This being the internet and all I know I’m required to share my feelings on Where The Wild Things Are. Other people will, I'm sure, be able to write more articulately about its quality. My basic thoughts were - it’s wonderful and magical and thrilling and all that stuff. But you already knew that. There are some other things I’d like to focus on instead. Like:
-Holy shit, that’s exactly what it’s like to be a 9-year old boy! The movie I mean. I know that was Spike and Dave’s (we're on a first name basis) goal in making it, and wow, well done gentlemen. If aliens landed and wanted to know what the experience of being a nine year old human boy is like then that movie would be all they would need. So interesting to know that the feelings and experiences I had at that age were pretty universal. And also that in retrospect I was a bit of a brat.
-I don’t understand the charges that it was too “hipstery”. I didn’t see that at all. Although I have to say I don’t remember that scene where Max goes to the Grizzly Bear concert in McCarren Park from the book.
-Sure enough, at my showing there were plenty parents with kids walking out less than halfway through. And people have already taken to the internet to complain that their kids were bored/scared/hated it. Well no shit. Clearly it’s not a movie for kids. Have you seen any of the trailers? Do you know anything about the people involved with it? Yes, it’s based on what is ostensibly a children’s book, but there is enough very strong evidence out there that this film adaptation was not going to be for kids that unless you are a complete moron then you should have known not to take them. (Unless you have like, you know, really awesome kids.) But we saw this phenomenon this summer with Bruno too. People who walk out of a movie they should have never been at in the first place. And then afterwards getting upset with that movie, when what they should really be getting mad at is their own willful ignorance. It’s like if you really wanted a banana but instead you decided to get an orange because, well, hey, it’s a fruit, it must taste like a banana, and then asking for your money back when your orange doesn’t infact taste like a banana. You don’t get to complain, when the basis for your complaint is that you’re a moron. It’s not the orange’s fault that it doesn’t taste like a banana. It tried to warn you by being orange, and, you know, shaped nothing like a banana. So it’s actually your fault for ignoring the basic facts of the fruit at hand.
Look, I understand not wanting to go into a movie with too much information or any preconceived notions. And I’ve felt burned and let down by plenty of movies I paid to see in theaters. Even actively loathed a couple. But ultimately, if you’re walking out a movie it’s probably not the movie’s fault; it’s probably yours.
-If there’s not a music store in Williamsburg called “Max Records” within 10 years then I will be very shocked and disappointed.
-I could (and someday will) write a lot about the experience of working with kids. But the main thing in the film that struck me as being incredibly authentic to the experience of being a kid is the incredible power of their imaginations. You could take almost anyone between the ages of 5-10 and put them in a completely empty room and they would find some way to entertain themselves. They see the possibilities in things. In everything. To us "grownups" a stick is a stick. To them, a stick can be a sword, a strange mutant creature, a dear friend, or anything at all really.
When I was in elementary school I participated in a competition called Odyssey of the Mind. Part of the competition was something called the “spontaneous competition” in which someone would name an everyday object and then your team would have four minutes to come up with as many potential uses for that item as possible. I remember one year the item was a light bulb. My team came up with something like 50 different responses in our four minutes. And we weren’t even one of the best teams that year. Coming out of Where the Wild Things Are I was reminded of that competition and I tried to see how many responses I could come up with on my own as a seemingly wiser 27 year old. I couldn’t come up with any uses for a light bulb other than “light a room”. Not a single other thing. I vividly remember our “coach” back in those days saying, “enjoy the power of your imaginations now because when you get older you won’t be able to do things like this anymore. You won’t be able to see all these possibilities.” I remember it so vividly because it seemed like such an absurd statement. If I can come up with 40 uses for a light bulb as a 10 year old then wouldn’t I be able to come up with 100 of them as a 30 year old? Turns out the only possibility I couldn’t see was the possibility that knowing more would ensure that I would be able to see less.
Sometimes I worry that our constantly wired culture will hurt the development of kids’ imaginations, but I think ultimately imagination is something so innate to children that nothing can harm it. Except for age.
- I don’t know about you but I got really invested in the James Gandolfini character. I was really engrossed in his storyline and I couldn’t wait to see what would ultimately happen to him in the end. Then right when I was about to find ou
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