The famed children’s author discusses life, death, and more in TELL THEM ANYTHING YOU WANT. Courtesy of ChaiFlicks.MY GOD. And no, I’m not talking about the beloved children’s book. I’m talking about Spike Jonze’s 2009 live-action adaptation. To be honest, I didn’t really love the book so much as a kid. (I much preferred The Polar Express.) The film is one of my all-time favorites, and I know that’s a controversial statement because Jonze’s movie was very divisive. Most critics “liked” it but didn’t love it. Made for $100 million, it barely made enough at the worldwide box office. When I showed the film to my parents, my mom turned to me and said, “Matt, this is not a kids movie. This is way too dark.” Well, she has a point. Indeed, many people were turned off by how sad and depressing Jonze made Maurice Sendak’s classic.
Perhaps I’m just into darker movies, but it was destiny for me to love Where the Wild Things Are when it came out. I was just beginning my freshman year at Temple University, and I hated it. I wanted to go back to the past, back to high school and be a “kid” again. The character Max and I were very similar in that he, too, doesn’t want to grow up. Jonze’s film lays Sendak’s message out plain and simple: growing up stinks. It REALLY stinks, but we all have to do it. Life is too short to be moping around wishing to be young again. It’s a sad, yet brutally honest, remarkably truthful story about maturing.
Anyway. This isn’t a review of Where the Wild Things Are (which you can stream on HBO Max, by the way). It’s about a smaller film that Jonze also made, along with co-director Lance Bangs, the same year the feature came out titled Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak. Presented by HBO Documentary Films, Tell Them Anything You Want follows Sendak at his quiet home in the woods in Connecticut. He lives with his German Shepherd, Herman, and his caretaker and best friend, Lynn. His house is devoid of TVs or radios. There is just him, his canine, and his collection of illustrations and miniature arts and crafts he made with his brother as a kid. Jonze and Bangs began filming the author in 2003, six years before the movie and nine years before his death at the age of 83.
Born to Polish Jewish immigrants, Sendak, who has written and illustrated over 100 children’s books, has a happy yet grim sense of humor.
“Do you have any advice for young people?” Jonze asks him in the opening scene.
“Quit this life as soon as possible. Get out, get out.” Sendak replies.
Sendak is painfully candid about everything. He highly disliked his parents, even recounting how his father tried to abort him…and then he and his mother used to tell him about how they tried to abort him. He never had kids and vowed to never have them a while back, arguing that there are too many kids in the world with unfit parents. Ironically, as a children’s author himself, he states that he never wished to make that genre of books. He just wanted to make peculiar books about children.
This is very much the case with Where the Wild Things Are, a children’s book, but something more. Behind the gorgeous illustrations and iconic lines, there lies a melancholy, gloomy message in the story. The book itself was immensely controversial – and even banned – when it was first published and didn’t gain popularity until two years later. Critics were particularly disturbed by the mother’s actions to punish her son, like saying he will “never eat again” unless he behaves. Sendak’s career was further put in question when his other book, In the Night Kitchen, shocked readers by depicting its main character, a young boy, fully nude. A penis in a children’s book! For the author, however, he never meant to be controversial. All his books, no matter how uncomfortable they made readers (particularly parents) feel, showed a vulnerable, idiosyncratic frame of mind towards family and children.
Sendak admits that he is fascinated by death, mentioning several times that he knows he’s going to kick the bucket anytime soon. In a very bleak scene, he admits that his intrigue with dying began when he was just two years old. Charles Lindbergh’s baby had just been kidnapped. One day, Sendak was walking by a newsstand with his parents when he saw the horrible image of the baby’s corpse. That was it for him. That one fateful image shook him to his core. He couldn’t shake the fact that he could die. Children, adults, anyone could. We breathe, and then we don’t breathe.
A fear of death and also a painful reminder of regret affected Sendak until his last days. In one heartfelt moment, he mentions how he thinks he wasted many years of his life as a gay man. Instead of celebrating and loving his life, he hated it, for fear of his sexuality ruining his career. Luckily, he was with the love of his life, Eugene, for 50 years. (The film is dedicated to him.)
Death. Regret. Pain. Is this a really happy documentary? Well, I wouldn’t say that, but Jonze and Bangs have captured the true side of Sendak that few of us knew. His genius was in his audacious views on life and the things we don’t like to admit but know are true. Childhood is short-term. Death is imminent. We can’t change the past and fix our mistakes. We know these things, but we hide from them. Sendak, especially as a children’s author, is unique in how subtle he incorporated his bleakness in his works.
On a brighter note, regardless of his dry sense of humor over such dreary topics, Sendak was happy. He didn’t drown himself in gloom and kick the can early, as people may assume when they watch this film. For him, drawing was what saved him. Illustrating made the self-torment go away. He chose to live because he had a passion. If there is a hopeful message in Tell Them Anything You Want, it’s that we need to move on. Live life. There is pain, but if we do what we love, we will be OK.
Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak is now streaming on ChaiFlicks.