A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Wild Things
We find Dave Eggers to be a visionary editor and publisher (McSweeney’s) while being an extremely annoying writer (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius). Because of the latter, we’re delighted to hear good things about his screenplay for Where the Wild Things Are. From The Vulture
In transforming the 338-word story of Where the Wild Things Are into a 111-page screenplay, Eggers and Jonze have fleshed out the story not, unexpectedly, with wild plot developments, and not, thankfully, with densely packed pop-fiction references. Instead Where the Wild Things Are is 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….
We were deeply nervous about anyone taking on a story this beloved yet difficult, even talents like Eggers and Jonze, but this screenplay — if it hasn’t been changed too dramatically since October 2005, when it was turned in — goes a long way toward reassuring us that this movie, which is coming out in 2008, will be something special.
The Vulture’s got more details here. And we’ve got the original animated version after the jump.
