Talk about wild and unruly things. The New York Times Sunday magazine this weekend has a cover story on Spike Jonze and the six-seven year endeavor to bring “Where The Wild Things Are” to the big screen. It is nearly a whopping 7, 500 words long and we just parsed the whole damn thing so we might as well break down some, but not all, of it for you.
Essentially it’s an all encompassing piece about Jonze’s rise to film auteur status — the nascent BMX and “Dirty” magazine years, directing dazzling MTV videos that put him on the map, impressing with his feature-film “Being John Malkovich,” etc. — and the long, bumpy and winding creation of ‘Wild Things.’
The big “takeaway” if there is one in this sprawling piece about the film itself is that ‘Wild Things’ seems to focus less on narrative and more on feeling or tone and this is pretty much what the months arguing with Warner Bros. were about, not the fact — as many bloggers including us had framed it — as a battle over lightness and darkness.
What’s becoming evident is that ‘Wild Things’ seems to be largely less plot-driven than your average film, which stands to figure because the original script was similarly unconventional.
In fact, in a script review we wrote of Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze’s ‘Wild Things’ screenplay this was our very issue. We did call it “magical” overall, and this is still true, it leaves you with such an evocatively wondrous quality. But we did caution that, “the script also lacks any real dramatic arc and doesn’t really have the ‘increasing difficulties’ tenet that most screenplays and movies adhere to. There’s a lack of structure and there’s no major stakes.”
It wasn’t a dealbreaker for us by any means, but in trying to provide a true critical analysis (and frankly, not just a fanboy blowjob), we did think perhaps this was WB’s main issue and this — according to what we’re inferring from this long-ass NYT article — seems to be the case.
“Jonze’s attitude, much more than the ability to spin an enthralling tale, is at the heart of who he is and why he matters to people. His music videos don’t tell stories; they capture a feeling,” Times writer Saki Knafo wrote, trying to describe questions and issues of plot versus attitude.
Ultimately, this is probably for the best, as Jonze’s strength is tone, emotional verisimilitude, attitude, etc. Any narrative lapses should hopefully be made up for in the special, child-like world Jonze usually creates.
The idea evidently, was not making a children’s movie, but accurately depicting one in all its forms. “It’s in the visual language of, like, some sort of fantasy film, and it is a fantasy film to some degree,” Jonze said, “but the tone of it is its own tone. We wanted it all to feel true to a 9-year-old and not have some big movie speech where a 9-year-old is suddenly reciting the wisdom of the sage. Everything we did, all the decisions that we made, were to try to capture the feeling of what it is to be 9.”
Ok, for the rest, you’ll need to read the whole thing yourself, but here’s some interesting highlights. Some dates provided by us and some by the Times.
1994: The wildly popular and awesome video for The Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” is shot. No permits are used. Everything is done illegally on the video shoot including the stunt driving which is done by Jonze and members of the group. Two cameras are destroyed on the shoot including an $84,000 Arriflex that was, at one point, bolted onto the top of a car.
1996 (roughly): two months before principal photography is scheduled to start, TriStar pulls out of the live-action adaptation of “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” which Jonze is scheduled to direct. Maurice Sendak’s mentor, Crockett Johnson, wrote the book and he bought the rights. This is where he and Jonze first strike up an affinity for one another. “[TriStar] didn’t like my ideas, and they thought it would cost too much,” Jonze said echoing thoughts he told AICN last year about compromising his work on the adaptation far more than he would have liked and feeling a sense of “relief” after the project was deep-sixed.
1997-ish: He is offered a ton of lame movie scripts to direct, including a sequel to “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.” All of them suck, he turns them all down.
1998: His first initial meeting with John Malkovich for “Being John Malkovich” does not go well. Malkovich thinks the nervous young man is odd and… not American due to his crippled, frantic speech patterns. “I thought he was Czech. He had such a funny way of expressing himself. It sounded like he’d learned English as a second language.” Nevertheless, Malkovich finds him “funny and charming and strange,” and obviously he agreed to make the wonderfully odd picture.
Spring 1998: PolyGram threatens to shut down production on ‘Malkovich’ cause it is too bizarre, and in some cases, depressing and poorly lit in their estimation. But then the company merges with Universal and new execs come in. By the time anyone gets around to checking in on Jonze, he’s already been editing for almost a year. Almost by accidental default, Jonze makes his picture without studio interference. Hoorah for small miracles. Somewhere in the world an offering is made to the movie gods in thanks.
2001 and 2002: Sendak tries to entice Jonze into adapting ‘Wild Things.’ He respectfully declines. “I love it in this [novel] form, and I don’t want to add something on that seems extraneous,” he says.
2003: The “eureka” moment strikes as Jonze is going through a difficult period: he and wife Sofia Coppola are splitting up. An outpouring of emotion and ideas hit him when he falls into the idea that the monsters should be complex emotional creatures. “I felt that I could write infinitely about that, because that’s so much of what we are,” He excitedly calls Sendak for “10 minutes of rambling,” and decides he wants to make the film.
2004-ish: Jonze hires Dave Eggers to write the script with him and moves to San Francisco, where Eggers lived. They write in Jonze’s house distracting themselves with BB guns, skateboards and “The Wizard Of Oz.”
Spring of 2005: They pitch the script to Universal. The studio passes. Again, part of the issues are lack of plot. Eggers himself says the studio didn’t like that there wasn’t “any real easy plot arc: ‘Let’s go find the chalice! Where is it? Here are some people we meet along the way.’ ”
2005-2006: Warner Bros.’ Jeff Robinov who has just made smart, bold and creative decisions by hiring Christopher Nolan to direct “Batman Begins” and Alfonso Cuarón to direct “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” comes on board and hires Jonze to direct ‘Wild Things.’
July 2006: Problems on set emerge immediately. The suits from Jim Henson’s company are too cumbersome. They are faced with the choice of emotional faces or mobile and flexible suits that allow for running around, jumping etc. Jonze and his producers have to sacrifice, and ask Henson’s people to “tear apart the 50-pound heads and remove the remote-controlled mechanical eyeballs. This meant that all the facial expressions would have to be generated in post-production, using computers.”
December 2006: After a difficult four month shoot in Australia, Jonze asks for more money to shoot additional scenes. Warner counters and says they would like a director’s assembly cut first. Jonze, a notoriously slow editor finally gives them one almost a year later.
September 2007: The now infamous and disastrous Warner test screening. “We felt that the movie was too slow,” Robinov said. There was also “a question of intensity: Is it too intense for kids? Is the audience for the movie that we’re making broad enough?” Kids allegedly cry and wet their pants. Children apparently ask their parents if they can leave and the question whether the movie “is for kids” is raised. The internet begins to go into hysterical panic mode.
The ensuing months, late 2007, early 2008: of battle/ back and forth between studio and filmmaker was ““a rough process” according to Robinov. Asked whether the studio considered firing the director, the WB head says, mmm, not really. “There wasn’t a conversation about firing him per se. We certainly reached a place in talking about the movie where I can imagine it would have been easier for Spike to walk away, and it would have been easier for me to be talking to someone else, but we never got there.”
March 2008: Jonze turns in a revised script — is this the Jon Vitti touch-up? Not a lot of changes are made. One scene is removed, two are added. WB relents and gives him more money, reshoots happen in the spring/summer of that year. “We felt that the changes Spike made in the movie really addressed the majority of the issues,” Robinov says.
September 2009: ‘Wild Things’ is one month away and while this detailing was fun, we kind of want this exhausting hour of our life back.