Spike Jonze is known for creating intimate stories in unique and unusual ways. His stories are simple, but dynamic and fresh. In the early 2000s, Jonze got the idea for Her while engaging with a website in which one could instant message with an artificial intelligence. He then encountered a photograph, 2563 by Todd Hildo, depicting a blonde woman in front of a group of autumn trees, her back to the camera. An article about Jonze's development of the idea in Vulture says, "When Jonze started to write his newest film, he made a small editorial addition to the image—a ragged piece of a yellow Post-it note that he stuck on the glass over the photograph. Then he took it off, replaced it with another, and then another. On the one that he finally decided felt right, he had written three lowercase letters in black marker: her."
Her was the first screenplay that Jonze wrote completely by himself, and he did so in 5 months, always envisioning Joaquin Phoenix as his protagonist. He worked closely with his cinematographer, Hoyte Van Hoytema, and his other designers to achieve a singular visual style, both cleanly futuristic and hauntingly contemporary. Filming took place in Los Angeles and Shanghai. Samantha Morton read Samantha's part during filming, sequestering herself in a small recording box and resisting interaction with her scene partner, Phoenix, as much as possible. Jonze approached filming in an especially collaborative way, but from an especially personal place as well. In an essay about his work, Jonze once wrote, "Every time I go to make something, I’m trying to discover … what I like and what I’m into. It’s like I’m figuring out who I am again.”
The film received widely positive reviews from critics and audiences. At the Academy Awards, Jonze won for Best Original Screenplay.
