How are the Wild Things?

For the last 7 years or so, Dave Eggers has been one of the defining singular voices of American literature, and it was only a matter of time before the author dipped his pen into the screenwriting ink pool. His first script is an adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. By now, most of you are aware of this project, but for those who aren’t, the script was co-written and will be directed by Vice Magazine godfather Spike Jonze (ADAPTATION).

Even my hipster/scenester/indie rock friends, who think the fact that I spend so much time following upcoming movie news is tres lame, are excited about this one. And now, New York Magazine claims to have a copy of the script and they think it’s pretty darn nifty. Their blog Culture Vulture writes that it’s “filled with richly imagined psychological detail, and the screenplay for this live-action film simply becomes a longer and more moving version of what Maurice Sendak’s book has always been at heart: a book about a lonely boy leaving the emotional terrain of boyhood behind”.

The book is about a precocious young chap named Max, who runs around his backyard ‘making mischief’ in a wolf costume, and when he’s sent to his room as punishment, his imagination gets the better of him and he enters the strange forested land of the Wild Things. The mag continues that Max is now an “8-year-old with an absent father, an older sister who’s drifting away from him, a mother whose personal and job concerns leave her little time or energy for the rambunctious boy she dearly loves.” I have a feeling this will be a movie that a lot of us will dearly love.