Spike Jonze and Max Records Interview WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
BY STEVE 'FROSTY' WEINTRAUB
OCTOBER 4, 2009
On Friday afternoon I participated in a roundtable interview with director Spike Jonze and Max
Records for “Where the Wild Things Are”. As I said when I posted the clips, I’ve thought the movie
was an honest look at what it’s like being a kid and not being able to express how you feel. The film
isn’t a fantasy, and it isn’t trying to sugar coat what you do when you’re upset at the world. While
some are clearly going to have issues with the way Spike chose to make “Where the Wild Things Are”,
I was spellbound and loving his universe. Also, I loved the way he had characters not say things when
other movies would have tons of exposition. Many of his choices are unorthodox, and as an avid
moviegoer and a fan of his work, I think he made a great film. Anyway, after the jump you can read
what the star of the film and his director had to say about the movie. Also, I did video interviews with
the cast, and those will be online the
week of release.
Q: What do you want parents to take
from this film, and what do you want
kids to take from this film?
Spike: I didn’t have any thoughts
about it. I don’t know what you should
take away from it. I think anybody can
take away whatever they feel
connected to or not connected to in
the movie. The one thing I hope is that there would be some conversations, and that a parent
might actually be able to talk to their kid in a different way and ask their kid what they think,
and not worry about how they’re going to turn out, but be curious as to who they are.
Q: Do you think kids should not see a film that’s this dark?
Max: No, not at all. Of course, they should see it. It depends on the kid, and it depends on the
age. When I was 7 or 8, I could not have seen this movie. But, my brother, who is 7 or 8, totally
could have.
Spike: We were just trying to make a movie that feels true to what it feels like, at times, to be 9
years old. I think, as you’re growing up, your emotions are just as deep as they are when you’re
an adult. You’re ability to feel lonely, longing, confused or angry are just as deep. We don’t feel
things more as we get older. We just have a better understanding of how to navigate those
feelings, and a better sense of how to navigate our relationships and separate our emotions
from them. I also don’t think of this as a dark movie. It has moments that are intense, for sure.
Q: How did you go about expanding the basic story of this book? Did any of this come from personal
experiences?
Spike: I’m not sure if I could explain it
any more than the movie.
Max: The movie and the book are just
pretty much the visual way to show
anger and sweetness together.
Q: Did you feel like it was a movie about
childhood?
Max: Yes. The kid gets pissed off, the
mom gets pissed off, he runs away,
and then there’s a lot more pissed off
and a lot more happiness.
Q: Spike, as a writer/director, how much did you struggle with constructing the beginning of the film
and getting all that information in, prior to the trip to the Land of the Wild Things?
Spike: I wrote with Dave Eggers, who is a writer I love and a person that I got to know. We
basically approached it, at the beginning, not over-thinking it too much. We tried to write it
really intuitively, at the beginning, and just write scenes, and we overwrote. We just wrote from
our gut. Later, it became a little more laborious, in terms of
editing and shaping it more. But, we tried to just approach it the
way a kid’s intuition approaches things. We tried to do a lot of
things like that. The music was written in that sense, of not
analytically, but just intuitively. We just tried to keep that spirit of
not over-thinking it too much. My other movies are much more
analytical or cerebral films. With this one, because the main
character was 9, I wanted to turn that part of my brain off and not approach it so cerebrally.
Q: Why did you decide not to make the world of the Wild Things as wondrous as people might
expect it to be?
Spike: It stemmed a little bit from taking Max seriously. We wanted to take this 9-year-old
seriously, so if he’s going to imagine that he’s going to a place, it’s not going to be some
fantasy version of it. For me, it just connected more to really being there with these wild
animals, in this forest and on these beaches, with sand and dirt and leaves in their hair, and have
that level of reality to it. It makes it more dangerous and, in a way, more exciting because you’re
really there. The whole movie is shot from Max’s point of view, where you’re discovering it with
him. Every scene in the movie is from Max’s point of view. We also tried to give it its wonder,
where it was relevant to the story, like when Max wakes up in Carol’s arms, and he’s carrying
him through this beautiful forest with leaves falling everywhere. Those moments have their
place, where it’s hopefully more wondrous or spectacular.
Q: Did you intentionally want to make it so intimate?
Spike: The idea is mixing intimate with epic, at the same time, and being able to have those
dynamics. The best songs are the ones that have that kind of dynamic. Arcade Fire has such
intimacy and epic-ness, as the same time, and that’s really inspiring.
Q: Did you decide to approach this completely like a child, and follow that all the way through?
Spike: Yeah. We just approached it intuitively. It wasn’t necessarily an easy shoot. It was very
complicated. We made a series of decisions, early on, by shooting the creatures real live-action
on location, with a boy in the middle of it all. That was a very challenging way to shoot it. Once
we made those decisions, we just agreed to take whatever weather, lightening and wildness of
that way of shooting that came with it. We tried to keep the whole film in the spirit of a kid, and
tried not to put our adult stuff into that. That being said, we had some tantrums, along the way,
because the shoot was so stressful and difficult. I’ve worked with (cinematographer) Lance
[Acord] and (production designer) K.K. [Barrett] for so long, and we did this whole movie as an
adventure. The whole group of us moved to Australia and all lived in neighborhoods near each
other. It was just a very group
experience, where we went off into
these woods and deserts, and made
this film. We lived the movie, in a lot
of ways.
Q: Maurice Sendak said that he found
you to be very old-school. Do you
consider yourself that way?
Spike: I don’t know. I do, definitely, think of artists, like The Beatles, Maurice Sendak, who wrote
this book in the ’60′s, Shel Silverstein or David Bowie. I think of artists, that were of that period,
that are really inspiring and exciting. There is probably a similar sensibility when I think about
artists now, like Arcade Fire or Karen O. (from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs). There is something similar,
in terms of the singularity of those voices, and not living and working in the mainstream. Their
motivation is coming from within them, as opposed to from outside in the marketplace. It’s
always coming from, “What am I going to make that is going to inspire and excite me?” Maybe
that’s something I’m inspired by.
Q: Max, how gross was it for you to do that scene where you come out of KW?
Max: You don’t want to know. They
put some sort of gross gel stuff on
me.
Spike: He was covered and goopy. He
hated it. We shot it once, and then we
had to shoot another piece of it again,
and he just did not want to get in it.
He said, “I will only do it if,
afterwards, you let me cover you in it.”
And so, afterwards, we went back to
his room and he just covered me in it.
He was so happy and I was miserable, so it was a good retribution.
Q: Spike, can you talk about the Maurice Sendak documentary you did?
Spike: We did it to give good context. It’s basically a video portrait of him. It’s about 40 minutes
long, and it comes out on HBO, a couple days before the movie is released.
Q: Do you know what you’re doing next?
Spike: No, not yet.
Q: Are you going down the indie path?
Spike: I don’t know. I’m just going to make whatever. I don’t look at it with a label. That’s weird.
I just want to make whatever is exciting.