Dear Nat:

Yes, I think A Hole Is to Dig was something new. It came from Ruth Krauss' listening to children, getting ideas from them, polishing some of the thoughts, exploring additional "definitions" of her own. It really grew out of children and what is important to them. (A brother is to help you.) Some of the definitions seem quite serious to children but those aren't the once the adults smile over and consider "cute." For instance, "Buttons are to keep people warm." Adults think oh isn't that darling, but it makes perfectly good sense to children.... A Hole Is to Dig was the first of all the Something is Something books, and has been mushily imitated ever since it was published....

You asked me how "revolutionary" Where the Wild Things Are is. There have been a good many fine picture books in the past. (Some by Margaret Wise Brown, and illustrated by one of two or three or four talented artists.) But I think Wild Things is the first complete work of art in the picture book field, conceived, written, illustrated, executed in entirety by one person of authentic genius. Most books are written from the outside in. But Wild Things comes from the inside out, if you know what I mean. And I think Maurice's book is the first picture book to recognize the fact that children have powerful emotions, anger and love and hate and only after all that passion, the wanting to be "where someone loved him best of all." I'm writing this in a terrible hurry, so forgive me, please. A lot of good picture books have had fine stories and lovely pictures (Peter Rabbit, the best of Dr. Seuss, Wanda Gag's Millions of Cats), and some have touched beautifully on basic things in a child's life, physical growth, going to bed, coming to terms with a new sister or brother (this is making them sound sappy but they are far from that-I'm thinking of Ruth Krauss' The Growing Story, Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon, Charlotte Zolotow's Quarreling Book, the Hobans' Baby Sister for Frances). But it just seems to me that Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are goes deeper than previous picture books. And of course his use of three consecutive double-spreads to show what happened when Max cried, "Let the wild rumpus start!" has never been done in any book.

Yours,

From Dear Genius, the collected letters of Ursula Nordstrom.

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The fact that the movie does not hew to the book is, to be fair, irrelevant. The filmmakers are within their rights to mangle the original and do what they need to make the movie they imagined. That's how adaptations work, but that doesn't give this blowout any wiggle room. My boys-pretty much the age of the boy in the movie, Max, played by Max Records-would find no terror in this movie. They'd be bored to death and ask to split after an hour. Knowing the original book at least gave me a little investment. How will they render Max's journey across the sea? How will they depict the rumpus? That curiosity got me only so far before the stasis of the movie took over, and I started ooching around in my seat. What, exactly, does this movie expect me to DO over here?

The opening feels right, and takes place in what this movie posits as The Real World. Lonely, moody young Max creates a modest igloo from snow near the family house. When his older sister and her stoneball friends show up, Max decides to sucker punch them. He carries out an attack from behind a fence, pelting them with snowballs before retreating to his igloo. This moment ends up being wasted, but it's glorious for a minute or so. The bigger boys come back and clobber Max, as they would, and dogpile the igloo back into snow, almost crushing the little guy. Then they take off in a weirdly vintage car. Max's sister looks back through the car window with a disdain that is never explained. That's par for the course. Very little about the creatures in this movie, real or imagined, is given any explanation beyond a shot of moist eyeballs and a series of subtle body positions that must mean something to Jonze but will look to the rest of us like Standing Still and Sniffling. (In the book, Max has what art directors would call a "devilish grin." In this movie, Max wears the Elijah Wood mug: pie-eyed and neutered.) This movie, in fact, is a vivid rendering of sniffling, and for that reason alone may have earned an aesthetic place in the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics.

After the big kids wreck the igloo, Max hates the world, has a fit and messes up his sister's room. It's a wuss move, though, since he doesn't break anything she'd care about. But we're in the synthetic mindworld of Eggerjonze, which denies us a realistic depiction of children or adults while also making imagination seem like a miserable burden. Welcome to the Home of the Wild Things! You can now bum the fuck out with natural lighting for ninety minutes. Your only respite will be the musical equivalent of prison food: Karen O and "The Kids" hootling and strumming while you try to figure out what you're supposed to latch onto.

Max seems pretty human when he builds that igloo and decides to punk his sister's friends. And when they descend and crush him, he certainly wouldn't enjoy that in the moment-who would? But kids know kid rules. Jonze turns the physical movement of the igloo moment into a kinetic blur and nails some of the psychology; even at the zenith of their cool-acting days, older boys are still boys, ready to rumpus and throw ice. But this is all followed by Max's long, self-pitying coda. What? He thought he could ambush a bunch of teenagers and not catch a problem? Max would have known that payback was coming and, qua boy, would probably enjoy wrecking the igloo, even if he couldn't breathe for a minute. Here is your Cliff's Notes to this slushy, grey movie: everything sucks. Even snowball fights.

We then proceed to our thirtysomething interlude. Mom (Catherine Keener) is angry that Max has semi-trashed his sister's room and solves this problem with a pile of fresh towels and soulful tut-tutting. But then, to make things super-terrible, Mom decides to have a date! With a man who isn't the person who sired Max! Whoever that was or is! And so when Max sees Mom and Guy (Mark Ruffalo) making out on the couch, he decides to wild out. It's hard out here for a nine year-old. Never mind that nothing actually bad happens-it is about time that you accepted the movie's premise that childhood is one long, bug-eyed stretch of misery. Never mind that you've got your own fucking room, foxy Catherine Keener is making you dinner and your dumbass sister left you alone in the house all evening. Nope! This little bitchy Max jumps up on the kitchen table, throws a Mariah and then runs out into the dark streets.

In the book, Max goes to his room without supper after having his tantrum. There, without motion and without company, he begins his imaginary journey to the land of ambiguously fun monsters. (There are not much more than 300 words in the original, and none of them describe divorce or the sheer horror of being alive.) A child running into the streets because of a dispute with his mother is not funny, lighthearted or common, no matter what decade you pick. At this point, we throw aside the source material (already moot) and reach for something even more critically verboten: the personal lives of the creators. Since Jonze has stated the movie is not for kids, but is "about childhood," it feels OK to go down this road for a beat. Sendak never had kids, Jonze has none, and Eggers has a four year-old girl and an infant son. I understand that recalling your childhood is everyone's God-given right, and that those involved had tough times before adulthood arrived, but, for a movie that seeks to represent the experience of being a kid, this movie is tone deaf. Everyone would just snuff it if this were what young dreams were like, and no one would ever reproduce if kids and parents had such monotonous troubles. Obviously, families invite discord but little of it feels like the two-note whine of this movie. Who the fuck are these people? Really?

When Max finally reaches the island-a journey by boat that now happens in the shadow of Lost, whether or not Jonze or the audience likes it-he finds the fabulous creatures. They're a technological coup, looking entirely real and unreal, both like goofy costumes and living, breathing organisms. Really big organisms. Give some love to art director Sonny Gerasimowicz and costume designer Casey Storm, because Jonze seems to want to punish them, and us. We meet the creatures in the dark, and that's where they stay, locked in the natural light Jonze relies on, rarely seen clearly enough to enjoy. But then, nobody is big on enjoyment over on the island, especially the creatures. Max has to conceal himself when he finds them because the alpha male, Carol (James Gandolfini) is throwing things around and breaking enormous pod-houses made of branches. This isn't a rumpus-it's Carol's tantrum, our first laserbeam of psychological projection. So Carol is our Max, then. But, no, after Max enters the world of the creatures and escapes being eaten by convincing them he's a king, we find out that Carol is a mishmash of Max, his mother, and possibly his absent father. Everyone on the island is hoping that Max will take away "the sadness." Yoiks! This is the break that Max gave himself from reality? An Outward Bound test of his character? This island is now his own self-flagellation for messing up his sister's room? Or the rumpus on the island is punishing all rumpussers?

From here on, it's up to you to find a way to stay awake. When we finally reach the real rumpus, it's relatively fun, a sly echo of the dogpile that Max suffers in the igloo scene. But check Karen O's "Rumpus" track and tell me you don't feel a little cheated on rumpussy vibes. Jonze simply won't let anyone in the film enjoy their misfit status to the max. Carol turns out to have a fractious relationship with KW (Lauren Ambrose) and everyone else, too. To distract everyone from the sadness, Max gets the community to build a big, gorgeous bit of steampunk Gaudi, a miniature palace made of branches and rocks that twists and turns and feels like Burning Man's answer to the Death Star. It is spectacular, not that anyone in the film seems to feel that way. (Carol punches a hole in it later when Max gets on his nerves.) This combination of Tatooine and the jungle recalls the landscape in Blood Meridian, which switches from snow to sand to woods and leaves you unmoored and lost, dizzy and ill. Where The Wild Things Are could have done that, and gone for full-on nightmare territory, giving all the anxiety and sniffling a direction, a slow burn leading to an implosion. But this movie doesn't have that kind of bravery-the creatures on the island are a family just like family back at home, with problems and flaws and, bro, you just need to love them for who they are.

BUT DOES ANYBODY REMEMBER LAUGHTER? Why was there only one killer moment on the island? The scene is yet another frustration, showing how well Jonze's knack for the perfectly odd moment can be tied to character and image. (Only a grouch would deny that Jonze knows his moments and his killer frames.) As Max and Carol trundle across the desert, echoing the blocking of several Star Wars desert scenes, an enormous dog passes behind them. Max asks about the dog and Carol says to ignore him. "He'll just follow you around." And that's that. The scene is shot in bright sunlight, which is a relief, though Carol's not close enough for us to see him in great detail. It's a good, multi-layered joke. The dog is four times the size of the already enormous island creatures, so he's just funny. He's a big frigging dog, the indie Clifford, and he's gone so quickly the gag is that much funnier. Maybe Max doesn't like dogs but can't say so because adults are always hugging them and saying "Good boy" and buying them organic beef jerky. What if you just wanted dogs to leave you the heck alone? Imagination, all of a sudden, works for Max, not against him.

Eventually, Max goes home and his exhausted and terrified mother makes him dinner. Of course I cried-the kid was running around in the goddamn streets. What am I, a monster? The ending-no place like home-just reminds us that we've just had a whole lotta Kansas and not a lot of Emerald City. DID YOU SEE THAT MOVIE? THINGS WERE GREEN AND GOLD AND SCARY AND FUNNY AND FUCKING WEIRD. Can this movie even stand a chance against Oz, or any number of Miyazaki movies? Didn't Totoro render this movie superfluous years ago? A child chases after an enormous hillock of fur and noisy breath that never seems entirely safe but is obviously some kind of kin. It's a good idea.

This was originally published under the byline "Paul Friedman Phillips," the pen name of Sasha Frere-Jones.

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Opening Ceremony collaborated with director Spike Jonze to create a limited edition collection of merchandise inspired by his film adaptation of the treasured children's book, Where the Wild Things Are. Unexpected yet covetable, the range features faux fur pieces for men and women, as well as Wild Things-inspired jewelry by Opening Ceremony favorite, Pamela Love. The playful and fully wearable line features hoodies, fur-accented bombers, and parkas for men, and full fur coats, dresses, and skirts for women. Max's iconic one-piece playsuit comes complete with furry-eared hood and raccoon tail.

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So! The article:

At the conclusion of the four-month shoot in December 2006, Jonze told Warner Brothers he needed more money for additional photography.

Ooh, over budget. And early. Good for him.

The executives replied that they'd first need to see a "director's cut." Usually, Robinov told me, when a studio asks for a director's cut, they expect it to be delivered in three months. Three months passed. Then another three months.

Dude went totally MIA. Like, freakily so.

"We spent a lot of time hunting through the footage trying to find that nuance that Spike wanted," Landay told me.

They seized the film???

Finally, in September 2007, Jonze screened a cut for executives at Warner Brothers. Robinov had concerns. "We felt that the movie was too slow," he told me. 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?" A test screening was convened in Pasadena, and some reactions were later posted on a blog. One viewer wrote, "I don't think it's for young children." Another claimed that some children in the audience began to cry and asked their parents to leave the theater.

They hated it so much they leaked the test screening results.

The back-and-forth between Jonze and the studio over the next few months, Robinov told me, was "a rough process." He and Jonze had a series of "disagreements" about the movie's "tone and pacing and clarity."

They fought like cats and dogs. Presumably the producers spent most of this period sitting on Jonze's head. And massaging the studio.

It was uncertain, he said, "whose cut of the picture and what cut of the picture would ultimately prevail."

Someone took it away from Jonze. Possibly the movie we're going to see is not Jonze's cut.

I asked if there was any truth to the rumor that he'd considered firing Jonze. "There wasn't a conversation about firing him per se," he replied. "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."

You can 'imagine' that? 'Per se'? I mean...

Jonze wouldn't talk about the rift, but Megan Baltimore, a former roommate from Torrance who remains one of his closest friends, told me: "I think he got in a pretty dark place at the time. I think he got to the point where he was spending more energy in the battle than on making the movie, and I think it was defeating for him."

Oh. Dude was in a "dark place." Yikesies! How dark? We may never know. I hope this movie is really really good, like his other movies, and I also hope it is his movie!

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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."

Choire Sicha: Is it a still from a forthcoming film?

Tom Scocca: Or is it the illustration for the week's short fiction? Why, it is both. The New Yorker is running a publicity still advertising a motion picture, as if it were content.

Choire Sicha: Wow, who's Renata Adler now?

Tom Scocca: No one is Renata Adler there, it seems. Remember when the question about the integrity of the New Yorker's editorial content was whether it would stoop to running photographs as illustrations at all? Me neither. What a boring thing to argue about.

Choire Sicha: I remember that, a little!

Tom Scocca: Now it can be argued–more now than ever!–that from a certain critical perspective, publishing a photograph by Annie Liebovitz is one kind of marketing proposition, and that it represents a degree of engagement with commerce.

Choire Sicha: I would argue that!

Tom Scocca: The same kind of critic could argue that the fiction section of the New Yorker is not unfamiliar with a kind of product placement, in that Literary Events are not infrequently preceded and heralded on their way to the commercial marketplace by the publication of an excerpt in the New Yorker in the form (or guise) of a short story. But this is not an example of the funny symbiosis between the purposes of the New Yorker and the purposes of the publishing industry.

Tom Scocca: This is actual marketing: a marketing-department image which is part of the marketing campaign for a mass-market movie, occupying most of a page in the editorial hole of the New Yorker.

Tom Scocca: And the next nine pages, not counting the cartoons, are devoted to a piece of "short fiction" by one of the Warner Bros. movie's screenwriters, which is a novelization of the Warner Bros. movie's story.

Tom Scocca: This is a big, long step beyond using the fiction space to give everyone a preview of the new Jhumpa Lahiri. It is a step that carries the New Yorker off the sidewalk and into a deep ditch bubbling with raw sewage.

Choire Sicha: That's not a very nice thing to say about Hollywood.

Tom Scocca: Hollywood, or Hollywood marketing departments?

Choire Sicha: Like there's a difference!

Tom Scocca: Anyway, we have not gotten to the particular substance of the story, yet, because I am trying to keep these issues separate. For the moment, it is only worth stipulating that it is a lousy story.

Tom Scocca: It is an adaptation of an adapted screenplay–a derivative work of a derivative work–and is completely without the sort of artistic merit that would allow someone to rationalize the marketing package on literary grounds. At least, the pages I read before hurling the magazine against the wall were clearly worthless, and someone who read the whole thing confirmed that it just kept on going that way.

Choire Sicha: I'll report back to those that are concerned about stapling that the magazine only holds up so-so against hurtling.

Tom Scocca: So let's pause here and finish with the magazine: this package, particularly the publicity photo, represents a gross lapse of ethics and taste by the fiction department of the New Yorker, and the magazine owes the readers an apology for printing it. And an editor might think long and hard about why he employs a fiction editor who would think this was an OK thing to put in the magazine.

Choire Sicha: To her credit, she did publish a wonderful Chris Adrian story–a sometime McSweeney's author, by the way–back in April! But.

Tom Scocca: Now, this story (now: this story!)–this story does have a name-brand literary figure attached to it. Actually, it has two, but the second one doesn't get his name on it. The name on it is "Dave Eggers." One of the nice things that the semi-commercial publishing-promotion excerpt tradition of the New Yorker did do for me, long ago, was it allowed me to read enough of A Supposedly Fun Work of Heartbreaking Genius that I didn't have to go read the whole book.

Choire Sicha: I read the whole book.

Tom Scocca: How was it? I didn't mind the excerpt.

Choire Sicha: Capsule review: it had its ups and downs?

Tom Scocca: We are brave. Brave are we. We are going to hide in the hills, like desperadoes, and take Tiger Mountain by strategy. Etc. But Dave Eggers is not the real literary brand being monetized here, although his literary brand is being used to add value in an extremely irritating way.

Tom Scocca: The story is called "Max at Sea," and the "Max" of the title is the character Max–or Dave Eggers' and Warner Bros.' commercial reconceptualization of the character Max–from Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak.

Tom Scocca: Where the Wild Things Are is a masterpiece. I have read it many, many, many times in the past two years and two months.

Choire Sicha: It is a masterpiece!

Tom Scocca: It is a masterpiece of children's literature. What Dave Eggers and Warner Bros. have done is turned the plot of a masterpiece of children's literature into a creepy, idiotic piece of Young Adult Fiction.

Tom Scocca: When I read it, I was literally ready to punch Dave Eggers in the face, except he was nowhere around. Now that I have simmered down, it remains possible that if I ever do find myself in a room with Dave Eggers, I may throw a drink in his face, probably including the glass or bottle.

Choire Sicha: You know, violence is never the answer.

Tom Scocca: That's more or less what an editor told me many years ago when I wanted to review a Soul Asylum album by, rather than listening to it, borrowing my neighbor's shotgun and blasting it to bits and writing about the aesthetic experience.

Choire Sicha: Well that's not violence. It's a terrible capitalist construction that violence against objects is actually violence.

Tom Scocca: I don't hate writers anywhere near as passionately as I hate what they write. But, you know, we all have a dark streak. Unless we are characters written about by Dave Eggers. His innovation in this story is to supply Max, who "wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind / and another," with a sad Back Story just full of Problems. According to the oily world view of Dave Eggers, he has a broken home. Father gone.

Tom Scocca: Mother tired.... no, wait, that's Curtis Mayfield. Max Eggers is only a child of the EMOTIONAL ghetto. Would you believe his mother has a boyfriend he doesn't like? Would you believe his older sister is mean to him?

Choire Sicha: Oh boy.

Tom Scocca: If you ever read any of the books in your middle-school library, you probably could believe that. So Max Eggers is angry. He acts out. Dave Eggers is the voice from the world in which "acting up" has been replaced by "acting out."

Tom Scocca: Maurice Sendak's Max is from a stable, loving home. He is allowed to run around in a wolf suit, which belongs to him. He is sent to bed without any dinner, but in the end dinner is waiting for him.

Tom Scocca: But then why does Max go wild? Why does he chase the dog with a fork? Why does his nice tidy bedroom have a wild forest grow up through it, as he laughs?

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