Where The Wild Things Are

[Good Old Neon]

The New Yorker has published an excerpt from Dave Eggers’, The Wild Things.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/08/24/090824fi_fiction_eggers

[KevinG]

The New Yorker has published an excerpt from Dave Eggers’, The Wild Things.

 

http://www.newyorker..._fiction_eggers

 

freaking awesome

[Sir Stewart]

I saw a TV ad for this. It looks so incredible.

[Gobias Industries]

The New Yorker has published an excerpt from Dave Eggers’, The Wild Things.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/08/24/090824fi_fiction_eggers

 

I love. Putting it on my "to buy" list when it comes out.

[gogo]

Maurice Sendak tells parents to go to hell

This Friday, October 16, the movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are opens in theaters.

 

 

The poignant 10-sentence book about an angry boy who is sent to bed without supper and sails to a magical land overrun by wild creatures has been made into a full-length feature film with a script by director Spike Jonze (recently interviewed by the Chronicle) and local boy Dave Eggers.

 

Ever since the media got word of the film, reporters have hounded Sendak, Eggers, and Jonze. One of the main questions reporters are asking is, Will this film based on one of the best children's books of all-time be appropriate for children?

 

The creative minds behind this film have seemed to dance around this question in most interviews, but Sendak freely spoke his mind for a Newsweek story, appearing in the October 19 magazine. Sendak, Jonze, and Eggers were all interviewed for the story.

 

Reporter: "What do you say to parents who think the Wild Things film may be too scary?"

 

Sendak: "I would tell them to go to hell. That's a question I will not tolerate."

 

Reporter: "Because kids can handle it?"

 

Sendak: "If they can't handle it, go home. Or wet your pants. Do whatever you like. But it's not a question that can be answered."

 

Jonze: "Dave, you want to field that one?"

 

Eggers: "The part about kids wetting their pants? Should kids wear diapers when they go to the movies? I think adults should wear diapers going to it, too. I think everyone should be prepared for any eventuality."

 

Sendak: "I think you're right. This concentration on kids being scared, as though we as adults can't be scared. Of course we're scared. I'm scared of watching a TV show about vampires. I can't fall asleep. It never stops. We're grown-ups; we know better, but we're afraid."

 

Reporter: "Why is that important in art?"

 

Sendak: "Because it's truth. You don't want to do something that's all terrifying. I saw the most horrendous movies that were unfit for child's eyes. So what? I managed to survive."

[jakobnicholas]

Early reviews are mostly glowing. 4 stars from Rolling Stone. It sounds like it might be a great movie for adults and kids alike. Pitchfork has an interesting interview with Spike Jonze:

 

Pitchfork: I'm not sure if you were in the theater tonight. Do you enjoy watching your art with an audience?

 

Spike Jonze: When we put out a music video DVD [for the Director's Label series], we would do 90-minute screenings, and those were really fun. Normally when you put it out you don't get to watch different people, so that's just really fun.

 

Pitchfork: I was trying to think of anything in your past that had any connection to this narrative, and the one thing I could think of was your Daft Punk "Da Funk" video, because it's a mirror image opposite of Where the Wild Things Are-- one animal in a world of humans.

 

SJ: Yeah, I never thought about that.

 

Pitchfork: Obviously, the story itself comes from Maurice Sendak however: How did you end up hooking up with Maurice?

 

SJ: I had known him for a number of years, because he was producing another movie that didn't end up happening, but through that I got to see him as someone whose work I liked.

 

It was a book that he had talked to me about over the years a few times, and it was a book that I loved, and when he brought it up to me I was very excited but also very apprehensive, because it was something that I thought was so great and so perfect in its form-- What am I going to add to that? I was so apprehensive to add something just for the sake of adding it, for the sake of a movie, and not really having a reason to make it, basically. But eventually I came up with the idea that you see what you see there, and Maurice was great, he was insistent upon that taking it there.

 

Pitchfork: He was very generous about allowing you to create your own film?

 

SJ: Yeah, I really don't think we could have done it without that. I would have been too nervous to make something he wouldn't like. And I didn't want to do that.

 

We were really nervous with the first script, because we didn't know what he would think. He read it three times in a row. The first time he read it, he was like, "It's not like my book." And then he said, "Oh wait, I told them not to make it like my book." And then he said, "Let me read it again," and he started to be able to feel it. By the third time, he was totally detached from anything before, and was able to feel it for what it was, and he called us up and told us he wanted to do it.

 

He had script approval, so if he didn't like it, we just wouldn't have done it. So it was a big call to get that call from him telling us that he liked it, and good luck.

 

Pitchfork: How long was that gap between those readings?

 

SJ: He read it three times in one day.

 

Pitchfork: So he called you after the first reading, and said--

 

SJ: No, luckily he didn't call us then. He went through that process on his own and called us, and then afterward he told me.

 

Pitchfork: When you first started to imagine it, did you do so in more cinematic terms or narrative terms? It's virtually a picture book, and some of the power of it is that it's less a book someone would read to you as it is a book that a child can get lost in.

 

SJ: Well, cinematic terms. I knew I wanted it to be live action; I wanted to build the wild things for real. I wanted to be on location. I wanted it to be a real boy with real creatures, in a dangerous, unpredictable environment, where you're with wild animals. But that wasn't enough to make a movie. It was more the idea that gave me confidence that there was a movie there was that the wild creatures were wild emotions, and Max was trying to understand things that were confusing and frightening, and made him anxious-- things being out of control, and him being sort of emotionally wild himself.

 

Pitchfork: Did you see it as a childhood thing, in terms of the emotions, or are these more just human emotions to you? The adult relationships in the film have the same needs and fears in some ways.

 

SJ: The emotions I felt were true to a child, were true to what it feels like to be a kid. What the world is like from a nine-year-old's point of view. Like when you're nine, you haven't figured out how to process all this.

 

My memory is that nothing is explained to you, you've got to try to figure it out, pick up clues from the people around you, try to figure it out from their reactions. And the things that are out of control are scary-- I mean they still are, to me. But I think even more so at that age, when you really have no sense of control of your life.

 

And so the things that are really out of control, and scary, are emotions-- of people around you, that are unpredictable, or those in yourself which are unpredictable. Like having a tantrum. The thing I remember most about having a tantrum is not the rage during the tantrum, but the being freaked out afterwards, and embarrassed, and guilty. It's scary, to lose control of yourself. We wanted the movie to feel like it was made by a nine-year-old, on some levels. So like you're in the headspace of a nine-year-old, and you're in the world, you're on the island with Max, trying to understand this foreign place. It kind of feels like being a kid, you've just shown up to this place, and there's no road map to it.

 

Pitchfork: Were there other examples of children's art that you were looking at? Things that were sort of about childhood, rather than for a child?

 

SJ: It wasn't so much that we looked at them; there's things that we knew did it right, but we didn't reference them, we went back and watched them. Like The Black Stallion, that I loved, in 1981, it's beautiful. My Life as a Dog. The 400 Blows. there are a couple others, just films that feel like they're from a kid's point of view looking at the world.

 

Pitchfork: How did you and Dave Eggers end up working together?

 

SJ: Because I had known him for a few years, and I love his writing, and just like him as a person. It just felt right, it was one of those intuitive things, like, "That's who I want to write this with." Just sensibility-wise, his first book, the way he wrote about a young character. I don't know, just the way he writes, and we're very similar, we're the same age, just the way we grew up influenced and in love with Maurice's work. It wasn't even too thought out, it was just like, "That's right."

 

Pitchfork: Talking about your ages. Do you think there is something about this story that makes it so beloved with our generation specifically?

 

SJ: I'm not even sure if it's just our generation. I think it might be that if you're five years old and you read that book, you're like, "I recognize that." It's in the language of a kid, of monsters and of things being giant. And it's like when you're a kid, adults really do feel giant. Monsters are a part of your subconscious. You have even less control of your emotions than you do now. I think it's all in the book. And he is really speaking the language and what it feels like at that age.

 

Pitchfork: So you guys had almost an open-ended structure to build a narrative. Was all that freedom helpful, or more difficult? Did you go a lot of different routes before you got the script you wanted?

 

SJ: Not a lot of different routes, but we definitely wrote a lot of different drafts. We shot, and then had the footage... the way I work, I like to constantly evolve, and try to find a better way to do something; searching and seeing what else can be discovered. And so yeah, there were many things where we were like "That's an amazing idea!" and that was it for a week and then "No, no this is a better idea!"

 

Along the way, the things that stay are the things that really deserve to stay. I love that process, of not feeling overly pressured, "this is the movie," and some people can do that, like the Coen brothers, their movies I think they write, the script they write is very, very close to the movie they put out. And they shoot exactly what they need, you know I probably shoot about four times as much film as them. They're like, "Oh, we got it." And I'm like, "Oh, what else can we do? And what if we try it this way?"

 

You take that leap and you don't know exactly how it's going to turn out, but you know what it is that you're aiming for. You know your goal.

[sureshot]

Maurice Sendak tells parents to go to hell

 

I love it. Im tired of art and stories being compromised and watered down to appeal to kids...I think the recent success of Wall-E and others have proven that you dont need to compromise in order to be successful. Children are smarter and more perceptive than most give them credit for. And sometimes you need to be scared...thats part of what growing up is about. And then you realize that there are lights at the end of the tunnel. Jonze and Sendak clearly came to a consensus on a vision for the film, and Im thrilled that despite their best efforts the studio did not wind up neutering the final product (although they certainly came close).

[jmacomber68w]

Good interview with Spike on NPR today, it should be available as a part of a podcast

[sureshot]

I remember the first time I saw Return to Oz as a kid. The very first scene involves little dear Dorthy getting prepped for electro-fucking-shock therapy. That movie scared the living bejeesus out of me as an impressionable tyke. (and it wasnt nearly as bad as some of the stuff my friends were seeing...Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Psycho..) But you know what? It was fantasy. I discovered that line real fast. And its not nearly as bat-shit terrifying as the REAL world that we all wake up to every morning.

 

Parents can decide for themselves if its a film they want junior to see. But accept it and his vision for what it is, and stop expecting "kids" films to be all singalongs and princesses. And hell, when you actually look at them, Disney films have more sexual innuendo than you can shake a stick at. And its not exactly hidden either.

[ih8music]

great. now I'm second-guessing my intention of taking my easily-spooked 5 yr old to this movie. he LOVES this book, I'd hate to ruin it for him.

[Preferred B]

I remember the first time I saw Return to Oz as a kid. The very first scene involves little dear Dorthy getting prepped for electro-fucking-shock therapy. That movie scared the living bejeesus out of me as an impressionable tyke. (and it wasnt nearly as bad as some of the stuff my friends were seeing...Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Psycho..) But you know what? It was fantasy. I discovered that line real fast. And its not nearly as bat-shit terrifying as the REAL world that we all wake up to every morning.

Ha! That movie is all kinds of crazy. I was in equal measures in love with it and terrified by it as a little kid. Mostly love. But those wheelers? AHHHH.

 

[Edie]

Parents can decide for themselves if its a film they want junior to see. But accept it and his vision for what it is, and stop expecting "kids" films to be all singalongs and princesses. And hell, when you actually look at them, Disney films have more sexual innuendo than you can shake a stick at. And its not exactly hidden either.

 

This.

 

And Bambi is not a children's movie.

[KevinG]

great. now I'm second-guessing my intention of taking my easily-spooked 5 yr old to this movie. he LOVES this book, I'd hate to ruin it for him.

 

My son is 5 as well, I really want to take him, but I just don't know.

[Wild Frank]

My son is 5 as well, I really want to take him, but I just don't know.

My son is 5 aswell (His birthday was yesterday!) and I will definately be taking him. We watched the trailer on-line and he was really excited. There may well be scary elements to it but I have no reservations in taking him in to see it. Sometimes you need to expose the little 'uns to slightly unsettling things to give them a fuller experience of life, even at an early age. Related to the above post, I remember seeing the 'Wizard of Oz' and hiding behind the sofa when the wicked witch appeared. It scared me, and I remember it, but it didn't do me any harm.

 

As mentioned in the Sendak interview there are things I see in movies that still scare me. There was a film called 'Zodiac' that was out a couple of years ago and there was a scene when the murderer attacked a couple who were having a pic-nic. I had to leave the room as the scene really 'scared' me. I didn't expect that reaction but it really unsettled me.

[Sir Stewart]

As mentioned in the Sendak interview there are things I see in movies that still scare me. There was a film called 'Zodiac' that was out a couple of years ago and there was a scene when the murderer attacked a couple who were having a pic-nic. I had to leave the room as the scene really 'scared' me. I didn't expect that reaction but it really unsettled me.

That killing disturbed me greatly, too.

 

For the sullen teen angle on Wild Things, I asked my 15 year-old nephew if he gave a crap about this film. He said no. Oh well. Sounds like a movie for wee ones and adults.

[KevinG]

That killing disturbed me greatly, too.

 

For the sullen teen angle on Wild Things, I asked my 15 year-old nephew if he gave a crap about this film. He said no. Oh well. Sounds like a movie for wee ones and adults.

 

But in two years he will probably be watching the movie stoned off his ass in his dorm room, and loving it.

[Sir Stewart]

But in two years he will probably be watching the movie stoned off his ass in his dorm room, and loving it.

 

You are probably right.

[tongue-tied lightning]

I was all geared up to take my 5 year old, BUT read some reviews and the scare factor is to high. Kids under 7 were advised not to see it.

 

I guess i'll go myself

[bobbob1313]

I enjoyed it a lot. Definitely an adult movie.

[Sir Stewart]

I enjoyed it too. Sad movie.

[rareair]

I enjoyed it a lot. Definitely an adult movie.

 

good to know. my five year old would have freaked.

[Sir Stewart]

It's conventionally a kids movie, but...

[isadorah]

I saw it and thought it was ok. I found it to be very dark and angry and not a children's movie. My parents took me to wildly inappropriate movies as a child and I don't think I am better for it or need to get over it. I think there is a flaw in artistry that takes what is clearly a children's book, makes something extremely different from the book that is adult and artistic, and then markets it to be connected to the original inspiration. That is like saying wicked is ok for kids because it was inspired by the wizard of oz. I wouldn't take a 5 year old to see it. I would take Tweens and teens to see it. I still question why the art we seem to be putting out has to be angry or violent. Where did all the happiness go in our culture?

[Calexico]

So this is an adaptation of an ,obviously beloved, kid's book right? I must admit to never having heard of the book at all but the promos of the movie look really charming. Reading about the book itself I am left wondering how on earth I missed out on it, to not have even heard of it? My childhood was patently incomplete.

[Vacant Horizon]

i want to see this as it seems like a validation for the human psyche. ironically, it's an interpretation of what goes on in a kids brain, but it's inappropriate for kids.