Sendak’s Wild Things Move to Hollywood
If you ever felt like your Jewish relatives belonged on a page in Maurice Sendak’s “Where the While Things Are,” you were probably right. The celebrated children’s author and illustrator based his classic fanged monsters on Yiddish-speaking family members who descended upon Sendak’s childhood home every weekend to clear the cupboards and pinch young Maurice’s cheeks. “I saw them as fiendish creatures,” Sendak told the Jewish Journal in a 2002 interview. “They ate raw onions, and they stank. They screamed at each other in a foreign language, and they had bad teeth.” Sendak’s 1963 interpretation of his relatives’ interactions will be brought to life once again — on the big screen. Director Spike Jonze, however, did not stage young Max and his friends in a Brooklyn kitchen. Instead, he took his crew down under, shooting scenes at various locales in Australia. “The look and feel is very naturalistic. When our creatures knock down trees, they really knock down trees,” Jonze told Entertainment Weekly. The long-awaited film has been in production since 2006 and is slated to open in October.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!
