Wild Thing!

Mau­rice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are is my absolute favorite pic­ture book of all time.  I loved it as a child, but as an adult, it’s even bet­ter.  Read­ing this out­loud is so much fun!  The lan­guage is expres­sive and beau­ti­ful, and of course, noth­ing beats a story with a wild rum­pus in the mid­dle.   I love to get my audi­ence jump­ing, whoop­ing, hol­ler­ing and basi­cally on the brink of total bed­lam, and then I sud­denly become Max again and star­tle them still by yelling, “NOW STOP!”

Doesn’t that look absolutely mag­i­cal?  The Wild Things and Max look per­fect.  Unlike so many recent kiddy movies, it’s not over­loaded with creepy CGI effects to dis­tract from the tale.  The sounds work, too.  Arcade Fire rere­corded that ver­sion of “Wake Up” just for the movie.   Most impor­tantly, though, that last lit­tle bit of howl­ing sounds exactly like our wild rum­pus at home.

Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze cowrote the screen­play.  I’m not famil­iar with Dave Eggers’ work.  He did write an adult nov­el­iza­tion of Sendak’s book, intended to be released at a time coor­di­nated with the film’s open­ing, to tie in to the hype.  Mau­rice Sendak him­self sug­gested Eggers write it, after grow­ing close to him while work­ing on the film.  That endorse­ment sat­is­fies me, and I’ll be look­ing for the book.

If any­one has the imag­i­na­tion and hon­esty to do this one right, it’ll be Spike Jonze.  His fil­mog­ra­phy includes Being John Malkovich.  He’s directed the absolute best music videos ever.   If you can’t remem­ber who he is, he directed the Beastie Boys’ “Sab­o­tage” and Weezer’s “Buddy Holly.”  Remem­ber Christo­pher Walkin in Fat­boy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice”? My per­sonal favorite, though, is Björk’s “It’s Oh So Quiet.”  (Shhhh… shhhh…)   It helps that artists I like tend to grav­i­tate towards Jonze, but on those rare occa­sions I didn’t like the song, I’d still have to stop and watch a Spike Jonze joint.  He even man­aged to make a cool Gap ad!

Despite being very leery of any great children’s books being made into film, I’m expect­ing noth­ing short of pure genius.  It comes out Octo­ber 16, 2009.  Let the Wild Rum­pus start!