue._