Spike Jonze had me at the “Sabotage” video. Since that time he’s become one of America’s most prized directors and struck music video gold many times over, including the unforgettable “Praise You” vid for Fatboy Slim. Spike Jonze combines the best of artistic creativity, human reflectiveness, and skill in his directorial duties and all of them have been thrust upon the much talked about film adaptation of “Where The Wild Things Are”. Jonze has been working on the film for at least 5 years, and early trailers and reviews have shown it to majestic in nature. 5 years is not short time to work on a film, but as we learn in Spike interview with Vice Magazine founder Shane Smith, the film’s been in author Maurice Sendak’s mind for twenty years and he personally asked Jonze to make it a reality.
It was a really simple idea—to take the feeling of the book and expand who Max is and who the Wild Things are. And my idea was the Wild Things are wild emotions. It was that simple, but it was enough for me to know I could explore that idea and still be true to the book. I think that as a kid, for me at least, wild emotions were probably the things that were the scariest.
You can read the rest of the interview here.