Spike Jonze Brings Wild Things to Life

Director fought for years for his vision of Sendak's classic
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 5, 2009 8:45 AM CDT

Trailer for Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are"
(TrailerParkCentral)
(1 of 2)

Spike Jonze grew up on the children's classic Where the Wild Things Are, and wanted to make a very raw, very unconventional movie of it, portraying the wild things as the scary emotions kids feel. Jonze persuaded Maurice Sendak to take a shot on his vision, but the studio was a tougher sell, terrified that the result would be too dark and plotless for the box office bang they need from a big-budget picture, the New York Times reports.

That prompted a long, painful battle for the veteran video director with only two quirky feature films under his belt, Adaptation and Being John Malkovich. "It’s so insanely crazy and awesome and so untraditional,” a wowed Slashfilm editor said after seeing the result in preview this summer. “It feels like a movie that was written by a child who knew what he was doing but had never seen a movie before."

(More Spike Jonze stories.)

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