Wildly Conflicted: Ruminations on an Adaptation

Several months ago, I heard that someone creating a film version of one of the greatest books of all time: Where the Wild Things Are. My immediate reaction was sheer horror. How could they do this? Why would Maurice Sendak (the author of this and numerous other amazing tales) allow such an endeavor? Would he be involved in the scripting or character and set design? Who would direct this travesty?



Okay, deep breath. Why did I have such a visceral reaction? I didn’t respond this way—well, I was troubled, but not horrified—to the adaptations of The Cat in the Hat or Horton Hears a Who. (Full disclosure: I’ve not seen either of those, and I won’t. I am the opposite of interested.) Why indeed? Well, the power of Where the Wild Things Are resides in its simplicity—it’s made up of maybe a hundred and fifty words (many of them repeated, particularly at the end, where the words that bring him home are the reverse of the words that open up his new world), drawn over maybe forty pages. The images are clean yet lush. They start simple, almost incomplete, and on single pages, with words opposite; then they grow to take up entire spreads, with the words nearly incidental. And the entire thing is a dream. The power of childhood, the simplicity of childhood, the ability of imagination to free us from negative emotions, a child’s need for home, for comfort, for love, for supper—all in a hundred and fifty words and forty pages. What movie could possibly do what this does? I mean, first of all, any writer would have to expand it, and I (still) don’t see how that could do anything but kill it. Just. Kill. It. Combine that with Hollywood’s history of successful adaptations—a very short history indeed—and maybe the reasons for my horror become clear.

Well. Last week my wife and I went to see the movie 9. One of the trailers was for… yep, you guessed it… Where the Wild Things Are. I was entranced. Really. It’s… beautiful. And funny. And cute. The kid playing Max, a newbie I think, is… well, at least three years too old, but his lines are great.

Wild Thing Judith: “You have a home and family?”

Max: “I had one of those once.”

Wild Thing Judith: “But you ate ‘em all?”

Max: “No! I have no plans to eat anybody.”

It’s so damned cute you almost want to spit. But then… The sets—oh, my, the sets. Sumptuous. The humor—all there, particularly in the ram wild thing (who’s on, I think, a single page in the book). The wild things? They are not CGI, not animated. They are puppets, outsize, lovingly rendered, warm-spooky-unsettling-comforting puppets (with voices by an amazing array of unlikely actors, who must be doing it because they too love the book, perhaps as much as I). The costume—Max’s costume—is perfect, down to its floppy ears and sensuous velvet; I just want to touch it. Maybe becoming a dad has made me a sucker, but this stuff just hits me. Right. There. (The heart. You have to imagine the hand gesture.) So far, so good; right? Well, maybe not.

The crux of my problem is this: books are not movies; movies are not books. The experiences are wildly (er, widely) different. Where the Wild Things Are lives in my imagination. It is there, never to be lost. When my first child was born, it was one of the first books I turned to. I could not wait. And now, we can all recite the book without even looking at the pages. While the movie looks perfect, down to the last feather, down to the last gnashed tooth and terrible claw, I can’t help but feel that a movie version is a loss. A loss to readers and to children of all ages. When I shared these feelings with Carla, she said, “Well, I’m glad our children know the book already.” And that’s it, right there. No matter how faithful the adaptation, no matter how wonderful the movie, it will subsume the book. Even for me, I fear to watch it because it could eclipse my memory of the source. And it will interfere—for generations of children to come, the movie will be there; for some, it might be their first experience of the story, and they may come to see the book as some incomplete version of the film. While this is a triumph of the imagination (for the filmmakers), it’s the death of imagination (for readers).



To see the trailer, go to

Where the Wild Things Are, directed by Spike Jonze, opens nationwide October 16, 2009.

[book cover image ©HarperCollins; movie poster image ©Warner Bros. Pictures]

We're all just background: Book Critic at Play #4

Extras, by Scott Westerfeld
I’m not sure if this is the best entry in the Uglies series or simply the most cerebral. The action is in keeping with the other three books—the surfboards are there, the hidden forces, the adversaries who could easily destroy the hero and who are probably manipulating her as well—though this one seems to take a little longer to get started. The pacing is still nearly perfect and the characterization nearly enthralling; the only bummer is that this one is not about Tally Youngblood, and I’d become rather enamored of our young heroine. Ah, well. Extras takes place after—how long after is not clear, but not more than a few years probably—the events of Specials, the third entry in the series. Aya Fuse is a kicker, or wants to be. The best kickers are citizen journalists; the least of them are gossip columnists. Instead of YouTube, the citizens of Extras have constant feeds embedded in their eyes, or projected from. Extras is a world of instant media, a celebrity culture where no one stays a celebrity for long. The goal of most citizens is to increase their face ranking, their level of fame. At the start of the novel, Aya is a nobody; of course, that changes, and so does her understanding of face ranks, of how life is, of how life should be. Yes, Tally makes an appearance—she has to; it’s the world she remade, and this novel deals with the question of responsibility. But more than that, it’s an exploration of fame, of desire, of identity. Who is Aya Fuse really? Who does she want to be? Does that desire make sense? Does it define her? As with each of the novels in this series, nothing is quite what it seems, including the main character. This is dystopian sf, sure, but it’s also classic coming of age—Aya has to decide where her true path lies, whether what she needs is truly the same as what she wants, who her true friends are and what loyalty means. Part of the fun of a Westerfeld novel seems to be trying to figure these things out before the heroine does, and part is in the language itself—this author combines elements of Australian slang, tech argot, and the language of the world he has invented to create a cant for his characters that is not found elsewhere. This is cultural criticism disguised as pulse-pounding sf thriller. (Image ©2006 HarperCollins Children's Books)

Framing Faith: I Actually Like TV #1

Joan of Arcadia (2003–2004), Season 1
“Faith is believing when you have no rational reason to believe.” This line comes near the end of the season, and while it’s hardly a new concept to anyone with or interested in faith—its challenges and its blessings—it’s fairly unusual to see on TV. Joan is the middle child in a nuclear family that has just moved to the town of Arcadia. Dad is a cop (and a good one), Mom is an artist (a painter, actually), big brother is a former jock who has just been in an accident that left him a paraplegic (confined to a wheelchair), and little brother is super science nerd. Joan is a teenage girl who, simply put, speaks to God. Or more accurately, God speaks to her. In each episode of the first season, God appears with a different face, and each time, the stranger gives Joan a mission—he or she tells her to do something, and out of that something comes a realization, growth for Joan. Ultimately, Joan of Arcadia is a coming-of-age tale, but with a twist, this conceit. It does not preach, nor does its God. He or she insists that free will is the core, his or her greatest gift. God is everyone—black, white, Asian, man, woman, young, old—and God is in Joan. Or god is. She questions, she refuses, she grows. She may actually be delusional, but then faith—whether in something divine or in other people—is not logical. The producers nailed the dual-narrative nature of episodic television, neatly deepening themes by putting one or two other major characters into subplots that echo and resonate with Joan’s. Pop culture that makes you think, that addresses faith and hope and growth? Who says television is soulless? (Image ©2003 Sony Pictures Television)

It Ain't...: Opinionated Movie Comment #5

Rocket Science (2007), Reece Thompson, Vincent Piazza, Anna Kendrick, Nicholas d’Agosto, Aaron Yoo, Utkarsh Ambudkar; dir. Jeffrey Blitz
Jeffrey Blitz first caught the film world’s attention in 2002, with his documentary Spellbound, an examination of eight competitors (I almost wrote “players,” but this is no mere game) in the national Scripps-Howard spelling bee. That film had more drama (and comedy) than many big-budget Hollywood films, and characters no fiction writer could have written with receiving accusations of unreality. Five years later, he brought us Rocket Science. Both feature young adults on a stage, competing against one another in battles judged by adults, not by peers. Both show us young people consumed with ambition and self-doubt. Both show us characters forced to look into themselves and grow. And though one is fiction and the other documentary, both are true. Rocket Science opens with a debate—and what a debate! Forensic debate, high-speed, ridiculous verbal fluency, argument and counter-argument. But it comes suddenly to a screeching stop, almost a stutter. And stuttering is important in this film—or rather verbal shutdown. Hal Hefner, our hero is a very, very smart lad, but he seems unable to speak. He also has another problem: He has a crush on Ginny Ryerson, the debate team star, and she has absolutely zero interest in him. Until, that is, she invites him to join the team. This movie is likable for several reasons: The people who populate the movie are real—no teen movie (or Teen Movie) beautiful people here. No one is ugly or acne-ridden or deformed; they just aren’t beautiful. Blitz and his cast created some fantastic characterization, particularly in Hal’s awful older brother Earl. There is some great toying with music, particularly pop tunes, for comic effect. The Violent Femmes have never been so slick, nor so clever. But in the end, this is a coming-of-age movie—warm, painful, heartwrenching, heartwarming, and true. (Image ©2007 HBO Films)