A lowly puppeteer takes a job as a file clerk in an office, only to discover a mysterious portal that transports a person into the mind of actor John Malkovich, only to be spit out alongside the New Jersey Turnpike fifteen minutes later.

It’s hard to imagine that Spike Jonze’s mind-melder was also the debut film from this music and skateboard video director. But Charlie Kaufman’s script helped Jonze create such a fully-formed universe of the hilariously bizarre (and plaintively melancholy) that it become an immediate modern classic.