While he and Sendak kept in touch, initially, he had no desire to adapt what is essentially a visual poem into a 90-minute movie. When he was shooting Adaptation, he read Where The Wild Things Are at night in his Los Feliz bedroom, mulling over its words and pictures. Sendak's book was never far from his thoughts. But that was before Being John Malkovich, before he'd truly gained respect in the studio system. The story of a compromised Hollywood screenwriter, it must have resonated with its director – not least because he'd already worked with Sendak's production company for over a year on an aborted version of Crockett Johnson's 1955 children's book Harold and the Purple Crayon. Jonze followed it in 2002 with the Kaufman-scripted Adaptation. As he puts it, "disagreements with the studio as to what the film was" led to a protracted, painful, post-production period that was anything but a joy for Jonze. And it felt like there was just this huge weight off my shoulders."Īrriving seven years after his last film, Adaptation, and on a budget close to $100m, the process of bringing Maurice Sendak's beloved children's novel to the screen had left him spent. "I'd done a lot of promotion up until that morning. "I felt different when I woke up," he admits. It was the day his latest film, Where The Wild Things Are, was due for release in the US. Dressed in grey trousers, a thick red-and-navy lumberjack shirt, pink socks and white trainers, his mind turns back to a previous morning – 16 October last year, to be precise, just six days before his 40th birthday. It's around 10am and Spike Jonze is tucking into his breakfast – a healthy-looking bowl of yoghurt and cereal.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |