Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
Spike's Free-Range Movie Set

I really do promise, no more “Where the Wild Things Are”-related posts after this. In a recent interview, though, Spike Jonze shared about an aspect of the movie’s filming I hadn’t heard before – and quite frankly, love to pieces:

Q: Even though it was a long and hard shoot, did the process bring out the inner kid in you?

Spike Jonze: I don’t know… did it? The inner kid was what the script came out of, but I don’t know. We all moved to Australia together and everyone brought their families.

Basically, the philosophy was: if there are lots of kids around, they can go anywhere. They can go in any of the trucks – go make something in the art department truck, or go put the wolf suits on, or get fake blood from the makeup trailer, or go into one of the sets and make a movie. The idea was like summer camp – this is your set.

But also, [it was for] Max and all the kids on the set to have this group to play with and hang out with. The idea was [that] the set was open for the kids to come whenever they want. Max was there every day with some other photo doubles that played Max in the movie. So there [were] always at least four or five kids, and then on a good day there were probably 15 kids, when everyone’s kids would come.

How cool is that? And to think that you can actually be true and honest to the feelings driving a story throughout the whole filmmaking process… in this case, letting everybody behind the camera go just a little wild too.

Nov 01, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #