Urusula Nordstrom, Sendak's Editor, on "Wild Things," 1964 @9:02 AM
On December 1, 1964, Ursula Nordstrom wrote a letter to Nat Hentoff, who was on assignment for the New Yorker. (Hentoff's piece on Maurice Sendak ran January 22, 1966—well over a year later.) Nordstrom—who had never been a teacher, a librarian or a college graduate—published Sendak, Gorey, Silverstein, White, Wilder and Brown from 1940 to 1979, at which time she and her partner Mary moved up to the country. READ MORE 15
"Where the Wild Things Are": Where Is the Place Where They Put the Things? @4:46 PM
Maurice Sendak said it first: "I thought it was never going to end." If you've ever been through family therapy, you've had the same thought. And this is what director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Dave Eggers have reduced Where The Wild Things Are to-a glum ninety-minute session where emotions are projected onto big fuzzy creatures who look like nested Russian dolls bleached of color, blown up and covered in hairy mildew. The creatures serve therapy, not dreams or fantasy. They embody the vexations of a boy named Max, but none of his desires or imagined ecstasies. And if you've read Where The Wild Things Are, you probably think it depicts the work of a fertile young mind trying to escape grownups and their fat, dopey buzz-killing. Jonze and Eggers, in an audacious sidestep, decided to side with the buzzkillers and render Wild Things as a wintry march of afflictions and psychological donkey work done at the expense of children. If this movie represented the reality of juvenile imagination, I would get my kids hooked on drugs as soon as possible, just to spare them the agony of Having Their Own Thoughts, because that seems like a seriously raw deal. READ MORE 33
Where are the Wild Things At? Magical Story About Magical Movie-Making Totally Picks Narrative @3:15 PM
Well here is the big Where the Wild Things Are Spike Jonze profile, for this Sunday's New York Times magazine. The piece is made up of the idea of the struggle between a brilliant, unusual director and a stultifying studio system. Gosh, it is hard to make a good movie in the studio system! And gosh, directors are difficult little children. This is probably a thing that is always true! And here, not at all appearing in the article, are the names of the producers of the film (except Carls and Sendak, who, you know, were shopping a movie version together for ages), which sort of leaves the article as being a giant heap of nothing, to be rude. But that there is an entire depiction of a back-and-forth between Spike Jonze and the studio, without the producers as participants, is absurd. I'm sure none of the producers would go on the record, because what does it gain them? But to have no view of the roles of extremely powerful people (um, Tom Hanks?) in this process is ridiculous. There are some coded suggestions lurking in the piece however! Let's annotate. READ MORE 18
The Shadow Editors: Hands Off That Rumpus, Dave Eggers! @5:54 PM
Tom Scocca: So because I am a subscriber to the New Yorker, my current issue is still the August 24 issue, which I guess people could buy off newsstands something like 10 days ago.
Choire Sicha: So you have just seen a truly hair-raising thing, I take it!
Tom Scocca: The pages are a little loose in this issue, because I flung it away from me and it hit the wall. I am not a satisfied customer.
Choire Sicha: The McKinsey consultants aren't going to like hearing that.
Tom Scocca: On page 61 of this issue there is a tiny bit of type. A photo credit. The photo credit reads "MATT NETTHEIM / WARNER BROS." READ MORE 51
'Wild Things' Is Good Enough For Maurice Sendak @9:50 AM
While hipsters and Choire are falling all over themselves in anticipation of Spike Jonze's forthcoming Where The Wild Things Are, I have been a little less enthusiastic. I mean, sure, I like Arcade Fire just fine, and the preview had its moments, but there's something about the seemingly obvious ways in which they've opened up the story (oh no, Max is upset about his mom's new boyfriend!) that rub me wrong. That said, this feature with author Maurice Sendak puts me slightly more at ease. I'll give it a shot, I guess. But if Michel Gondry explains the titular character's desire for solitude as an expression of millennial discontent in his forthcoming adaptation of One Was Johnny (starring Viggo Mortensen as the robber) I reserve the right to be pissed off. 2
