Sabotage - Beastie Boys

I love the way Spike Jonze constantly manages to surprise with his music videos. I consider him the number one and the king of the genre. He’s also a brilliant film director and has directed many great commercials as well, with several of my favourite featurefilms among his work.

When the Beastie Boys and Spike Jonze set out to make the video for “Sabotage” in 1994, the plan - if it could be called that - was pure mayhem. Shot guerrilla-style on the streets of Los Angeles, the video was made with minimal permits, minimal preparation, and maximum disregard for public confusion. The result was a fake 1970s cop show so convincing that passersby - and reportedly even a few real police officers - briefly believed they were witnessing an actual crime spree.

The concept came together quickly. The Beastie Boys had originally imagined a straightforward performance video, but Jonze countered with a parody of gritty, low-budget television police dramas like Starsky & Hutch and CHiPs. The band immediately leaned into the idea, inventing absurd alter egos - Vic Colfari, Cochese, and Bobby “The Rookie” - and donning intentionally terrible wigs, fake mustaches, and polyester bravado. The acting was deliberately bad, a knowing send-up of macho TV clichés played with complete seriousness.

Much of the video’s manic energy came from how it was filmed. Jonze often operated the camera himself, running alongside the band, hopping onto moving vehicles, and using rapid zooms to mimic the hyperactive visual language of 1970s television. The production was loose to the point of recklessness: scenes were staged in real traffic, fake guns were waved in public, and explosions of performative masculinity unfolded without explanation to anyone nearby.

Perhaps the most Spike Jonze touch of all was that he credited himself under a fake name - “Nathanial Hornblower” - as if the video were an actual forgotten TV relic. MTV initially didn’t quite know how to categorize it. It wasn’t polished, glamorous, or aspirational. It was loud, chaotic, and aggressively silly.

That uncertainty didn’t last long. “Sabotage” quickly became one of the most iconic music videos of the decade, redefining what a rap video could be: funny without being novelty, cinematic without being slick, and self-aware without winking too hard. What began as a barely sanctioned street shoot ended up cementing the Beastie Boys and Spike Jonze as masters of controlled chaos - turning a parody of bad television into a timeless piece of pop culture.