Ok, by now we all know that director Spike Jonze and Warner Bros. did not exactly see eye to eye with the filmmaker’s original cut of “Where The Wild Things Are.”
Perhaps the most candid Jonze has been about the fracas was when he told Rolling Stone that the rift was akin to being in the doghouse with your girlfriend. “In the end, they let me finish my movie [but] the editing process wasn’t always fun . . . It’s like a couple that’s been fighting and going to counseling. What matters now is that we made it through all of that. There was definitely a point in time when [Warner Bros. was] sleeping on the sofa.”
So we noticed this interview with Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (who composed the film’s score with Carter Burwell) with the London Times this weekend which suggests a lot of tweaking was made to please WB.
Apparently O has seen Jonze’s film (her ex-boyfriend), “13, 14 times, but like 12 different versions of it. It’s pretty spectacular.” Geez, 12 different versions? That’s a lot of finessing. Is this why the film was delayed an entire year? Pushed back from fall 2008 to fall 2009 after a pretty upsetting early 2008 test screening that reportedly bothered children? Many people have already reported that most of the opening sequence with Mark Ruffalo (the lame boyfriend of Max’s mom, played by Catherine Keener) have been greatly excised. We wonder what else was cut/ removed from the film. Will there be a definitive “adults version” on the DVD possibly? That’s some wishful thinking, huh?
Of the songs she wrote for the film, she echoes what she told MTV a few weeks ago. “The songs are innocent and pure. We’re trying to evoke the music that would appeal to the child in anybody, and something that kids also really love.”
“Where The Wild Things Are” hits theaters on October 16.
