Into the Wild

Of all the filmmakers to have left a dent in the brand new millennium, nothing says 2000-and-something quite like a Spike Jonze picture. Building on an already impressive resume chalked up in the busy world of commercials and pop promos, Mr. Jonze kicked off the decade with the release of his groundbreaking directorial debut, Being John Malkovich in 2000; he rounds it off with similar fireworks and a spectacular and unlikely adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic, Where The Wild Things Are.

Between films, he’s ushered Jackass into the world as a headlining producer and active prankster.
His playful and surreal sensibility – “My name is pronounced Rodriguez but the ‘r’ is silent”, he suggests helpfully – has attracted other likeminded hipsters to the cause. Frequent co-conspirators include Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry, Björk and the Beastie Boys, Catherine Keener and Chris Cooper. The new film, in this spirit, features the vocal talents of such impeccably cool thespians as James Gandolfini and Paul Dano, a screenplay from McSweeney’s founder Dave Eggers and Karen O smooching on the soundtrack.
Sitting in a London hotel – the cardigan and tie say knowing geek chic, the garret physique says real deal – Mr. Jonze ponders the links between himself and these other quintessentially Y2K artistes.
“I don’t think there’s a shared sensibility or anything,” he says. “It’s not something I can generalise. It’s all about the individuals. When I have a conversation with Michel (Gondry), he’s always inspiring and interesting and thought provoking. Dave (Eggers) is fascinating in a totally different way.”
Since his divorce from director Sofia Coppola in 1999 – he reputedly served as the model for Giovanni Ribisi’s photographer in Lost in Translation – Mr. Jonze has found romance with another noughties notable, the former Mrs. Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams. He is currently dating Karen O.
“She inspires me as an artist,” says the director. “She never lets me lose sight of the need to play around for this one.”
Where The Wild Things Are is a labour of love for the director, who has been working on the project since the completion of Adaptation. It has, by his admission, been a fraught production of his “own making”. Having worked a ten sentence kindergarten book into a 111-page screenplay, Jonze insisted on old-school animatronics and puppets to fit with a decidedly unvarnished handheld aesthetic.
“We did everything the hard way,” he says. “But I didn’t want to make that sort of magic pixie dust movie. I wanted it to feel real, to have a genuine sense of danger, to capture how scary the world can be for a 9-year-old boy. So we shot it so that you can’t always make sense of it all. We let a bunch of kids and actors loose and let them play around with trucks and equipment. It had to feel explosive and heightened and wild.”
“The worst thing about working with Spike Jonze,” notes the film’s star, Max Records, “is that he knows exactly what he wants and the 622 other variations he needs before he says ‘cut’. It’s fun but it’s crazy.”
He’s not kidding. When the film’s young hero journeys away to the land announced by the title, anarchy erupts onscreen and at the level of the screenplay. Few concessions are made to mainstream or young audiences.
Mr. Jonze, who insists that this is a not a child’s film but a film about childhood, says Where The Wild Things Are draws on autobiographical material, but ask him about the particulars and you’ll get only curveball responses; “When I was really young I was eaten by a monster and had to eat my way out.”
Nonetheless, sitting beside Max Records – the film’s 9-year-old star who has turned 12 over the course of Wild Thing’s complicated post-production process – Jonze proves less reticent than he has been in previous interviews.
“The studio didn’t really know it was going to look like that until after they got it,” the director laughs.
“Boy, you got them good,” adds the young actor.
Jonze did, however, keep at least one audience member in mind; the project would not have gone ahead, he says, without Maurice Sendak’s blessing and participation.
“No,” says Jonze. “Not at all. The reason it has taken so long for this book to make it onto the big screen is because Maurice has seen many of his friends and fellow authors get burned with something that looked very artificial and Hollywood. He was very insistent that I made the material my own, that I made something personal which took kids seriously and didn’t pander. He was our mentor and muse.”
Happily, the famously irascible author was pleased with the end product.
“I had seen the movie dozens of times but showing it to Maurice was definitely the most nerve wrecking screening,” admits the director. “I kept trying to sneak looks at him to see how he was responding. I was thrilled when he liked it. It was the only review that mattered.”