Now this was a pretty cool event. I have to give a huge thanks to my pal and former coworker Sara Fludd for tipping me off to it in late August when my mom was here. Even though she's lived in Connecticut for two years now, Sara still reads latimes.com. Well, in late August on one of their entertainment blogs, they announced this special sneak preview of Where the Wild Things Are, to take place on this very night at the ArcLight Hollywood. Tickets were stiff, mind you. Eighty bucks. And they also had VIP tickets for two hundred that would get you to this post-screening party at some Hollywood nightclub. I was actually tempted by that. For about five minutes. But then I became reluctant to get even the "cheaper" ticket. Did I really want to cough up that much for a movie? The high cost, I should mention, was for the benefit of 826LA, a nonprofit literacy program here in Los Angeles that was founded in 2002 by Dave Eggers, just a couple years after he landed on the map with his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I'm an avid reader and aspiring novelist. Although I've yet to read a single thing by Dave, I certainly know him by reputation. And if I have to pay that much for a movie ticket, I can't think of a better kind of place for the money to go to than a nonprofit group that teaches kids to read and write. Right? Figuring it would sell out, I bought a ticket right then and there. Mom and I were leaving for Palm Springs the same morning Sara sent me that e-mail. I was paranoid the tickets would be all gone by the time we got back the following evening.
I was wrong apparently. Either that or some people who bought tickets didn't show up. At any rate, while a decent crowd did show up, the auditorium was by no means full. I spotted empty seats here and there, especially up front. Maybe that explains why they were so late letting us in. Eleventh hour folks were showing up to buy tickets on the spot. They said they'd let us in at 6 p.m. and the show would start at 7. Ha! Hardly. I got there a few minutes after six, and they had this huge line that started just outside the lobby entrance and wound its way along the side of the Cinerama Dome all the way to the sidewalk on Sunset. The VIP line was very short. And they'd be going in first. Lucky bastards. Anyway, it was practically seven when they did let us in, and thankfully they took the "cheap" ticket line I was in and split it in two by last name. The line on the left was A through J, and then K through Z on the right. I was among the first in that latter line so I ended up getting in pretty soon. I got a decent seat on the upper level, row X, as you can see on my ticket stub above. Thank God I brought my September-October issue of the L.A. Conservancy newsletter to read. By the time I got to my seat, I had almost an hour to kill.
I'm sure I don't need to tell you about Where the Wild Things Are, right? Puh-LEEZE tell me you've at least heard of it. It was originally published in 1963, when author Maurice Sendak, New York native and the son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, was in his mid thirties. Like the Dr. Seuss books, it's gone on to be discovered and rediscovered with each passing generation. On the off-chance you've somehow managed to avoid it your whole life, which would really be a miracle, I can give you the setup. It's simple enough. You've got this nine-year-old named Max. He's got a big sister, a single mom, and an absentee father. Max is sort of a wild thing himself. He likes to don this wolf costume and run around the house growling and so on, pretending he's, ya know, a wolf. Max has a terrific imagination. All kinds of people, places, and things live in his noodle. One night Mom brings home her new boyfriend. Max is jealous, acts out in his wolf costume, embarrasses her, and then runs away. He ends up in the woods somewhere. The woods lead to the shore of this huge lake. Conveniently a boat is moored there. Max hops in and sails overnight to this island inhabited by big woolly creatures called the Wild Things.
By the time he finds the boat, we're in Max's imagination. Everything from there until he comes back home is the result of his own vivid noodle. And he learns a lot from the Wild Things, and they from him. Therein lies part of the story's timelessness. In a very creative way it explores themes like love, family, loyalty. Stuff you've heard of before, but then again, there doesn't exist a theme that hasn't been explored at this point. What counts is how you get your point across. In other words, tell a great story. Like the Grimm Brothers stories, Where the Wild Things Are certainly has a dark streak to it. Many times throughout the story Max's life is in danger. If the Wild Things so choose, they could eat him without a thought. But it's all in his head, right? What if the Wild Things did eat him? Even if that was just his imagination, what would that mean for Max in real life? Would that signify his decision to run away for good and never come back? Or worse, would it mean he'd go nuts? Seriously, it's pretty obvious right away that the kid's volatile. Borderline unhinged. If he crafts a story in which he's king at first and is then discovered to be a fraud and brutally killed, what would that do to his mind? Maurice wrote a story in his early forties called In the Night Kitchen that was pretty dark, where this kid named Mickey is almost roasted in an oven by three cooks.
None of this should be too surprising if you know Maurice's background. First off, he grew up Jewish at a time when people weren't as--how shall I say?--liberal minded as they are today. People don't talk about it much but, while we certainly weren't the Nazis, a healthy share of Americans in the fifties weren't very nice to Jews. It wasn't just the blacks who had a hard time. Basically if you weren't a WASP, you were screwed. Maurice's parents were also immigrants from Eastern Europe, so English was the second language in their household. If you're living in a land where you're the foreigner, you're self-conscious already, before you even get to the anti-Semitism. But wait, it gets even more complicated for Maurice. He was gay. So that's like the triple whammy if you think about it. At least his parents would accept him as Jewish and of Eastern European stock. But gay? He couldn't guarantee their unconditional love would be that unconditional. That's why he never told them. Ever. Maurice's parents never knew who he really was, even while he was committed to the same partner, this psychologist named Glen, for something like fifty years. Glen died in 2007. The following year, around the time he turned eighty, Maurice went on NPR's Fresh Air and told Terry Gross, "Yep, I'm gay." Amazing, huh? That he could keep it hidden that long? Anyway, now you might see why his stories sort of had a dark edge to them. He lived in a society that used to openly persecute people like him. And still does, in some circles.
The Q&A was split into two chunks. Before the screening you had Dave Eggers as well as the kid who plays Max, whose real name also happens to be Max. Max Records. Awesome name. And then after the movie Spike Jonze and Catherine Keener came out. Conducting both sets of interviews was Joel Arquillos. Joel started out as a volunteer teacher at 826LA back in 2002 and has since climbed the ranks to executive director. As his surname suggests, he does look Latino, but judging by his voice, Joel is thoroughly American. He's got that rapid-fire nerdy-type voice. No I'm not making fun. He's obviously a bright kat, hence his accession through the 826LA ranks.
Around quarter to eight, after we'd been sitting there close to an hour, the PA music, which had been playing the Wild Things soundtrack, faded out, and the spotlights at the front of the auditorium came on. Out walked the young Joel and a man whom I instantly recognized from all his publicity photos as Dave Eggers. Joel introduced himself and gave a spiel about 826LA and all the great stuff they do and how they're a nonprofit and totally dependent on the generosity of the public. What he didn't say, though, is that they've got quite the star-studded advisory board. You've got folks like Spike Jonze, Catherine Keener, Judd Apatow, and Fiona Apple. Spike Jonze has been involved with 826LA from the beginning, since around the time he directed Adaptation, the same year Dave Eggers published his follow-up to Staggering Genius, a novel called You Shall Know Our Velocity. On the board of directors you've got people like Miguel Arteta, a great director who's done solid work with films (e.g. Chuck and Buck, The Good Girl) and TV (Freaks and Geeks, Six Feet Under, The Office). And you've got Oscar-nominated screenwriter Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal (Running on Empty), the mother of--you know it--Jake and Maggie.
I've always known Dave Eggers is publicity shy, and that was confirmed tonight when Joel introduced him. He was like, "Hi, I'm Dave. I'm the new guy." And then Joel sort of hesitated before telling us, albeit under his breath, that it was Dave Eggers. Dave couldn't thank us enough for coughing up all that money. Tonight's screening would pay the Echo Park rent for six months, he said. And then he gestured to this kid sitting to the far side of the front row who turned out to be Max Records. He's twelve now. He reminds me of me when I was twelve, living with Mom in North Carolina. I had just picked up reading as a hobby and was therefore developing a smart lip, just like Max tonight. In the story Max is nine, and that's probably about the age Max Records was when they shot this. As you'll see below, it took quite a bit of time to make this film. Principal photography was two years ago at least. In the film and in person Max has this sort of sarcastic wit that belies his tender years. He got up and walked over to Dave and took Joel's mic.
Dave interviewed Max about his experiences shooting Where the Wild Things Are. First of all, how did he get involved? Max lives in Portland. His father Shawn is a photographer for music videos. Sometimes Max would hang out on the sets. Well, this eventually led to his starring in videos. Spike Jonze's background happens to be in music videos. So it was all about word of mouth. A few years ago he began casting the role of Max, which involved, per Dave Eggers, upwards of a thousand kids from all over the planet. One of the directors who'd worked with Max in Portland knew Spike Jonze and so made the recommendation.
The first part of the film, at Max's home in the snowy suburbs, was shot in Connecticut. The vast majority of the film, though, was shot in Melbourne, Australia. But wait. Before we even get to Melbourne, things got off to a rough start in Connecticut during the snowball scene between Max and his big sister and her friends. When Max came out of his trailer to shoot the scene, Spike Jonze nailed him with a snowball to the head. Max cried and went back inside. The day's shooting was canceled. Max said he had no idea why Spike would do that, but when Joel asked Spike after the film, the director said he wanted Max to know right away that he'd get a lot of bumps and bruises during the making of this film. And then they go to Melbourne. Max is ready for the hurt. In fact, during the shoot he made a list of all the injuries he incurred. The snowball to the temple was the first on the list. You also had things like the dog biting him. And his iPod breaking due to all the sand from the Australian desert that got in there. That wasn't a physical injury so much as a psychological one.
Max also talked about the brutal gusts of desert wind that would throw open his trailer door sometimes. So what he did was, he made a sort of makeshift dummy and flattened it outside his trailer and squirted it with ketchup in the hopes that Spike would think he'd been squashed by the wind-thrown door. Spike didn't buy it apparently, but it was cute the way he summed up the lesson learned. Ketchup may pass as blood on the screen, but it's too obviously fake in real life.
More trials and tribulations came in the form of being covered head to toe in a goo-like substance not too different from snot. The way Max and Dave talked about it, I was reminded of the ectoplasma from Ghostbusters. As Dr. Peter Venkman said, "Someone blows their nose and you want to keep it?" I won't tell you which scene required Max to be covered in the stuff, but it'll be pretty obvious when you see the film. Max talked about it being smeared all over his body for twelve hours or something. That made it onto his list of wounds.
One thing I'm surprised they didn't go into more was all the great actors he got to work with. Of course it's possible he didn't see much of them at all since they weren't on the set. The main Wild Thing, Carol, is played by James Gandolfini. His love interest, KW, is played by Lauren Ambrose. Ira and Judith are played by Forest Whitaker and Catherine O'Hara. Paul Dano, that nutty youngster from There Will Be Blood, plays Alexander. And Chris Cooper plays Douglas. Didn't Max get to meet them? He didn't say. The theme of his and Dave's conversation were all the bumps and bruises. That's amusing at first, but it does get kind of annoying when you stop to think that this kid landed the role of a lifetime, a role coveted by countless other kids, in a story beloved by generations for almost half a century now. And he was no doubt well paid.
Nonetheless, Max Records seemed like a bright kid. A sharp kid. Ahead of his years. He's not credited with anything after this on IMDb, but I can only assume that will change. And Dave Eggers, not surprisingly, is a normal Joe. Completely unassuming.
That about does it for Dave's interview with Max. They didn't come back after the movie. The post-screening Q&A saw Joel interviewing Spike Jonze and Catherine Keener. Apparently Spike's known Maurice Sendak for quite some time. They tried to collaborate on a project in the early nineties, when Spike was just out of college, but it fell through. He didn't elaborate on the nature of the project. At any rate, he's at least heard of Maurice for as long as he can remember. He described it the way the rest of us would think of George Washington. There really never was a time when Maurice wasn't part of his consciousness.
They first broke ground on Where the Wild Things Are almost a decade ago. By the time he was offered the opportunity to direct stuff like Memoirs of a Geisha and Synecdoche, New York, he was already ears deep in Wild Things. He passed on directing Benjamin Button back in 2001 so he could make Adaptation instead, his last film until now.
Joel asked Catherine about her involvement in the film. She's been working with Spike for a while now, starting with Being John Malkovich and followed by Adaptation, Synecdoche, New York (which Spike didn't direct but did produce), and now this. And as you saw above, he and Catherine both "advise" 826LA. What struck me funny tonight is that Spike always addressed Catherine Keener as just "Keener," in a sort of mock authoritative way, like a goofy football coach or something. "What do ya say, Keener?" Joel asked Catherine about playing the mom of a nine-year-old when she's the mom of a nine-year-old in real life. Even before he could finish the question, Catherine made that cutting motion across her neck to indicate the ix-nay. Weird. I know she and her long-time man Dermot "Dirty Steve from Young Guns" Mulroney finally divorced not too long ago. Was it ugly? I never found out the details, but I was kind of surprised when it happened. Why wouldn't she talk about her boy? Could be she's just private and doesn't want to mix that life with her Hollywood one. She did say she got along great with Max Records. Joel asked if she became a mentor to him. Catherine said nah, she wasn't so much a mentor as a partner. Then she elaborated by relating her trying to let Max know what he was in for on a feature-film shoot of this magnitude. It sounded to me like she was kind of his mentor, but by partner she meant they both had to tough out Spike's direction together. Comrades-in-arms.
She was much more talkative about her role as the film's producer. Both she and Spike were very honest about Spike's reluctance to make the tougher decisions, like hiring and firing crew. Although I've never been on a feature film set, it's no secret that crew can have a high rate of churn. Sandra Bullock produces almost all the movies she stars in and has talked in interviews about the hiring and firing behind the scenes. Just seeing them tonight and how they talked and interacted with each other, it's obvious Spike just doesn't have a pair as big as Catherine's. If you've seen Catherine in enough movies, you know she's got this knack for playing tough broads. Well there's a good reason for that.
One person in the audience asked something I would’ve asked if I’d had the chance: How and why did Spike get Karen O, of all people, to contribute to the soundtrack? Karen O’s the Korean-born New Jersey-raised lead singer of this rock group called the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They’re relatively new to the scene. Their third album only just came out this year. But with their debut, 2000’s Fever to Tell, they arrived. Karen O’s rep as a hard rocker was established right out of the gates. I won’t go too much into their work, but suffice it to say Karen O’s the last person you’d expect to contribute to a soundtrack for a movie like this. She did contribute music to the soundtracks of Jackass 2 and that Bob Dylan “biopic” I’m Not There. But for Wild Things she was much more involved. She and Spike were dating at the time, so there’s that. Yes, they’ve since broken up, and yes, Spike tip-toed around that particular topic. He did say her style of song writing isn’t as structured as movie soundtrack work demands, hence Spike bringing in Carter Burwell to be a sort of mentor. Both he and Karen O ultimately shared credit for the soundtrack. Spike used Carter for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. More notable, though, is that Carter Burwell has scored all the Coen Brother movies. And I do mean all of them, starting with their 1984 debut, Blood Simple, which was Carter’s first film as well. Interesting, eh? He also did Twilight.
It was inevitable someone in the audience would ask about how the Wild Things' facial expressions were rendered. This led Spike to talk about why it took so long to make the film: To make the Wild Things realistic meant, in essence, shooting the film three times. The first step was to get all the voice talent (James Gandolfini and all the rest) into a soundstage the size of the auditorium we were all sitting in, a huge, square, high-ceilinged room. The floor was covered with shag carpet of different colors depending on where you were standing. It was all very seventies. What made it more so were the goofy spandex-type outfits the actors had to wear, complete with those seventies-style headbands, each with a mic hanging down to pick up their voices. And they had motion sensors on their arms and legs. Of course they didn't have to film the entire script that way, only the parts with the Wild Things, but still, that's most of the movie. And then, of course, Spike had to go to Australia and shoot the live action. He made a point to say that he used almost no computer effects. He's old school and prefers building actual sets. The people in the Wild Thing costumes were local Australian stunt actors. The costumes were stifling and weighed a ton. The actors couldn't handle being in them for more than a few minutes at a time. Damn, considering how many scenes they're in, that is yet another reason the shoot was so painstaking. After the shoot, Spike had to go through those scenes a third time to merge the soundstage work with the on-location work, the voices and expressions and all that. Very, very painstaking.
But wait, it gets even more so, and at the expense of the unsung hero on every movie set: The cinematographer. The director of photography, or DP, as they say on set. The director's right hand, the person responsible for the look of the film. Spike's DP for Wild Things was Lance Acord. This guy also photographed Malkovich and Adaptation. And he worked with Spike's ex-wife Sofia Coppola on Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette. That's interesting because they'd already been divorced a while when Sofia made Marie Antoinette. In fact they divorced right after Lost in Translation came out in the fall of 2003. Apparently Giovanni Ribisi's aloof and emotionally unavailable photographer character in Lost in Translation was "inspired" by Spike Jonze. Hilarious. After tonight, I believe it. I don't know about emotionally unavailable. You can't tell that from one Q&A, but he is kind of dorky in the same way Giovanni's character was. They almost sound the same.
Anyway, back to Lance Acord, he almost died making Where the Wild Things Are. Specifically it was the scenes where Max sails to and from the island on his little dinghy that caused so much trouble. Both the boat scenes and the beach scenes were shot along the south coast of Australia. Melbourne's on the south coast, but we're talking away from Melbourne and the rest of civilization. It's not hard to get away from it all in Australia. In fact, Spike said that beach is the last bit of land before you hit the South Pole. It was some bay, I forget the name. For one of the boat sequences, we see everything from Max's point of view. Lance was in the boat, right? He's got all the equipment, and the boat's churning ahead. Suddenly! Here comes a rogue wave to knock his bee-hind right out of the boat, with all that heavy gear in his arms. It must have been terrifying at the time, but Spike was smiling as he talked about it tonight. And the rest of us were laughing, not at Lance's near-death experience, but at how morbid Spike seemed as he related it. Anyway, apparently Lance is an expert swimmer and had a pair of fins strapped to his tool belt. He was able to grab the rim of the boat with the tips of one hand. If he hadn't, who the hell knows what would've happened?
Just to reinforce Spike's eccentricity, when someone asked him where he'd gotten the idea of the giant dog in the desert, Spike said that was Dick Cheney's idea. Without a trace of irony, he said people don't know Dick Cheney's actually a very creative guy. We all laughed....but he didn't. He just went on about how Dick Cheney is an old friend of the family and that most people just don't understand him. He must be joking, right? Perhaps that was his own cryptic way of saying the dog scene meant nothing and it was just some whimsical ya-ya he had to get out. That's my interpretation.
When asked of which scene he was most proud, Spike said there wasn't any one scene. What made him proud was his ability to sustain a consistent feeling and tone throughout the film. When you read the book, yes, it's a kid's book with drawings and imaginary creatures, but it does have an edge of darkness. That's tricky when you're shooting a film, right? Tone in general is very important in film. It's one of the first things you learn in film school, but it's far easier to talk about it and watch other films by old masters who pulled it off. When it's your turn to step behind the camera, you might forget about it because you're too busy being a slave to the story. Of course if it's a good story, the tone will take care of itself, as will the subtext. But still, a children's story that's dark and foreboding while still being for kids and all ages, that's not easy. Add in the fact that it's one of the most popular kid's books ever, with a loyal fan base some of whom will inevitably not be happy no matter what you do.
You gotta give Spike credit. He's a goofy bastard, but he also has perspective. And confidence. To be in this business in the first place, you've got to have an ego, right? Spike's, I'm guessing, is the size of one of those Wild Things. And maybe it should be. The man's obviously got storytelling talent. He added that his pride in the film came not just from the tone, but that he kept the tone he wanted while dealing with so many obstacles. He didn't specify what his obstacles were beyond the movie studio. I think that's what he meant in general: Studio suits who had their own ideas about how to bring this classic to the screen. And he beat them. Without compromising his story. Again, that takes a lot of clout. And balls. I'm surprised he has a tough time firing crew.
