The Screengrab : where the wild things are

Trailer Review: Where the Wild Things Are

Paul Clark — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Four years after Spike Jonze began shooting this adaptation of the classic Maurice Sendak children’s book, there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel. And despite reports of production difficulties and tension between the filmmakers and the money men, I’ve got to say this looks pretty awesome. Certainly one of the biggest challenges faced by Jonze and his co-screenwriter Dave Eggers was how to adapt a novel that consisted of roughly a dozen sentences into a full-fledged movie while remaining true to the original. And judging by the trailer, it appears that they’ve done so without padding out the story too much. Instead, it looks like they’ve emphasized the scenes between Max (Max Records) and the Wild Things, particularly the adventures and mischief they find together. I had high hopes for this before, but this trailer has only propelled them higher. After all, how can one hate a movie in which James Gandolfini voices a furry, cuddly monster?

Where the Wild Things Aren't

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

It seemed like a match made in heaven. The classic Maurice Sendak children’s book Where the Wild Things Are and the one-time video wunderkind who brought a sure-handed touch to offbeat Charlie Kaufman material in Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. Throw in a screenplay by lit-hipster Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and what could go wrong? But Spike Jonze’s $80 million adaptation of Wild Things appears to have gone off the rails.

According to Patrick Goldstein at the L.A. Times, the movie “was originally slated for release this October but got pushed back to the fall of 2009. Last week it disappeared entirely from the Warner Bros. release schedule, a sign of continuing troubles. The script got good early reviews. But for months the Web has been pulsing with rumors and in-depth accounts that when Jonze had a research screening last December, kids in the audience were crying and fleeing the theater--not exactly the reaction the studio had hoped for.”

Apparently one big problem is that the young boy at the center of the story is “almost entirely unlikable, coming off as more mean-spirited and bratty than mischievous.” Then there’s the matter of the wild things themselves, originally a mix of actors in furry suits and animatronic puppets. No one was happy with these critters, who are now being replaced by (of course) CGI wild things.

This is not the first time an adaptation of Where the Wild Things has run into trouble. Disney attempted a version in the ’80s, with none other than Pixar maven John Lasseter at the helm. Check out Goldstein’s story for a clip of test footage from that never-made cartoon.

Related:

"Toy Story" Trilogy in 3-D

Charlie Kaufman Does Not Save His Urine in Jars

Charlie Kaufman Does Not Save His Urine in Jars

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 20 May 2008 20:30:00 GMT

In advance of this week’s Cannes premiere of his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman speaks to the Hollywood Reporter and assures us he’s not the Howard Hughes of screenwriters. “The first thing people will say to me in interviews is that you don't do interviews and I'll say ‘Well, I'm sitting here talking to you!’ I don't particularly like to be photographed and I don't like to talk about my personal life -- that doesn't make me a recluse. My feeling is that my work speaks about my life in ways that are very generous. I want to protect the privacy of people I know and of myself and I'm not interested in that kind of celebrity. I find it unappealing and scary, but I'm not a recluse. I live a regular mundane life in Los Angeles.”

Kaufman’s latest reality-bending tale concerns a theater director (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who creates an ever-expanding replica of New York inside a warehouse. “I'm interested in the structure and logic of dreams as a type of storytelling -- dream logic and images in a non-dream story,” says Kaufman. “It wasn't about my dreams -- it was about the visceral, emotional feeling one gets in them, the idea you can have things happen that are irrational and they just seem perfectly natural. That's a hard thing to translate into a story outside a dream.”

The story began as an attempt at writing a horror movie to be directed by Spike Jonze, but it kept evolving and eventually Jonze moved on to Where the Wild Things Are, at which point Kaufman took on the directorial challenge himself. “It was something I've wanted to do for a long time and the opportunity presented itself. The material is very personal, so in a lot of ways I am the ideal person to do it. All my stuff is that way. I directed a couple plays the previous year and that gave me confidence.”

Synecdoche, New York screens on Friday, and no doubt our man Paul Clark will have a roundup of reviews for your perusal.