OK, it didn’t make our Best Documentaries of the Decade — though we probably should have made an honorable mention for it — but Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs co-directed’ film about “Where The Wild Things Are” creator, Maurice Sendak, titled, “Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak,” is a beautiful, spare and raw piece of work. We called it a melancholy and perfect companion piece to Jonze’s “Where The Wild Things Are” live-action adaptation just before it aired on HBO earlier this fall.
But in case you missed it (and it is a must-see doc), it sounds like Beastie Boy Adam Yauch’s Oscillioscope Pictures is going to release the documentary on DVD sometime in 2010. Working on extras, bonus material and artwork obviously suggests its definitely not a theatrical release; plus Oscillioscope just started a new direct-mail subscription DVD club earlier this year, so it’s kind of a perfect match. Here’s the snippet from an interview with Gothamist:
We’re also hoping to release a film soon that Spike Jonze did, a documentary about Maurice Sendak, called Tell Them Anything You Want. So we’re in the process of getting that together right now. Spike’s working on the DVD extras. He did it with another guy, Lance Bangs, the two of them directed it together, so they’re working on putting together the bonus material, doing the artwork together, the cover and all that. It’s been fun hanging out with Spike lately.
It must be fun, they ostensibly haven’t partnered up in some time. The last connection we can recall is Jonze directing a second version of their “Root Down” song in 1998 and before that the director obviously made his name creating a pretty a pretty spectacular body of work directing some of their most creative music videos (“Sabotage” immediately comes to mind…), which allowed him to make the leap to feature-films.
You’ll recall that back in 1997 it was reported that the Beasties would be starring in a Spike Jonze-directed comedy, called “We Can Do This,” which was supposed to be a cross between “Zelig” and their wacky video for “Sabotage,” but obviously that never happened and surely that plan is long dead.
But Yauch does reference the film in the Gothamist interview and a few other ideas they’ve had, ala the 1964 Richard Lester/ the Beatles’ “A Hard Days Night” film. “I think we’ve actually started on three different Beastie Boys movie projects at various times, but for one reason or another, they never really managed to come to fruition.But maybe someday, something will come together. It would really be fun, you know. I love working with Adam and Mike, and we definitely have a lot of fun together. We just work quicker when we develop music than when we work on films.” Either way, nice to see Spike and Yauch working together though.
As for Yauch’s health situation (he was diagnosed with throat cancer earlier this year), he says, “I’m doing all right! I’m in Hawaii right now, feeling good. The sun is shining, the waves are breaking. There’s some giant squall coming through and there are sixty foot waves hitting. It’s pretty crazy.” We hope he has a speedy recovery.
