Let the Wild Rumpus Start

Long article, so my abridgment:

Bringing ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ to the Screen

“We’re on the verge of losing a movie.” He was referring to “Where the Wild Things Are,” a big-budget adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic picture book for children. According to Faraci, executives at Warner Brothers had deemed an early cut of the film “too weird and ‘too scary’ ” and were now contemplating extensive personnel changes and reshoots. . . .

“Where the Wild Things Are” is arguably of a piece with Jonze’s earlier works; it features moments of transcendent beauty and moments of profound silliness. . . . it represents a sharp departure from those family-friendly blockbusters. Most kids’ movies are brightly, mouthwateringly colorful; Jonze favored a mushy-vegetable palate of greens and browns. Most kids’ movies have a clearly defined plot and an unambiguous moral lesson; Jonze’s film has about as much plot as an episode of “Jackass.” Most kids’ movies crackle with one-liners; in “Where the Wild Things Are,” the characters talk over one another and spend a lot of time stumbling over their own words as they try to articulate their feelings. . . .

Catherine Keener, who was nominated for an Oscar for her work in “Being John Malkovich” and who plays a divorced mother in “Where the Wild Things Are,” told me that her 10-year-old son, Clyde, once asked her why Jonze didn’t live with his parents; apparently Clyde didn’t realize that Jonze was an adult. . . .

When I sat down with Jonze, I’d just seen a rough cut of the movie, and although I’d been expecting something unusual, I hadn’t quite been prepared . . .

“Everything we did, all the decisions that we made, were to try to capture the feeling of what it is to be 9.” . . .

“Harold and the Purple Crayon” tells the story of a boy who lives in a world of his own imagining; whatever he draws becomes his reality. It was in many ways the perfect vehicle for Jonze. “Spike is Harold,” Vince Landay, Jonze’s longtime producer, told me. “He’s an imaginative kid who for one reason or another has been allowed to fully explore his imagination.” Carls wanted Jonze to direct the movie, and he arranged a meeting between Jonze and Sendak. In spite of their 42-year age difference, the two men hit it off. “They’re both still very much connected to that child self,” Carls told me. “There’s a valve in all of us that shuts itself off between childhood and adolescence and adulthood. With Maurice, there’s a leaky valve. Spike is the same way. He sees the world as a big playground.” . . .

Growing up, Jonze told me, he completely identified with Max. In 2001 and 2002, while filming “Adaptation,” Jonze would read the book at night in his Los Feliz bedroom. “I’d read it and put it down next to my bed and think about it,” he said. Every once in a while, Sendak would call and they’d talk about work, art, Mickey Mouse, their lives. But whenever the subject of a “Wild Things” movie came up, Jonze told me, his answer was the same: “I love it in this form, and I don’t want to add something on that seems extraneous.” . . .

Then he began to think of the wild things as actually being wild emotions, embodying all the intense things children — and grown-ups — sometimes feel. “I felt that I could write infinitely about that, because that’s so much of what we are,” he told me. Excited, Jonze scribbled down some notes and called Sendak. . . .

Jonze asked Dave Eggers, the novelist and nonfiction writer, to write the screenplay with him; . . . To unwind, they’d ride around the house on skateboards and shoot each other with BB guns. Sendak had instructed Jonze to make the movie personal, so Jonze gave Max a single mom. He and Eggers spent hours talking about their childhoods and their families. . . .

Really, though, the quarrel was about something more unusual in Hollywood than darkness versus light, something more central to Jonze’s identity: the question of plot versus attitude. . . . Jonze’s attitude, much more than the ability to spin an enthralling tale, is at the heart of who he is and why he matters to people. His music videos don’t tell stories; they capture a feeling. . . .

Sciretta, wearing a “Ghostbusters” T-shirt, agreed. “It’s so insanely crazy and awesome and so untraditional,” he said. “It feels like a movie that was written by a child who knew what he was doing but had never seen a movie before.” The fact that Sciretta’s compliment would sound in another context like a criticism is telling: people who hate the movie will probably say that the story was poorly crafted, and people who love it will praise its childlike quality. . . .