Spike Jonze Q&A at BFI
What was it about the story that touched you and what was it about Maurice that you found so inspirational and influential?
Spike Jonze: I think he’s been influential to me at a few different points in my life. As a kid, he was influential as I was excited by the images he drew and excited by these ‘Wild Things’. Like in In the Night Kitchen, the little boy falls out of his bed and through the floors and out of his pyjamas and lands in this dough in the night kitchen. Images like that just seemed magical.
Then in my early twenties, I got into directing music videos and I’d sort of always go back and look at those books; In the Night Kitchen and Where The Wild Things Are and think about how perfect they were, these little short stories. I was aspiring to make music videos that were that kind of complete, magical and imaginative. And when I started working with Maurice, about five years ago, he inspired me again in other ways; how fiercely independent he is, how fiercely protective of his work and fiercely protective of children he is.
When I started working on the movie the only thing he said was, it wasn’t important to him if I was overly referential to the book, he just wanted me to make something that was personal to me in the same way that the book was personal to him when he was my age. He wanted to make sure I didn’t pander to children and I took children seriously. So that was the only thing he was fiercely, um, imperative about. Imperative? I’m not even sure if that’s the right vocabulary for that.
How did you turn a 338 word story into a 101 minute movie?
For a while, I was hesitant to make a movie of it. I love the book so much, it seemed so perfect. As I started thinking about what would happen, what kind of plot or story you’d add onto it, it just seemed like it didn’t belong. So twice we talked about it and I said ‘I don’t know how to do this'. Then the third time he approached me, I started thinking about it differently and I started thinking about who the ‘Wild Things’ were and who Max was. I think the idea that I had was that the ‘Wild Things’ are wild emotions. Once I had that idea, I could just kind of expand on what that means when you’re nine years old; how overwhelming and scary it can be, unpredictable emotions in you and people around you.
Why did you choose Karen O to make the soundtrack?
When I started the script, I knew I wanted her to write the music and she’s somebody who just writes from her heart. She doesn’t write analytically and she writes whatever she’s feeling. She kind of closes her eyes and goes with that feeling and writes a song about that. Everybody around her gets sucked into this stream of hers and it feels like her eyes are closed until she opens them and the song’s completed. I just wanted to have that; I thought that would be really powerful.
And also we talked about pop songs, Karen and I both loved pop songs when we were kids - songs like ‘Stand By Me’ and Gloria Gaynor's ‘I Will Survive’. I remember loving that song and as a kid it’s not like I’d experienced, I don’t think I’d experienced, getting dumped and being by myself and picking myself up again. But as a kid, I think you still relate to that idea of being lonely and sad and trying to feel you can do anything in spite of that.
I think as a kid you really connect to pop songs. I’ve seen my friend’s son sing ‘My Body Is A Cage’ by Arcade Fire. He’s this eight-year-old kid, missing half his teeth, and he’s just singing it in the back of the car and looking out the window. He loves it and he relates to this song about being trapped in your body and not being able to express yourself. I don’t know whether he thinks he relates to it but the way he sang it looked like he related to it [laughs]. I didn’t really listen to classical music when I was a kid. It was boring when my grandparents put it on so it kind of made sense not to score Max’s movie with it.
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