Did your parents read you Where the Wild Things Are before bed? It may have seemed like an epic, but they probably finished Maurice Sendak's story in minutes and had you to asleep before prime time. Even with the illustrations performed in real time, the book alone would not fill 90 minutes of screen time. Spike Jonze elaborated on the story when he co-wrote the script and directed the movie version of Where the Wild Things Are. It wont be everybody's idea of their childhood fantasy, but it is distinctly Jonze's.
In Sendak's book, Max gets a little too wild playing in his wolf suit and his mom sends him to bed without supper. A forest grows in his bedroom and he becomes king of the wild things. In the movie, Max runs away from home to discover the land of the wild things. He still becomes their king and leads a wild rumpus, but Jonze has the wild things throw dirt clods at each other, build a massive fort and step on each others heads. These arent just random bouts of whimsy, however. They mirror Max's destructive behavior.
Hollywood shouldnt expect a traditional kids movie from the director of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. He even gave his early music videos a touch of the surreal. When Weezers Buddy Holly came on, you might have thought you were watching an episode of Happy Days. Heck, his Sabotage video for The Beastie Boys even fooled Beavis and Butthead into thinking it was only a coming attraction for a video.
Jonze doesnt particularly want to explain Where the Wild Things Are. Put him in front of a group of reporters and he'd rather have everyone share their interpretations of the film. If they insist on doing an interview, hell still throw in some whimsical nonsense. We wouldnt have it any other way.
Question: Why do you take so much time between film projects?
Spike Jonze: Well, they just take a long time. My other two movies took three years. This one took five years and I think after I finished my last one, I didnt start right away. I wanted to take some time and then I didnt realize how long this one was going to take. Everything about this movie became twice as complicated as we thought it was: The script and obviously the way we shot it with these creatures and going to locations. Like, building the suits took almost a year. Doing the faces took another year. We just finished the faces a month ago. Everything about it was more complicated than I ever would have thought.
Q: How much of that time was spent looking for the right Max?
SJ: That was hard. I mean, probably a year. It came down to crunch time. We were already living in Australia and Id fly back here to audition with kids. We were prepping the movie and we still didnt have our hero. Our friend Lance Bangs found Max in Portland, OR. It was a huge relief. We got the first tape from Lance and then Keener was working in Oregon on Into the Wild so I asked Keener to go audition with him. Then they sent me a tape and each tape was more exciting. Then we flew Max to Los Angeles and I came in from Melbourne and we auditioned and basically just beat each other up with blow up boxing gloves and shot NERF guns at each other. I thought, Wow, hes got a good shot. He has good aim so I cast him.
Q: You have to add things to the plot. Where did the new story elements come from?
SJ: We got beaned by a dirt clod and were just like whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't know. Again, all those things, I don't know where they came from. They came from Spain?
Q: Okay, maybe you cant pinpoint your inspiration, but you must have known youd have to add to the story to make a whole movie.
SJ: Yeah, I think for a while I was hesitant to add a story on it because I didnt want to add something that wasnt in the book already because I loved the book so much. The idea I came up with was more just sort of figuring out who Max was and who the wild things were and writing the characters, the invention that the wild things could be wild emotions and that Max goes to this place to try and understand that better. So in creating the wild things as wild emotions, it sort of gave room for basically anything to happen. That was really the way in. Everything did happen because once you start writing characters, the story just came out of that, who Max was and who the wild things were and let the relationship create the story.
Q: Were you nervous about taking on such an iconic story?
SJ: I feel like very early on, before I even was really writing, when I was just writing notes, I sort of got hit by this fear. I started working on it, I would tell my friends and tell people and everyone would have such personal reactions to the book, because they read it when they were a kid and everybody has such a personal relationship to that book. So I started to talk to Maurice about it and Maurice was the one who said, You cant worry about any of that. You cant even worry about what I think of the book. You have to make your version of this movie and make it personal to you. All I ask is that you dont condescend to children, dont pander, make it honest and make it personal. So from that point on, once Maurice gave me that freedom, I gave myself that freedom to not really worry. All I can do is make my version of it. I always look at the book as like a poem because its so sparse yet so deep and theres so much to it. A great poem leaves so much room for everybody to have a different reaction to it.
Q: Were you surprised Sendak trusted you with his book?
SJ: Yeah, I think his attitude was I dont want to make a movie just to make a movie. I dont want to just make some crap to fill the multiplexes for a month. Thats why he didnt make it for 20 years. He trusted us which is astounding and Im grateful. Once he decided to let us make it, he really just gave us his book and said, Make it your own. There was not a sort of protective artist at all. All he was protective of was making it honest. Any time wed write a scene that felt dishonest, hed be the first one to say, This feels phony. Hes an artist through and through. Its pretty remarkable to have a mentor and a producer and a friend who guided us through it. One thing I was just thinking about Maurice is hes such a hard person to explain because hes this one of a kind person. We just did this documentary on him. Its a 40 minute documentary. It comes out on HBO October 14 and its just basically conversations with him. Its like a video portrait of him.
Q: Was the studio a little less receptive to your interpretation of the book?
SJ: Yeah, definitely. Im sure you guys have read about it. In editing, when they finally saw the movie, they were surprised as probably in the same way that Maurice described when he handed the book in, the publishing house was equally surprised. But thats kind of to be expected. What happened was when we made the movie, we were editing it, we showed it to the studio at a certain point and they were just sort of surprised by what the movie was, and what the movie is that you see. I think it just isnt what they expected it to be. Its just not a traditional childrens film. I think they were sort of expecting more of a pixie dust magical fantasy film where we set out to make a movie about childhood. It doesnt have a movie kid in it. It has a real kid in it. Maxs performance is so real and raw. Thats just not really what they were expecting.
Q: Did you make changes to placate them?
SJ: Hell no. We just made the movie we wanted to make. We werent going to work on something that long and care that much about it. It was just a process of getting them comfortable and basically, they had to learn to love the child they had. We triumphed. We stepped on their head.
Q: How did you explain the films tone to the studio, and now to audiences?
SJ: The idea was we werent thinking about whether it was dark or light. We were just trying to make a movie that represents what its like to be a human being at that age. What it feels sometimes, what it can feel like at times when youre nine. When youre nine, theres fun, theres love, theres safety and then theres also times where theres loneliness and longing and loss of control. We were trying to be true to Maurices work and I think Maurices work, his book actually when it came out was attacked by librarians and child psychologists and Better Home and Garden type magazines because it wasnt like a traditional childrens book. It showed this boy being wild, acting out, yelling at his mom and his mom, instead of calming him down and helping him through his emotions and teaching him a lesson, his mom reacted too and yelled at him and sent him to his room. That was something that they said, This book is dangerous for kids because it wasnt teaching the kids a lesson. But, it was truthful and kids recognized that. Kids started taking it out of the library and it became popular because kids loved it. Now, 40 years later, its a classic. Its something that everybody gets. If your friend has a baby, you get them Where the Wild Things Are. I think the movie is coming from the same intention, just to be truthful and not condescend to kids.
Q: What was your introduction to the book?
SJ: My introduction to the book was when I was a kid, my mom read it to me and it was one of the books I loved. Theres probably a handful of books that I deeply, deeply remember. It was Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, Nutshell Library of Maurices stuff and then some Shel Silverstein stuff. Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Missing Piece, The Giving Tree. I feel like those are the ones Id go back to. I remember going back to them when I was eight or when I was 12 or even when I was 15. For some reason, even when youre 12, you go back and read Where the Wild Things Are or In the Night Kitchen, you dont read them in the same way you did when you were five, but at least I remember again when I was 12 looking at the way the bedroom turns into the forest and how the magic of that imaginative creation and being excited by it and inspired by it.
Q: Why was Karen Os music the soundtrack to the film you decided on?
SJ: Karen is one of my favorite artists and shes so childlike in her freedom of expressing herself. Not that she makes innocent music but theres an innocence to her and a depth at the same time, even her most wild stuff from the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. I thought her music could sort of be the heart of the film because her music has so much heart to it. The idea was that we thought we would have pop songs be the score, not pop songs like Britney Spears but pop songs in the great sense of like Brian Wilson or John Lennon, Paul McCartney and David Bowie. I think as a kid, I connected so much to pop songs. As a kid, I remember listening to Across the Universe and feeling that feeling. Even though I didnt really understand exactly what they were writing about, I understood the feeling of it. I Will Survive, the Gloria Gaynor song. When Im seven years old, I could sing along that song and I guess I felt every word of it. I didnt probably relate so much to the woman being dumped and left by the man, but I related somehow to the sense of heartbreak and longing and whatever the things are. Pop music, I think theres a reason kids connect to it. We wanted to tap into that so Karen wrote from that place and didnt write songs about what the scenes were about. [She] wrote songs about what the themes of the movie were about. So even if the specific words arent directly one to one, its the themes and feelings of the songs.
Q: Was there ever discussion of doing CGI wild things?
SJ: I think before we started, Maurice had been trying to make a movie for a while and the studios had sort of talked to him about doing CG, so they were going to do a CG version, they were going to do an animated version but when we started on it, Id always wanted to do it live action. I just thought it would be more exciting and fun. Not only fun, I guess thats the wrong word. More visceral and dangerous.
Q: Which wild thing do you most identify with?
SJ: I think all of them. I think all the characters I feel a part of. In my other movies too. In the movies that Charlie Kaufman wrote, I feel like even those, you kind of have to be connected to them all.
Q: Whats the wildest thing youve done?
SJ: I ate a building, a hotel.
Q: Why'd you do that?
SJ: I was mad at it.
Q: Did it taste good?
SJ: No.
Where the Wild Things Are opens October 16.
In Sendak's book, Max gets a little too wild playing in his wolf suit and his mom sends him to bed without supper. A forest grows in his bedroom and he becomes king of the wild things. In the movie, Max runs away from home to discover the land of the wild things. He still becomes their king and leads a wild rumpus, but Jonze has the wild things throw dirt clods at each other, build a massive fort and step on each others heads. These arent just random bouts of whimsy, however. They mirror Max's destructive behavior.
Hollywood shouldnt expect a traditional kids movie from the director of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. He even gave his early music videos a touch of the surreal. When Weezers Buddy Holly came on, you might have thought you were watching an episode of Happy Days. Heck, his Sabotage video for The Beastie Boys even fooled Beavis and Butthead into thinking it was only a coming attraction for a video.
Jonze doesnt particularly want to explain Where the Wild Things Are. Put him in front of a group of reporters and he'd rather have everyone share their interpretations of the film. If they insist on doing an interview, hell still throw in some whimsical nonsense. We wouldnt have it any other way.
Question: Why do you take so much time between film projects?
Spike Jonze: Well, they just take a long time. My other two movies took three years. This one took five years and I think after I finished my last one, I didnt start right away. I wanted to take some time and then I didnt realize how long this one was going to take. Everything about this movie became twice as complicated as we thought it was: The script and obviously the way we shot it with these creatures and going to locations. Like, building the suits took almost a year. Doing the faces took another year. We just finished the faces a month ago. Everything about it was more complicated than I ever would have thought.
Q: How much of that time was spent looking for the right Max?
SJ: That was hard. I mean, probably a year. It came down to crunch time. We were already living in Australia and Id fly back here to audition with kids. We were prepping the movie and we still didnt have our hero. Our friend Lance Bangs found Max in Portland, OR. It was a huge relief. We got the first tape from Lance and then Keener was working in Oregon on Into the Wild so I asked Keener to go audition with him. Then they sent me a tape and each tape was more exciting. Then we flew Max to Los Angeles and I came in from Melbourne and we auditioned and basically just beat each other up with blow up boxing gloves and shot NERF guns at each other. I thought, Wow, hes got a good shot. He has good aim so I cast him.
Q: You have to add things to the plot. Where did the new story elements come from?
SJ: We got beaned by a dirt clod and were just like whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't know. Again, all those things, I don't know where they came from. They came from Spain?
Q: Okay, maybe you cant pinpoint your inspiration, but you must have known youd have to add to the story to make a whole movie.
SJ: Yeah, I think for a while I was hesitant to add a story on it because I didnt want to add something that wasnt in the book already because I loved the book so much. The idea I came up with was more just sort of figuring out who Max was and who the wild things were and writing the characters, the invention that the wild things could be wild emotions and that Max goes to this place to try and understand that better. So in creating the wild things as wild emotions, it sort of gave room for basically anything to happen. That was really the way in. Everything did happen because once you start writing characters, the story just came out of that, who Max was and who the wild things were and let the relationship create the story.
Q: Were you nervous about taking on such an iconic story?
SJ: I feel like very early on, before I even was really writing, when I was just writing notes, I sort of got hit by this fear. I started working on it, I would tell my friends and tell people and everyone would have such personal reactions to the book, because they read it when they were a kid and everybody has such a personal relationship to that book. So I started to talk to Maurice about it and Maurice was the one who said, You cant worry about any of that. You cant even worry about what I think of the book. You have to make your version of this movie and make it personal to you. All I ask is that you dont condescend to children, dont pander, make it honest and make it personal. So from that point on, once Maurice gave me that freedom, I gave myself that freedom to not really worry. All I can do is make my version of it. I always look at the book as like a poem because its so sparse yet so deep and theres so much to it. A great poem leaves so much room for everybody to have a different reaction to it.
Q: Were you surprised Sendak trusted you with his book?
SJ: Yeah, I think his attitude was I dont want to make a movie just to make a movie. I dont want to just make some crap to fill the multiplexes for a month. Thats why he didnt make it for 20 years. He trusted us which is astounding and Im grateful. Once he decided to let us make it, he really just gave us his book and said, Make it your own. There was not a sort of protective artist at all. All he was protective of was making it honest. Any time wed write a scene that felt dishonest, hed be the first one to say, This feels phony. Hes an artist through and through. Its pretty remarkable to have a mentor and a producer and a friend who guided us through it. One thing I was just thinking about Maurice is hes such a hard person to explain because hes this one of a kind person. We just did this documentary on him. Its a 40 minute documentary. It comes out on HBO October 14 and its just basically conversations with him. Its like a video portrait of him.
Q: Was the studio a little less receptive to your interpretation of the book?
SJ: Yeah, definitely. Im sure you guys have read about it. In editing, when they finally saw the movie, they were surprised as probably in the same way that Maurice described when he handed the book in, the publishing house was equally surprised. But thats kind of to be expected. What happened was when we made the movie, we were editing it, we showed it to the studio at a certain point and they were just sort of surprised by what the movie was, and what the movie is that you see. I think it just isnt what they expected it to be. Its just not a traditional childrens film. I think they were sort of expecting more of a pixie dust magical fantasy film where we set out to make a movie about childhood. It doesnt have a movie kid in it. It has a real kid in it. Maxs performance is so real and raw. Thats just not really what they were expecting.
Q: Did you make changes to placate them?
SJ: Hell no. We just made the movie we wanted to make. We werent going to work on something that long and care that much about it. It was just a process of getting them comfortable and basically, they had to learn to love the child they had. We triumphed. We stepped on their head.
Q: How did you explain the films tone to the studio, and now to audiences?
SJ: The idea was we werent thinking about whether it was dark or light. We were just trying to make a movie that represents what its like to be a human being at that age. What it feels sometimes, what it can feel like at times when youre nine. When youre nine, theres fun, theres love, theres safety and then theres also times where theres loneliness and longing and loss of control. We were trying to be true to Maurices work and I think Maurices work, his book actually when it came out was attacked by librarians and child psychologists and Better Home and Garden type magazines because it wasnt like a traditional childrens book. It showed this boy being wild, acting out, yelling at his mom and his mom, instead of calming him down and helping him through his emotions and teaching him a lesson, his mom reacted too and yelled at him and sent him to his room. That was something that they said, This book is dangerous for kids because it wasnt teaching the kids a lesson. But, it was truthful and kids recognized that. Kids started taking it out of the library and it became popular because kids loved it. Now, 40 years later, its a classic. Its something that everybody gets. If your friend has a baby, you get them Where the Wild Things Are. I think the movie is coming from the same intention, just to be truthful and not condescend to kids.
Q: What was your introduction to the book?
SJ: My introduction to the book was when I was a kid, my mom read it to me and it was one of the books I loved. Theres probably a handful of books that I deeply, deeply remember. It was Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, Nutshell Library of Maurices stuff and then some Shel Silverstein stuff. Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Missing Piece, The Giving Tree. I feel like those are the ones Id go back to. I remember going back to them when I was eight or when I was 12 or even when I was 15. For some reason, even when youre 12, you go back and read Where the Wild Things Are or In the Night Kitchen, you dont read them in the same way you did when you were five, but at least I remember again when I was 12 looking at the way the bedroom turns into the forest and how the magic of that imaginative creation and being excited by it and inspired by it.
Q: Why was Karen Os music the soundtrack to the film you decided on?
SJ: Karen is one of my favorite artists and shes so childlike in her freedom of expressing herself. Not that she makes innocent music but theres an innocence to her and a depth at the same time, even her most wild stuff from the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. I thought her music could sort of be the heart of the film because her music has so much heart to it. The idea was that we thought we would have pop songs be the score, not pop songs like Britney Spears but pop songs in the great sense of like Brian Wilson or John Lennon, Paul McCartney and David Bowie. I think as a kid, I connected so much to pop songs. As a kid, I remember listening to Across the Universe and feeling that feeling. Even though I didnt really understand exactly what they were writing about, I understood the feeling of it. I Will Survive, the Gloria Gaynor song. When Im seven years old, I could sing along that song and I guess I felt every word of it. I didnt probably relate so much to the woman being dumped and left by the man, but I related somehow to the sense of heartbreak and longing and whatever the things are. Pop music, I think theres a reason kids connect to it. We wanted to tap into that so Karen wrote from that place and didnt write songs about what the scenes were about. [She] wrote songs about what the themes of the movie were about. So even if the specific words arent directly one to one, its the themes and feelings of the songs.
Q: Was there ever discussion of doing CGI wild things?
SJ: I think before we started, Maurice had been trying to make a movie for a while and the studios had sort of talked to him about doing CG, so they were going to do a CG version, they were going to do an animated version but when we started on it, Id always wanted to do it live action. I just thought it would be more exciting and fun. Not only fun, I guess thats the wrong word. More visceral and dangerous.
Q: Which wild thing do you most identify with?
SJ: I think all of them. I think all the characters I feel a part of. In my other movies too. In the movies that Charlie Kaufman wrote, I feel like even those, you kind of have to be connected to them all.
Q: Whats the wildest thing youve done?
SJ: I ate a building, a hotel.
Q: Why'd you do that?
SJ: I was mad at it.
Q: Did it taste good?
SJ: No.
Where the Wild Things Are opens October 16.
VIEW 13 of 13 COMMENTS
buckylittlewing:
I absolutely love everything about this movie and book....I can now die happy and complete.
melx:
Cool interview, I loved the book but never saw the movie. I think I'm gonna add it to my netflix.