CultureCritic talks to Spike Jonze and Max Records about Where the Wild Things Are...

This film has been a long time in the making. Are you glad that it's now finished?

SPIKE JONZE: I felt really glad the morning it came out in the US. We'd done a lot of promotion up until that morning, and it just felt like a huge weight off my shoulders.

What was it about Max that stood out when you were casting?

SJ: Look at him - he's special. Just watching him on camera was really captivating. We needed an actor that could play the range of the role. The character that we had written had moments of very quiet introspection and sensitivity, and also wildness and recklessness. It was actually really challenging to find someone that could really do all that. As we started to audition Max we could see that we'd be able to go anywhere (with him).

What other performances from child actors have you admired throughout film history?

SJ: The performance in The Black Stallion, that kid's amazing. In the first 40 minutes there's almost no dialogue, it's just all on his face. And the boy in 400 Blows, that performance is really incredible. (To Max) Can you think of any?

MAX RECORDS: I haven't watched that many movies...

SJ: He loves Miyazaki movies.

Did you always have Karen O in the frame for the soundtrack, or was that something that evolved?

SJ: No, right from the beginning, even as I was writing, I talked to her about it.

Were you happy with what she did? Was it what you'd asked her to do?

SJ: Yes, I just wanted her to write from her heart. When we were shooting we started sending her footage, and she'd write to that. We would send her something like 20 minutes of footage for a sequence, just unedited and raw. The idea was for her to write to a feeling as opposed to trying to score something. Early on I started getting songs from her and we cut to the music. We'd never done that before; we'd always just cut a picture and then scored it afterwards. It just made the music and the film that much more intertwined.

Max, Spike set up a great soundtrack for this film. Who you would you like to see on the soundtrack?

MR: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, alternative rock stuff.

SJ: Tell them about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs sound check you went to.

MR: In Portland, where I live, they were playing the day before my school was coming out for summer break. The show was at midnight, so they let us come to the sound check instead. They took requests and stuff, and the place was completely empty, so we got to slide around on the floor.

Did you make any requests?

MR: Yeah, for Hysteric and Heads Will Roll from the new album.

SJ: It turned out to be concert for four kids.

This is the first script for a film that you've done without Charlie Kaufman. His scripts are very verbose, and this is the complete opposite  - very sparse. Was trying something completely different in filmmaking terms a particular attraction?

SJ: I think the attraction was initially just the book and the feeling I was trying to capture. But certainly as I got into it I thought that what was required to tell the story was not to be cerebral about it and to be much more intuitive. We were telling the story of a nine-year-old, so I wanted the movie to work in the way that the mind of a nine year-old works. I was in London when I was started to consider the film, and I saw Chris Cunningham, who's a good friend of mine and somebody that I really respect. I was talking to him about it, and he was very encouraging. He thought it was exciting to see this other side of me that was more like videos I'd done, as opposed to my two movies - much more focused on capturing a feeling.

What does it take to get inside the mind of a child? Is this film informed by your childhood memories?

SJ: Probably. As you write, that's where you're at and the longer you're in that place the easier it is.

What are some of the differences between working with a child such as Max and a grown-up such as Nicholas Cage (who starred in Adaptation)?

SJ: Nicholas Cage didn't eat me up! Actually it's interesting you mention him, because the way we worked on that movie (Adaptation) was more similar to the way I worked with Max than with a lot of other actors. All the other actors in movies were playing opposite other actors, but with Nicholas, since he was playing twin brothers, I'd often play the other brother. So we worked that way in rehearsals and in shooting, and I really enjoyed it because I could direct the scene from within, without stopping, without even giving direction. Just the way I delivered dialogue to them could shift the tone of a scene and make it more aggressive or softer or quieter or louder, and I could bring out different colours. So that was actually, in a way, practice for this movie, because Max and I worked together a lot.

Max, how was it working with Spike? Did you have fun?

MR: Yeah. Spike knows exactly what he wants, and he also knows 63 variations of that exact thing that he wants.

SJ: Max stopped believing me when I said, ‘let's do it one more time'. I think ‘one more time' lost its credibility.

MR: I think our record was 54 takes for one scene.

Was Max given much creative input on the film?

SJ: As much as any actor, if not more. This is Max's interpretation of the character, and he carries the movie. It all plays on his face. He would always contribute and he was always engaged. He was never just there, not participating or just saying his lines. He was thinking about every scene. He was coming up with lines or ideas every day. He also operated the camera.

Max, I heard that Spike let off a few propane gas canisters to make you look surprised at certain points...

MR: Yeah, that really, really worked! He did all sorts of behind-the-scenes things to try and give me something to react to, and it only worked about half the time. He would spray somebody with a fire extinguisher, he would put somebody up on wires and make them fly, or have the Wild Things stage lightsabre fights. He hired a couple of guys from a side show to come: there was a sword swallower, a fire swallower, a guy juggling chain saws...

SJ: It wasn't a movie where you could just have an actor off camera playing the scene that's written, because the actor that's off-camera is a Wild Thing throwing another Wild Thing, or doing something that would take half a day to stage. So we would do a little play behind camera so Max had something to react to, instead of just putting an actor in front of a green screen and saying ‘ok your ship is floating in here, and your dad's dying right there, and... exit!'

What were the reasons for the delay of the film's release?

SJ: Well, we're slow editors for one - we definitely take a long time. We edited our first movie for nine months, the second took 13 months and this one took 18 months. We also had disagreements with the studio as to what the film was. When they saw the edit, I think it freaked them out that it wasn't what they would normally consider a children's film.

But it's not really a children's book in the normal sense, or do you consider it to be?

SJ: Maurice says he's not trying to write children's books, he's trying to write about childhood. I think we had the same intention. Maurice's books speak to kids because there's something honest in them, and that's something I remembered. I really connected to the book, to the feelings. As a kid I remember they played The Red Balloon in school, and there are feelings in there that are not the feelings that you get in a lot of stuff that you're read or shown as a kid. Those are feelings that you understand and connect to.

How have kids reacted to it?

SJ: The thing about kids is there's no one reaction because they are all different, just as there's no one reaction to the film from adults.

MR: We had a screening in September at my school, before it came out. There were 400 kids watching the movie, and some of the younger ones were closing their eyes and covering their ears. But all the kids that were older than (those in) 3rd grade totally loved it.

Were they scared?

MR: Yes.

Maurice Sendak said the parents who think that the book is too scary for kids are stupid. Do you agree with him?

MR: Weren't they slightly stronger words...?

SJ: Yes, maybe! I think when the book came out, it was considered too dangerous for children. Maurice got into a lot of trouble, and there was a lot of stuff written about the book for being ‘not for children'. There were supporters of it too, but a lot of librarians and child experts and teachers were against it. Maurice said that, after a couple of years, kids started taking it out of the library more and more, and loving it, so the kids are the ones that made it what it is, and now it's this classic. I think there's a knee-jerk reaction to things from parents. I think parents are probably more scared of it than kids are, and that goes back to the problem with the studio. I don't think it was anything to do with kids; it was all to do with the studio's anxieties.

Is the film being marketed like a children's film?

SJ: Actually, the woman at the studio who marketed the movie was a real champion of the film, she really fought for it. I give her a lot of credit because she's the one who fought for the way it was released and really saw it in a way that felt true to the movie. I think everything that we put out felt true to the movie, without trying to pretend it was something else.

You are known for music videos. Is there a band or artist you'd particularly like to work with?

SJ: I haven't really been thinking about it. I've been more excited about doing short films lately than doing music videos.

The Mighty Boosh have put you at the top of their list to direct their prospective forthcoming feature. Is that an offer you would be prepared to take up?

SJ: Yes, they're hilarious. Actually they were Karen O's favourite show. Karen gave me the DVD. It was hilarious.

Do you have another film that you are thinking about now?

SJ: We're just finishing this robot short film that I wrote called I'm Here, and we'll show it at Sundance. It's half an hour long, so I'm not sure how we're going to put it out...

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