As we had written late last week, Spike Jonze one of the producers of Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” was in attendance at the Cannes 2008 Film Festival to help support the film and we had hoped aloud that someone would have the chance (or cojones) to ask Jonze about the status and rumors surrounding his highly anticipated, but reportedly-troubled adaptation of children’s novel “Where The Wild Things Are,” by Maurice Sendak.
So far it seems like no one scored any direct quotes from Jonze, but Cinematical did have a chance to ask actor Tom Noonan a couple questions about the film during a roundtable interview. The actor, who plays the big chicken Wild Thing, Emil, explained the process of how the actors and filmmakers brought the monsters to life.Rather than motion-capture techniques Jonze and co. shot the film mostly as live-action. “They shot us [the actors] in a room, they video-taped us doing the parts, and then they trained acrobats and dancers and had them imitate our gestures, then put them in the costumes and had our voices coming out.”
But more importantly and perhaps more comically, Noonan noted that ‘Wild Things’ author Sendak was involved and would give “motivating” foul-mouthed video conference chats with the crew to whip them into shape “Maurice Sendak was involved. We’d do these video conferences with him where he’d be like, ‘If you can’t be children, don’t be in the fucking movie.’ He’d say, ‘I want to see children. I don’t know any adults who are able to be children,’ and he’d give us these pep talks where he’d say, ‘Don’t do what you always do, do what you’ve always needed to do.”
Noonan called Jonze “the perfect person” to help the actors go back to feeling what it felt like to be a kid. “He’s really good at getting people to do crazy things.” When asked if he had seen the film, Noonan said. “We’ve looped a little, and I’ve seen clips of it — I’ve only seen little pieces of it. But what I’ve seen looks amazing.”
Noonan said Jonze the boy who played Max to be involved int the filming process until the Wild Things suits were on so Catherine Keener – who plays the mother in the film that sends Max to his room without any supper – “played her own son” and that Jonze stood in for the child’s part at times too.
Before Cinematical had a chance to ask about the reported problems on the film, the roundtable discussion went back to the subject and film at hand, Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” which Noonan stars in. If Spike Jonze was part of any rountable interviews, none of them seem to have been published and at this juncture it seems very likely that he wasn’t. We’re still surprised some reporter or blogger didn’t have a second to come up to him and ask a quick question about the film though.