  Where the Wild Things Are opens Friday
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LOS ANGELES -- Spike Jonze's wild things aren't out of the woods yet.
Five years after the alt-indie director of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation began adapting author Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, the pricey, brooding children's fantasy opens Friday following an arduous production and months of rumoured behind-the-scenes strife.
And still, in the minds of many a Hollywood suit, a larger question looms. Namely, in an era in which happy hyperactive 3D cartoons have become synonymous with family filmmaking, will Jonze's movie -- about a troubled child of divorce who retreats into a dangerous, imaginary realm populated by fierce, fantastical beings -- be too frightening and difficult for youngsters (and their easily-spooked parents)?
"I don't think it's a dark film," Jonze tells journalists at a Beverly Hills hotel. "It has moments that are intense, for sure."
Just how intense those moments should be has been -- if you believe the Internet (and who doesn't?) -- a source of friction between Jonze and executives at Warner Bros. One report that surfaced last year suggested the studio was contemplating reshooting the entire film after a troubling test screening. At the very least, Wild Things, which was originally expected to open in 2008, appeared to be in turmoil, with some questioning whether the Jonze, 39, would stay on to finish it.
Even the cast couldn't ignore the industry rumblings. "I read stuff and I heard stuff," says Catherine O'Hara who voices one of the creatures encountered by young protagonist Max (Max Records).
"I thought it can't be true because how lame would it be to take it away from Spike Jonze? Who did they think were getting? If they wanted -- I won't name one -- but if they wanted a certain kind of children's movie, they wouldn't have hired him.
"So they had that instinct and they should trust their instinct. I don't know what the story was. He stayed the course and I know Maurice Sendak had his back; I don't know if it was a big a fight as all the rumours you hear would have you believe. But I'm so glad he didn't give up and they came to an agreement."
In fact, a year later, the film has seemingly reversed its fortunes. It is opening wide (as opposed to being dumped in obscurity), has considerable marketing muscle behind it and has generated rabid anticipation among the book's generations of fans thanks to a stunningly-assembled trailer. And Jonze -- unlike a director nursing studio-inflicted wounds -- is out promoting the final product.
Of course, perhaps none of this should have surprised Jonze. As they say, complicated is easy, simplicity is hard. And Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are is very, very simple. Which raises the question: Just how do you fashion a feature-film screenplay out of a 20-page tome?
"Basically we approached it not over-thinking it too much," says Jonze, who wrote the script with author Dave Eggers. "We tried to approach it the way a kid's intuition would approach it. In many of my other films, they're much more analytical and cerebral and this one, because the main character is nine, I wanted to turn that part of my brain off and not approach it so cerebrally."
Which isn't to say Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are is, in any way, dumbed down -- especially when compared to the inane, charmless likes of The Cat in the Hat and How The Grinch Stole Christmas (the 81-year-old Sendak is sufficiently pleased with the adaptation that he is the subject of a Jonze-directed HBO documentary that airs later this week in advance of the film's debut.)
For one, Jonze doesn't sugarcoat Sendak's less-than-idyllic view of childhood and children. Far from the rambunctious, unnaturally wise brand of brat that populates most children's fiction, Max is immature, painfully vulnerable, needy and desperate to control the world around him. In other words, he's a real kid. And that sense of authenticity also informed how Jonze chose to envision the imaginary realm Max flees to after a fight with his mother (Catherine Keener). Instead of predictable Spielbergian spectacle, Jonze opted for a startling lack of awe -- hand-held cameras, genuine locales and, most remarkably, nine-foot-tall animatronic puppets (whose expressions were later added digitally). The faux-documentary look, says Jonze, "stemmed from taking Max seriously. He's going to imagine a place that's real -- not some fantasy version of it. For me, that connected more. Really being with these wild animals and seeing the dirt and sand and leaves in their hair and having that level of reality to it would make it more dangerous and in a way more exciting because you're really there. And the whole movie is shot from Max's point of view where you're discovering it with him."
Filming on location in Australia, he continues, "was a very challenging way of shooting it. But we made that decision to take whatever came with it -- the weather and whatever else. We definitely tried to keep the whole feeling of a kid and not put our adult stuff into it ... We did this whole movie as an adventure. We kind of lived the movie in a lot of ways."
As for whether the film -- with its hipster director and alternative aesthetic (the soundtrack includes Karen O and Arcade Fire) -- is appropriate for children, 12-year-old Records says, "It depends on the kid and it depends on their age. I know when I was seven or eight, I could not have seen this movie. But my brother is seven or eight and he totally could have."
Adds Keener, "I would love parents to be less afraid (of the movie) because kids aren't ... As far as I can tell, all the kids who have seen it feel completely that that's where they're at (emotionally). It's the natural feeling of a child who wants to get control and identify with the world outside of a parental constraint."
"The one thing I would hope is that there would be some conversation," says Jonze, "That a parent might be able to talk to their kid in a different way and ask them what they think. Not be worried about how they're going to turn out, but be curious about who they are."
