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Oct
12
This weekend, quite possibly the second highest anticipated movie of the year, Where The Wear Things Are finally releases nationwide. I can bet most of you are brimming with as much excitement as I am! Newsweek had a chance to sit down with the creators of the film, Spike Jonze, Dave Eggers & the man himself, Maurice Sendak. Naturally, they cover such topics as the creation process, walls they ran into during the making, and America’s perception of what is and isn’t appropriate for kids in the media world. One thing Spike said in reference to the studio bigwigs that really stuck out to me is, “The big disagreement is that they thought I was making a children’s film and I thought I was making a film about childhood…” Its important to acknowledge the distinction between the types of movies he mentioned. Children’s movies cater to an overly glamorized view of how “happy” & “fun” it is to be a kid. Inversely, a movie about childhood delves into the different dynamics of growing up; the feeling of uncertainty, joy, discovery, and rather importantly, fear. Its easy to overlook such things in a nation ran by Disney. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
Jonze: I mean, I think it’s a film—I want children to see it, and it’s not like I made it not for children, and it’ll be on the video shelf under CHILDREN’S, but I didn’t come at it that way. I came at it from the inside out as opposed to the outside in. In the end, though, the studio let us make the movie we wanted to make.
Sendak: It’s really an American problem.
What do you mean?
Sendak: Europeans have done films about children, like The 400 Blows or My Life as a Dog, which is one of the most wonderful movies ever. It’s tough to watch his suffering when his mother is dying and he scoots under the bed. That’s the kind of way they have of dealing with children and they always have. We are squeamish. We are Disneyfied. We don’t want children to suffer. But what do we do about the fact that they do? The trick is to turn that into art. Not scare children, that’s never our intention.Do you think Disney is bad for children?
Sendak: I think it’s terrible.
Read the rest over @ Newsweek.com!
Exactly
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I grew up on this book and will be seeing it with my children in 2 weeks.
It looks like an interesting movie.