Buried at the bottom of an interview with the the writer-directors of the new Sissy Spacek film, “Lake City,” Hunter Hill and Perry Moore, is a small tidbit about Spike Jonze and “Where The Wild Things Are” author Maurice Sendak.
Namely that the duo are working with Jonze on a documentary about Sendak. Not much other info. Presumably, he’s producing and their writing/directing with his input?
Either way, its evident that Jonze loves Sendak and not just because he’s adapting his work. If you’ve read any of the various interviews with Jonze this year (or last year) about the children’s author, clearly he has a strong affection for the man.
And Jonze has had an interest in his work and related works for years. According to that recent massive AICN interview with the director, Spike once was working on an adaptation of “Harold And The Purple Crayon.” Sendak didn’t write or illustrate the book, but he was a protege and close friend of its author Crockett Johnson and Sendak wrote an appreciation in his 2005 version of “The Magic Beach.”
Jonze said the project fell apart years ago and he was sort of glad because it grew to become something that wasn’t part of his initial vision (too commercial and Hollywood perhaps?) “It was so ambitious, yeah, in terms of effects and animation, and to make all those pieces tell one story. And I was only 24 then, so I just think I didn’t have that much experience, but I also didn’t have experience with studios. We worked on it for like a year and a half, and bit by bit, it just got away from what I had initially wanted to do.”
So yeah, anyhow, Spike Jonze, Maurice Sendak documentary. It will surely dovetail nicely with the October 2009 release of “Where The Wild Things Are” if they can have it ready by then (or maybe it’s being planned for the DVD?)