Wild ride

Where the Wild Things Areis a refreshing take on childhood and the power of imagination. Below, director Spike Jonze is flanked by Maurice Sendak and Max Records. Photo / Supplied

Take one auteur film maker, a brainy young novelist, an uber-cool pop chick and a much-loved classic children's book, and what do you get? The most hyped and highly anticipated movie of the year.

Spike Jonze's film version of Maurice Sendak's subversive 10-sentence story Where the Wild Things Are, first published in 1963, has triggered an extraordinary level of excitement among people of a certain age. Subliminal memories of those weird beasts crowding each precious page, ramped up by the release of the gorgeous soundtrack by Karen O and the Kids have fed a Wild Things mania to rival the tween love affair with Twilight.

Where the Wild Things Are, which opened here this week, is beautiful and strange, quite unlike anything previously produced by a major studio. Director Jonze was chosen by Sendak to adapt his book, and by Warner Brothers to hold the reported $110 million purse strings on the film project.

People who have worked for years with the visionary 40-year-old director of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation claim they understand only a fraction of what goes on in his brain.

This may have something to do with Jonze's apparent reluctance to cast all but the most oblique light on his creative processes.

In View's precious 15-minute conversation with the director, a throw-away opening gambit about worldwide reaction to his film elicits an agony of indecision, broken thoughts, and pregnant pauses that threaten to engulf the entire interview. "It's been pretty even," he finally concedes.

Asked if it's slightly unnerving for a director to have his film hyped so intensively before release, Jonze again wrestles to engage with the question. Eventually he admits: "I guess it is unnerving."

In the film version, written by Jonze and novelist Dave Eggers, the Wild Things are huge, hairy beasts with violently destructive urges, prone to jealousy, depression and suspicion. As in the book, Max - a young boy dressed in a wolf suit (mesmerisingly acted by young Max Records) - encounters the beasts after running away from home and sailing to an island in a small boat. Exactly what the Things represented, however, was never overtly explained in Sendak's sparse text.

So, in the film, are the creatures simply symbolic of wild childhood emotions, or are they a dysfunctional family in their own right?

"What do you think?" says Jonze.

What do I think? Okay ... I think they are both. And that's fine in the context of this highly unusual film, as far as I'm concerned.

"That's cool," says Jonze.

He adds that he is "open" about the meaning of his Wild Things.

"The island is a wild place," he says. "And these creatures at times are wild emotions. As a kid wild emotions can be really confusing and scary. We wanted to make the Wild Things as complex as possible, and to represent how complex we all are."

Jonze has spent more than five years on this project, although his conversations with his friend Sendak about the project go back even further. He admits to being slightly overwhelmed about bringing such a talismanic text to the screen.

"Early on I was really concerned about it, how many people have a connection to this book and how I could possibly respond to all that. The thing that happened was, I talked to Maurice and he said to just make a movie that is personal, that takes kids seriously and doesn't pander to children.

"The book was considered to be dangerous, and there are scenes in the film like when Max is chasing the dog which the studio wasn't that comfortable with. But Maurice said, 'Don't soften it. Those are the things that are important to me. Nothing else matters'."

There is a wonderful sense of non-political correctness about the film. Max is a spirited child and prone to tantrums. He loves outdoors rough and tumble, inciting the Wild Things with a cry of "Let the wild rumpus start!", launching dirt fights and a wantonly destructive version of what New Zealand adults might recognise as bullrush, that violent schoolyard game that was banned from schools on health and safety grounds.

Was this non-PC element a deliberate statement about childhood today, I wondered?

Jonze agonises a bit more: "I think kids aren't PC, and that's definitely something I wanted to capture. You might be walking with a kid and he says 'Look at that fat lady', and you say 'Shhh!' and he says 'What's wrong?' They're unapologetic, that's what's amazing about them."

Has childhood become too safe then, with kids glued to computer games and the slightly dangerous fun stuff legislated away?

"Too buttoned down?"

Yes.

"I don't know." He ruminates again. There is a wariness about him, as if he is unwilling to vent his personal opinions about anything so specific. "I like Max's [Records] parents in that they have found the balance ... they give him a lot of space to be his own person, but they are there looking out for him. "If there's a decision to be made, they include the kid in it. Like the decision to be in the movie, they reached that as a family."

Jonze auditioned "hundreds and hundreds" of children before casting Records. There was something about the boy's face that the director found compelling, and he showed an ability to deal with the emotionally demanding role. "The character we wrote was a very complicated character. Like most kids do, he had very sweet sides and a side that was very undisciplined and wild and playful and gleeful. There's the potential to get very upset and out of control.

"To find a kid to do all of that was really challenging. He was the one. He could go to all those places we wanted him to go."

Exactly where to pitch a film based on a children's book cherished by adults was always going to be tricky, not least to satisfy the studio.

Wild Things has a PG rating, but Jonze admits "it's probably too scary for 4-year-olds". Not that he's apologising for that.

"I think some parents don't want to see their kids frightened. But there are moments which are sad. Some complain that 'my kid was crying at the end' - almost like it was this really bad thing. I want to give the kid room to take away whatever he or she has connected to in the film. Maurice's work doesn't do those old tidy lessons at the end."

Which is really one of the best things about Jonze's movie; it is what it is - or what each individual viewer takes from it. There are no morals, or saccharine solutions. And it makes Jonze's reluctance to nail down the meaning of his Wild Things perfectly justifiable. The film speaks for itself.

Jonze lets me in on a secret at the end of the interview, which is that he came "very close" to shooting the movie in New Zealand, rather than Australia. He visited this country to scout for locations, but it was decided in the end that Victoria offered better proximity between the different landscapes needed, although he hopes to be back this way one day to make a film. "It's so beautiful. It seems like a great place to live. And the people are very grounded and cool."

Gee, thanks Spike. One last question, what were you like at Max's age? "Shorter," he retorts, then laughs. "Ask my mom."

* Where the Wild Things Are is out now in cinemas.